Druids need to be wildshaped for a significantly longer portion of the day. It should not be a combat only ability.
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Played a scenario where a pc was teleported off plane, with the game ending shortly after. The GM ruled, with much player opposition, that the PC was gone, dead, with no chance of resurrection. The PC was irrecoverable. I’ve never seen this in PFS before. Is this within the confines of the rules? I thought res and body recovery were always available if you had the requisite pp or gold.
How is the solution coming? This issue has been posted about for more than 5 months now. I like to read reviews to see what scenarios I’m interested in running and playing. It is frustrating to be only able to read the first page of reviews.
Ok, but that begs the question of why is Paizo hanging on to 15 year old code that presents real challenges to providing a stable platform? Wasn’t the website rebooted recently? We’re these just cosmetic changes? I’ve just never seen the outages and issues on a website from a company that relies on their site for revenue.
I don’t understand why Paizo cant keep a stable, bug free website. Outages, bad links, now artwork problems. I’ve never seen a website with so many ongoing issues.
Still broken for all scenarios
stuff My bad. I thought you were talking annual sales. Over 10 years I’d guess you’re in the ballpark.
Do you have any data on this? I’d be amazed if Paizos numbers even remotely approached your estimates.
I think if Paizo was truly open to stepping back and doing a complete overhaul, as some have stated, they really made an error in their timeline. 12 months is not enough time to thoroughly play test a design, analyze feedback and make necessary changes before publication. If they were open to large scale overhaul, why the constrained timeline? Why not announce it is 18 months out or “we will play test this as long as is necessary”. Remember how long the D&D next test was. Paizo said they gave been working on, and incurring expenses, on 2E for two years before the announcements was made. Any reasonable person, of whichbPaizo has lots of, would know that sales of 1e material, would plummet on the announcement of 2E. This puts a dent in their revenue stream at the same time that they need everyone on board to put out the new edition. I think the 12 months from release if plsytestv to finished product is driven by financial necessities that won’t be ignored. I would be very surprised if Paizo pushed back their date even in the face of responsibly widespread claims from customers that thus is not the product we want. The key to success for 2E is attracting a greater number of new players to replace existing customers who don’t like the new game. That is an uphill battle that I’m unconvinced they can win.
I think Paizo’s design goals are at odds with each other. Keep existing playerbase who on balance like a deep crunchy game, and attract new or 5e players who enjoy a lighter, easier to teach game. The game they’ve come up with is a mish mash that is unlikely to appeal to either camp. I too would have liked to see PF 1.5. I don’t think that PF can ever regain the market prominence they had after the 4E attrition. If so it would be a long time from now and require D&D to crap the bed again. I’d love to see Paizo get back to its roots and start to write content for 5E. Is 5E ogl? I’m not sure.
CLW wand spam is a problem that seems to exist nearly exclusively in the minds of the devs. I have never once heard a complaint about it from players or GMs. Contrast that to the amount of complaints that’s are voiced in opposition to resonance, the system devised to fix this supposed problem.
Just going to bump this every so often until it gets fixed or someone yells at me.Thankfully we just fixed the bug preventing people from yelling, no joke. I'll get this added to our outstanding issues, thank you for letting us know about this Jhaeman! This has been brought up in numerous threads previously. Oh well st least they acknowledge it’s an issue.
But seriously, in order for it to be a "misstep" there would need to be something they did wrong. What exactly did Paizo do wrong here? They took precautions to strengthen the website before launch, and when it did go down they made the playtest documents available through an alternate download source. What was the mistake, not having the resources to make a website capable of handling 10,000+ concurrent download requests? Are you serious? I’m honestly not sure. I’m going to assume you are. What they did wrong is have a business that relies on their website to deliver PDF while not having or being unwilling to pay for IT support that can allow their website to handle peak traffic. Whatever precautions they took were not adequate and to argue that a business having their web portal shuttered for 2 weeks shortly after their play test goes live isa good thing is frankly absurd. If it crashes again at the 2E launch are you going to argue its a good thing that so many people want the download? Every minute that website is down is a loss for Paizo and they are accountable for it. If you don’t see that as being 100% crystal clear, you don’t have a very good idea of how businesses work.
When would they make that type of change then? Changing core mechanics of the game after it went live would be a poor choice.
This part of the discussion started because a poster stated that he had confidence in how well Paizo runs their business. This was not a discussion of the quality of the game design.
Apparently the inability for a small company to handle tens of thousands of users on their website simultaneously in the wake of a hotly-anticipated release counts as a "misstep" now? Of course it does. What would the consequences be to Paizo if on the day 2E launches, their site goes down for 2 weeks?
Ultimately, my contention (pretty much nothing more than a guess from reading between the lines) is that the hardcore "I switched from 3.5 and want PF to always be a continuation of that system" cohort is of dwindling significance economically but form a significant majority of the group being turned off by PF2. I hear what you’re saying but I think it’s a misstep for Paizo to think they’re going to replace pf1 players who don’t like the new system with new players. D&D has too much of an advantage in name recognition and is frankly a better designed game for what it is than pf 2E.
Sorting out which of these issues are Doomsday Dawn specific (a purposeful meatgrinder meant to produce data) and which are systemic to the rule set is important. The chapters being primarily a stress test shapes the experience. The content needed an explicit warning that, like any hazardous test site, things sometimes blow up and people leave unhappy with the results. If you are sacrificing people enjoying your new game to better collect data, man that is a very dangerous way to run a playtest.
I think it's a small marketing problem. I think it’s a lot more than a little problem. I’ve asked a lot of local players what their thoughts were on 2E and not one has said they are excited about it anymore. At first there was a lot of interest as love it or hate it, everyone mostly acknowledges that 1e could use some tweaking. After playing 2E though there is a collective “meh” about the new game. We’ve lost a fair number of players to 5e since the playtest started and others have just stopped playing altogether. I really don’t think these players are going to pop back up when the new game goes live. I personally feel if they want it to be successful, 2E needs a MASSIVE overhaul from the devs,as in starting over. I think there is a bit of burying their heads in the sand and not wanting to acknowledge the feedback they’re getting.
I really think this design philosophy, Paizo, not yours is a misstep. People like to be wildshaped when playing a Druid. That is a huge part of the appeal of the class. If casting spells, or scouting while wildshaped is so game breaking why don’t we see more of them in 1e? From my experience Druids are one of the least represented core classes I see at tables.
Ok, that’s reasonable. I thought Paizo was taking their feedback through surveys and the actual playtest reports. I thought the boards were just for bullshitting about the game.
Ok, yes most of what is said is not useful and there are some agitators out there. I agree. But why lock threads? What is the issue with allowing a non productive conversation to happen? If useful and non conflagratory is the bar we need to clear, you can erase most of the internet.
I'd generally agree with this statement, but most of these threads are just repeating talking points that have been made dozens, if not more, times and than ending in circular arguments. Just look at the last couple of posts about AoOs in the 4e thread, which is neither helpful nor productive, so I don't mind shutting that kind of "discussion" down. While I agree that 90% of the stuff on these boards is non productive, my own posting included, I dont see the harm in allowing the discussion to take place between parties with interest in continuing. Additionally, I don’t think it’s good optics for Paizo to be steering the conversation.
Basically put other products in your thread it will probably get shut down. Makes sense to me... They dont want to promote other products While what you said generally makes sense, much of what has been shut down is comparisons to 4E, a dead system. As far as comparisons to 5e goes, a Paizo employee was on the boards the other day saying a healthy 5e is great for Paizo, so I don’t understand the reticence of allowing comparisons to D&D.
There seems to be a marked increase of closed threads under the guise of “this thread is no longer productive, feel free to try again”. Well, those posting in the thread obviously feel it has merits or they wouldn’t be doing it. I understand shutting down a thread that has devolved into acerbic name calling, bullying etc, but it feels to me like Paizo is increasingly trying to steer the conversation. Their boards, their rules, fine. But it seems disingenuous to put out a play test, which many have paid for, ask for input and then actively shut down some of the discourse on the product you claim to want feedback on. I think it would be great if board users could decide what topics are worthwhile of discussion and not have an active topic closed because of reasons.
The design of 2E seems hellbent on stripping fun out of the game. I’m glad you’re having fun and think the game just needs some touch ups. Great. That’s not the issue. I’m objecting to you dismissing my statement as hyperbole. Hyperbole requires extreme exaggeration, as in the example I gave above. It’s not extreme exaggeration to claim this design is removing fun from the game. There are hundreds of posts on the boards from people saying the same. You can dismiss my statement as a “sweeping generalization” but that does not make it hyperbole.
Druids are my favorite class. I play a Druid primarily because wildshaping is fun and cool not because of how op or not it is. When I play a Druid I want to be wildshaped the whole day if possible, not because it’s mechanically great, because it’s fun. The design of 2E seems hellbent on stripping fun out of the game.That's pretty hyperbolic. Fun is entirely subjective. As I said, I really enjoyed the druid. Do you know what hyperbole is? Objectivity or subjectivity has no bearing. “Paizo is the worst company ever and their decisions on wildshape are the worst design decisions made in the history of rpgs”. That’s hyperbole. I gave an example of something fun I enjoyed in 1e that is now not possible. This is just one example of quite a few decisions that have been made that just simply remove fun parts of the game. See prestidigitation.
Druids are my favorite class. I play a Druid primarily because wildshaping is fun and cool not because of how op or not it is. When I play a Druid I want to be wildshaped the whole day if possible, not because it’s mechanically great, because it’s fun. The design of 2E seems hellbent on stripping fun out of the game.
You can’t comment on the distributors break even point without knowing what kind of markup they put on when selling to retailers, to say nothing about what happens to unsold merchandise all along the chain.
The change we made was to remove the fast-pay discount of 5% at the distribution level and that I'm sure was passed along to the retail channel. They are still getting the product at at least a 40% discount, maybe more. This seems like a very strange move given what’s going on with Paizo currently. With 5E stripping away customers and a reboot of their main product line, customer and retailer retention would have to be a priority. This move hints at some financial weakness at Paizo and confirms my feeling that if 2E is not successful, that will probably be the end of Paizo. This just doesn’t seem like a move a healthy company would make. Full disclosure I don’t know diddly about the publishing business.
Hear him! Pretty much how I feel about it.
What makes mine the exception? why isn't yours the exception?Except I'm a player that played 3.5 didn't like 4th then played pathfinder and I am looking forward to PF2. Yours is the exception because my statement is backed up by the 3.5>4E>PF1 history. It’s real and it happened. If by and large PF1 players flock to 2E then I’m wrong and I’m the exception.
Except I'm a player that played 3.5 didn't like 4th then played pathfinder and I am looking forward to PF2. Dang. Any exceptions completely invalidates my statement. I stand corrected and withdraw my statement. Ugh. Of course there will be exceptions and people ideas and game preferences may change. But on balance, paizo is trying to sell a game design to people who have previously rejected this type of game. Can they make it up with new players? We will see.
Give me a break. Of course I didn’t fund a scientific study on this. The reason Pathfinder exists is because a large percentage of the D&D playerbase rejected the gamist design of 4E. The same type of design Paizo is presenting with Pathfinder 2E. It’s a logical inference that those same players will not be happy with this type of game again.
how much has PFS informed or influenced the design of PF2e? That’s not what he said. I think in trying to explain what he said you misinterpreted something along the way.
This makes it worse. If designing for PFS, at least the degree of homogeneity and restriction would be understood if not agreed with. Saying it makes it a better quality game is a pretty bad misread of what much of your core fan base wants.
I don’t understand this mentality of “it’s your loss” if you don’t participate in the playtest. I’ll bite. Central to economic theory is th3 concept of opportunity cost. Why would I waste my time giving feedback on a game that I have no confidence I will enjoy playing when I could spend my free time doing something I enjoy more and thus place a higher value on?
But my desires and the goals of Paizos staff as it relates to game design are different. Paizo wants to design a game that will meet their sales objectives. I want to see a game I want to play.
I don’t understand this mentality of “it’s your loss” if you don’t participate in the playtest. It’s Paizo’s job to design a game that appeals to people. If they design a rule set that people hate so much they do not have motivation to continue giving feedback, that’s on Paizo not the player who has lost interest. I think Paizo’s main motivation for 2E was not to build a better game, but to try and clawback players from 5E. In so doing I think they have severely underestimated the brand value that D&D has and have gone a long way to alienating their core playerbase. The more I read about 2E the more I want to just bring in changes from Unchained into 1e or just go play 5e.
PFS is imploding in my area. Prior to 5E we had a vibrant community with 5 or so stores running games multiple times a month. After 5E was released the playerbase was halved but still many options to play, maybe not as many tables available but still a good core. Currently, the playerbase which was further fragmented with the introduction of core and Starfinder is rapidly dissolving with the introduction of the 2E playtest. What has the experience been in your area? I am not hopeful for PFSs long term viability at least in my neck of the woods.
The rush of people who will in all likelyhood attempt to get their hands on the remaining 1st edition print lines before 2e officially launches should probably keep Paizo steady enough. You’re joking, right? I really hope you’re joking.
That’s an interesting point. I would have to think that Paizo would have accounted for revenue drop during this transition phase as part of their 2e business plan.
Thanks. That’s some solid advice. My animal companion, Allosaurus, used to be a beast, but while he has a great AC, his hp and to hit are falling behind. I think what gets hard at higher level with this character is that without a ton of prefight self buffing, they are not that great defensively. Saves are good, but hp is on the low side and AC is ok but not stellar for that level. When you are wildshaped as a huge Allosaurus, most baddies will consider you their primary target. I feel like the damage output, which tore through things a few levels ago, is hampered pretty badly by dr/. Don’t get me wrong. It’s still a great character and I love playing it. Just wondering if there’s a better path than more levels of Druid.
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I have a level 13 Wizard who's focused on creating clockwork constructs, and he's starting the game with three Clockwork Soldiers and three Clockwork Servants. I know for simplicity's sake some GM's will have summoned creatures/pets/familiars/constructs/etc. act on their owner's turn, but do they still have their own full turn each, or do I have to spend some kind of action to command each of them? All of them at once? How's this work?
This may be a stupid question, but I just need some clarification. I've made a Scrollmaster/Scroll Scholar(eventually Cyphermage), and I'm not entirely sure what level to scribe my scrolls at. Is there any point to making a CL 5 Scroll of Burning Hands to use as a Scroll Blade? Is it still just going to act as a masterwork short sword with 1 hit point and 0 hardness? Should I just stick with CL 1 scrolls for first level spells that are going to be used as Blades? Secondly: Is there any point to trying to make the scrolls out of a material with a higher hardness, like Darkleaf Cloth or something like it? The RAW says that "Each successful hit by the scroll blade reduces its hit points by 1; this damage cannot be repaired, but does not affect casting from the scroll. When its hit points reach 0, the scroll is destroyed." That first bit doesn't actually say that the scroll takes 1 point of damage, it just says the hit reduces its hit points by 1, so does hardness even apply in this case? But the second part says that it IS damage... Any help would be great!
I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but I need someone to explain how this works. I have a 1st level Shadowcaster Conjurer who took the Versatile Summon Monster feat from Monster Summoner's Handbook, and selected the Dark Creature and the Primordial Creature templates. I know that the only creatures that you can apply templates to are the ones with the asterisk on the Summon Monster list, but could I apply both the Dark AND Primordial templates to a creature I'm summoning? Can you apply multiple templates to summoned monsters? Is that a thing? Do I need a feat to do it? Or can I just do it?
I'm looking for advice on how this would work. This character that l'm playing is Lawful Evil(of the "I'll kill people to keep the stability" variety) in a Good/Neutral (not Neutral Good) campaign. It's a long campaign and is pretty much a sandbox game. My character has plans to found his own kingdom, and he would like to do so with a Queen by his side. The NPC that he's currently enamored with though is a Neutral Good wizard, enchantment spec. While this screams role-play opportunity, how would it work mechanically? I have no intention of changing alignments, and I doubt she does either, so how would I take her as a cohort? I'll be taking the Leadership feat next level, at 7th. I feel like there wouldn't be much of a conflict of interest, alignment-wise, since he does respect her for her power over others, considers her a peer, and would of course never betray her. As a side note, he does harbor secret feelings of suspicion that she might have enchanted him somehow to fall in love with her, but so far Detect Magic and spells of the like have shown nothing.
After a long hiatus, I've decided to start playing with the PFS again. I have two registered characters, one Human Conjurer (level 3) and one Aasimar Cleric (level 1). My issue is that I don't have the character or chronicle sheets anymore; I'm thinking I must have lost them when I moved. I figured for the Aasimar, since he's level 1, I can just remake him, but what do I do about the Conjurer? Am I SOL regarding him?
This doesn't just apply to Smart Armor, though that's what my request has spawned from, but really all of the Tech Armors. Is there any benefits/penalties to wearing Smart Armor without it being "on"? What kind of benefits does it convey once it runs out of charges? Because the Expanded Form of the Smart Armor takes 1 charge/10 minutes, but the Compound Form ALSO takes 1 charge/10 minutes. So I'm a bit confused as to what happens when there are no more charges. Does it lose all AC bonuses, DR, etc?
So the target restrictions on effect words always annoyed me. From a DM standpoint, I can understand why they exist, otherwise some wordspells would be a bit OP. I tried to balance this feat so that I could get what I want out of it. Thoughts anyone? Expanded Word
Hey all, I'm gonna start running RotR, AE this Saturday. I've read through the whole thing once already, but I wanted to read through it once again before Saturday. Doesn't look like I'm gonna have time to do that, so is there any plot/foreshadowing that I should keep in mind for at least Part 1? Any help would be great! Thanks.
I'm going to try being careful about what I'm submitting, so as to not reveal anything... In determining the price for "charges per day", the books don't say anything (as far as I can tell, for anything that has "charges per week", or "charges per month". How would I determine the price for that? Also, in determining the price for adding in a spell that uses material components, the pricing lists are there, but what if the spell requires a material component (worth X gp) AND a focus (worth X gp)? |
