kogarou's page

Aha, I've finally found the explanation for the gap in my bookshelf. I was about to email support. Looking forward to this Adventure. :)

Best wishes to the community. PACG has always been such a special game, and one we'll keep playing. The wiki's basically complete with official rules content. The next step will be to support those who create and share homebrew content.

What an incredible announcement! Beloved A-list voice actors on such an epic AP... I can't wait to share this.

I appreciate the advice, thanks all.

Given the importance of selling PDFs to keep Paizo employees safe in COVID times, can the company send a DMCA request to the simplest source of piracy I've seen? I'm going to avoid sharing information publicly here but they're very visible and 120% breaking Community Use Policy.

I am so dang happy you're releasing extra content like this. Thank you!

I always love how just beneath the rules text on any card is a rich pool of roleplaying inspiration that can easily turn into compelling characters and stories. Thanks for sharing more.

Oh, wow, I forgot about this being in the Playtest! In the final CRB, the entire Item Quality section has been lost. Instead we have the Materials section. I'm still wrapping my head around it and may still be very wrong about things, but here's my current impression:

You must craft a new item to incorporate a particular material. The GM must approve of the combination of item and material. Each material has three grades of purity - low-grade [expert], standard-grade [master], and high-grade [legendary]. The effect is the same regardless of grade; the reason you care about grade is that low-grade precious material in incompatible with runes beyond a corresponding level. You are able to increase the grade of an item later by investing the price delta via Crafting - but you can't directly craft a pre-existing sword into a silver-coated sword.

One super cool thing about this system is that it gives you rules for finding the raw material in varying Bulk and how much it's worth. You get to think about how many items you can cover with the material you've found, and describe the details of your new item.

...so back to my initial post - there's a hodgepodge of rules that could be generously interpreted in a way that e.g. allows a weapon to be reforged, but I don't think it's in RAW. There is a mechanic for transferring runes (at a 10% value fee), so I believe it's reasonable that we should also be able to reclaim some material value of our items, and particularly that of the precious material they may contain. Hope to find some official guidelines in the future. Maybe Paizo was worried about the economy implications, since they've been so careful with it in this system - it could e.g. lock a player into wooden items if they invested in something expensive and wooden. Or it could cause a group to stop caring about finding the same precious material twice. But I still want this to work, somehow.

Edit: If I tell myself "getting something new is more fun!", I suppose I'm fine with RAW. Would still appreciate peoples' thoughts.

Vallarthis, thanks, that makes a lot more sense than having to calculate the literal speed players move and think about how much arriving early or late in the day causes an impact on an event at the destination. Because that's usually beyond player knowledge. I'll use this trick sparingly but when I think it's needed.

Perhaps there will even be guidelines in the GMG about how travel speed interacts with random encounters. Though hey, right off the bat, it makes sense if players can estimate how many times they need to make camp (given miles to destination), that could lead to some interesting thinking. Fast characters like elves laden with Speed feats might be able to take the 1/2 Speed penalty from an exploration activity without slowing their group, allowing them to avoid an extra encounter roll. For short trips that should take well less than a day even moving slowly, characters should all just pick a slow activity.

Suddenly I love this.

Fair Narxiso, though spellcasting is typically a two or three action activity. Quick Draw sounds great for anyone regularly throwing knives. Maybe there will be more feats for other interactions? I see a 4th-level fighter feat (Dual-Handed Assault) that lets you switch to 2-H grip and Strike as a single action (even if it's not normally a 2-H weapon; damage is improved over normal behavior with this feat either way).

Since we're talking about hands, I'd like to confirm how bards work (and mostly ignore hands limitations): it looks like many bard composition spells aren't somatic, does this mean that using an instrument to cast them (which requires "at least one of your hands to do so") triggers Attack of Opportunity? i.e. would it gain the manipulate trait even though it's not somatic? It seems the answer is YES if using an instrument for a composition spell in particular, as these "require you to use the Performance skill while casting them" even though there is no call for a check to be made, and the Performance skill (without literally taking the Perform action) says it add the manipulate trait if you use an instrument. This would suggest that bards in close range could safely avoid AOO for these specific spells if they simply sing instead. They could dance, but with its Move trait that would also provoke AOO.

It seems that bards can play their instruments "with one hand free" even though all musical instruments typically require two hands. I guess bards are ridiculously deft or magical when it comes to music in combat. Probably even just using magic to manipulate e.g. their violin's bow. This system lets the bard actually engage in combat, at the cost of 1 action to recast their compositions each turn they desire the effect.

I think this is up to GM fiat. I'd like to say yes (at 50% of the item value, as per items that have been disassembled in hopes of obtaining its formula, and no longer simply Repaired), and allow my players to reforge a destroyed beloved item into something new, within reason - metal to metal. Perhaps sometimes they'd even like to upgrade an unbroken item, (though I'd still force it to be disassembled to 50% value first). This could increase the value of crafting as opposed to just buying new items in the store.

Any thoughts or conflicting rules? Maybe when an item is destroyed as opposed to intentionally disassembled, I could apply the -10% raw material value penalty for critically failing a reverse engineer attempt.

Not gonna spoil the numbers, but that skill feat got way stronger since the Playtest, as it now scales with proficiency.

Interesting idea to allow perma-wielding only by 1H weapons!

Also want to add to Mathmuse's scenario - the rogue picking up a weapon would be at risk of attack of opportunity or other reactions from their foe (who certainly doesn't want the weapons to be picked up). It might be best for the rogue to Step, Stride, and draw another weapon from their Merisiel dagger belt. Still, in general I'm fine with a slightly off-raw reading allowing players to grab and pass but NOT use two items at once.

Thanks all for the perspective everyone, I'm feeling a lot more confident about this. Still can't find anything preventing players from having their weapons drawn all the time, so I'll just embrace it. They'll probably leave them sheathed in town, and if someone wants to draw a weapon that implies we just roll initiative instead.

Mathmuse - thanks for the link. One update is that there's now a low-level Athletics skill feat that allows you to keep holding a weapon while climbing that should help with the action tax. And sometimes you can jump instead of climbing. And while it's a bit clunky, I'd imagine that the rogue in your example who put their weapons down and cozied up to peer into the lock would be well-served by just fumbling to pick up one weapon when caught off guard. Two-weapon fighting doesn't directly add much damage after all - you get 90% of the effect just by picking the right weapon for the situation.

I dislike when players say "assume I'm always detecting magic, and my weapon's drawn, and I have a readied attack". Are there any relevant rules about this? It seems like the exploration mode rules could apply (you're slow if you're so cautious), but then my players will probably just slow walk everywhere. I don't want to embarrass them in-game either, just give them a sense of baseline normal behavior.

AKA, given this quote: "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game" - what new tools does this edition give me to limit that opportunity?

OK I'm back. Players make a secret check (probably all 4 will attempt.)

The Dryad Queen's Deception DC is 40.

To learn her "true intentions" you need critical success, which is only really possible for players atm with a Nat 20 and Perception +20. At level 13, character Wisdom will range from +16 to +24.

Beyond this, the Sense Motive skill is worded in a strange way. The failure outcome sounds more like success than the success outcome. So I'm going to make up an assumption: let's say that at success you get the impression that the opponent isn't being entirely forthright with you, but you're not sure whether they are just keeping a secret, trying to get on your good side, or intend to cause you to come to harm.

Alright, how can our players succeed against the monster DC 40 without a nat 20? Well, it's the same breakpoint. Beyond Perception +20, players get an increasing chance to sense something is wrong.

Now there's an important downside: the chance of critical failure. This causes "a false sense of the creature's intentions". At what point can a high perception character be sure they aren't crit failing vs DC 40 Deception? The answer is: They would need to be able to succeed on a nat 1, but for the result decrease effect. This means only characters with Perception +39... not happening!

So game mechanics dictate that with higher Perception, you're more likely to sense something is wrong, but you can never be 100% sure. Except against all enemies with garbage deception, once you hit the Perception +11-15 range. And high WIS teammates always have a chance to glimpse a foe's true intentions!

I'd appreciate any corrections!

If the GM even makes The Dryad Queen take a check (the GM certainly doesn't have to say they're making a roll to deceive the players, and generally lets players control the PCs' opinions), she will still fail to deceive any player trained in Perception (aka everybody) on a Nat 1. Every class is at least Expert Perception by level 13, leading to a minimum Perception DC of 10 + (modifier: -1) + (proficiency: 17) = 26. Her roll of 31 = success would reduce to failure (the worst possible outcome for Deception(Lie)).

Your min-maxed high perception character has a DC 34, meaning they disbelieve lies 15% of the time. True, that's not much payoff in this case, but it works better against the rest of the bestiary. And after the first lie detected, you'd get +4(circumstance) vs future Lie attempts in the same conversation!

Edit: My bad, just realized players would request a Sense Motive check rather than the GM rolling Deception(Lie). Checking the rules on page 471 now...

Just checked all other level 13 monsters - the only others with Deception are the Gelugon (Devil) at +25, Adult Blue Dragon at +26, and Glabrezu (Demon) at +28, and generally skill modifiers float around 22-24 unless they're just a simple fighter with only Athletics +30. Looks like the Dryad Queen is intentionally very strong at skills. Most monsters don't have that skill trained at all, meaning their deception is utter garbage (raw charisma).

So it's very valuable to use abilities that reveal such information. Monsters feel really good in their specialties but not everything. Only monsters with thematic reasons to deceive seem to have the skill available.

Players use skills to hit 1 known DC of interest.

This monster needs to use Deception to have a chance (but not guarantee) of fooling a party of 4.

There must also be spells that have a decent-but-not-absolute protection against deception.

Not enough evidence that anything is wrong here. Sounds more like something is right.

Somehow I got placed in both of your sessions, which I'm very OK with, but I'm glad to find a replacement if you'd like to get more people involved!

Otherwise, I'm a 2.5 and would like to play Lem.

I'm a 2.5
And I would like to play Seelah, but am open to whatever!

@Fluff, I think your image of what a paladin should be has been shaped by board games just as much as fantasy. I don't recall reading any fantasy about paladins bravely standing in doorways. In the same way, the new system is ripe to create fresh new images for paladins. Moved to action to righteously avenge their teammates, or, always by their fragile companion's side. Who knows what else. The purpose of a second edition doesn't only have to be retreading old ground.

In order to schedule players, I need an estimate of how many 2 or 4 hour sessions are required for each Part of Doomsday Dawn. Can we do one 4-hour session every 3 weeks, or will we need weekly play of our typical 3-hour sessions?

I mean, hopefully this info will be in the PDF tomorrow, but getting a group together and scheduling is hard - I can use all the time I can get. Anyone have a good sense for the timing?

Absolutely! Looking forward to it.

The more I learn about this game, especially by looking at the incredible variety of class deck designs, the cooler it gets, and the more confused I am about why I can't find articles (besides the product announcement blog) talking about how awesome it is for roleplaying, strategy, and simple fun.

Is there a lot of this sort of discussion on the official Paizo forums? I don't spend much time here.

Awesome! I'll be at PaizoCon too (2nd year) and know it'll get me super excited to help with a community project afterwards. I'd love to have your help and learn from your strategy tips!

I've done a lot of research since my last post, and here's what I've discovered so far. The Community Use Policy was designed to fill in gaps around OGL + PRD, granting access to the Setting and Proper Nouns. PACG gets the CUP, but no OGL - so nothing (explicitly) permits sharing of mechanical game content! Just card titles. Having CUP gets us awesome community Adventure guides, but leaves a hole where we're not (explicitly) permitted to reproduce official card mechanics or perhaps even list the official recommended starting decks for AP characters - though community recommended builds would be OK! Along that line of reasoning - a PACG wiki could focus on less controversial aspects, like deck-building/strategy discussions and opinionated class deck analysis. But I am personally most motivated by a belief that PACG's potential is severely limited so long as cards are not publicly catalogued. I'll save the rest for those most motivated in that direction, or as my fallback plan.

That said, let's draw a comparison - there are extremely thorough, popular wikis for Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone. They make their derivative content available to the world under permissive licenses, but I have not been any justification for how they can use high quality card artwork and text - just "trademarks/copyright are owned by Blizzard/WotC yo". And these particular websites thrive even though they're constructed in a way I suspect Paizo would take issue with (heavily branded; close proximity to paid accounts). These websites are represented by a big gaming company with lawyers, and I'm not. But I'm still holding out hope that a free-access, community-spirit project will be quietly accepted, and that Paizo will have every opportunity to tell us to turn back if we approach any lines in the sand. Far better would be if Paizo helps out and makes even more content available - especially card images!

So basically, Paizo's Community Use policy and packages are a much better starting point than similar Wikis work from. There are no OGL guardrails, but that doesn't mean we're not safe. My first draft of this post was nearly despondent, but after getting recharged seeing your response and researching beyond my comfort zone, I now feel quite confident. We've got Fair Use and obvious good intentions on our side. Paizo can reserve and exercise their copyrights however they like - hopefully by taking no action and reaping the benefits! (Unlike trademarks, copyrights don't need to be exercised to remain valid. And I seriously doubt this clearly fan-based project will threaten either category.) Still, I'm receptive and will take action the moment Paizo reaches out, publicly or privately.

To Paizocon and beyond!

Postponing Ultimate Add-On deck reviews until they're in the Approved Product List.
Proceeding with wiki content overhaul.
May share mock-ups (with no official art or Golarion/product identity stuff, of course).

I've gained confidence, so I guess all is well - and I've got an excuse to dig into the earlier class decks!

I've read http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qosq?An-important-note-about-creating-and and the Community Use Policy to the best of my ability!

More importantly, I finally got the Approved Product List to open, and that seems central to what content I'm allowed to share! Moving carefully...

Want to float some projects the community might be interested in, and learn if there are any big "stop signs". Is there any reason I haven't seen these attempted before?

1. I'd like to share (here + reddit) my personal deck listing for the various class decks I've obtained, starting with the Ultimate Add-On decks. With entries targeting intermediate-advanced players, of the following form:

[3] Name of Ally [Trait Trait] "Custom flavortext evoking card powers (no proper nouns!)"
> Recharge [first {C} of turn]: +1d6.
> Discard: Move then Explore, +1d6 on first {C}.

(4) Name of a Blessing {D} [Trait] "Custom flavortext evoking card powers (no proper nouns!)"
> Discard: +1 die, or +2 dice to STR/CON {non-C}.
> Discard: Explore, +1 die STR/CON {non-C}.
* Recharge(timer is Trait) and shuffle.

This listing would be linked from an high-effort post analyzing the deck composition and why players might get excited to add its options to their OP characters. Feels like a pure improvement over the YouTube "unboxing" videos that mostly just show every card.

I'm not expecting feedback on the format, which I'm still rapidly changing - and I'm certainly not expecting approval - I'm providing a channel for disapproval! Perhaps this sort of project would be more welcome on older Class Decks. Or if it's not welcome at all, (even though perhaps it could be legal under Fair Use), I'd rather look for other ways to contribute to the community.

2. On that note! The PACG wiki is extremely bare compared to the various extremely-thorough rules resources for Pathfinder RPG, or wikis for games like Hearthstone and MtG. Fleshing out these resources would make homebrew using official content more accessible and enable new community gameplay modes! Off the top of my head - imagine a format where players could challenge custom scenarios with hand-crafted characters or parties (within certain requirements: sum of card deck numbers <= X, # of class decks <= Y). More accessible play -> the most fun options float to the top -> Paizo can better serve their community. So I'd like to add content to this Wiki, but only after receiving guidance on how to proceed.

3. Finally, I'd like to share card mock-ups that are less wordy and backwards compatible. I'm aware that the original decision was made for good reasons, but now that the game's matured, players are better, and there are more resources for players to learn and adjudicate their games, I think the community would like to weigh in and look to the future, drawing inspiration from games like MtG that say a whole lot with "3/3 Flying, Vigilance, Haste", a few symbols, and a few semantically-organized traits (and flavortext!). If cards were easier to scan, I think I'd be able to play this game with many more friends.

-

With this new (universal?) Base Set on the horizon - perhaps making big changes - and given that this game has distribution far more locked down than the RPG line (you need to obtain physical product, the licensed app, and/or use the licensed DriveThru engine to really play - not just obtain PDFs), I'm hoping that all these efforts are warmly welcomed. If so, maybe the best thing I could do would be to encourage others to share and contribute!

I'm the type of person who enjoys helping even more than play. So before all else, I'm eager to not hurt or obstruct the awesome Paizo/PACG crew. I'll proceed cautiously if I hear nothing back.

Hoping for each monster skill with an override modifier to be specifically fluffed up in the flavor text! This helps DMs describe things for their players, so the group can develop an intuition for its capabilities outside of observing the results of rolls.

So for Redcaps, I'd love to see lore describing lithe, springy (Acrobatics), but freakishly strong (Athletics) creatures, with specific examples of how they trick their victims (Deception), terrify the good and bully their minions (Intimidation), utilizing the features of their environment (Nature) to silently ambush lone travelers (Stealth). No need for the heavy-handed parentheticals - they're just to make my point.

Though I wouldn't call this fluff anymore, I'd call it integral. And perhaps it's already part of your development process! -- Thanks for creating a specific Exploration Mode to highlight roleplay; please give us many tools. Looking forward to consuming the playtest materials. :)