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It is my contention that we need a better way of submitting rules questions. By "we" I mean "PFS participants" specifically. The trouble is this: If I post in Rules, I get a half-dozen people saying "Oh just houserule it" and no mod response. If I post in PFSGD, I get a half-dozen people telling me I'm in the wrong forum ... but I might well get a mod response that actually solves my problem.
Take my White-hair Witch thread. I'm not the first person to ask this question, and I'm not the first person to get no official response. All it needs is a one word answer, and everybody knows what that one word will be: "Intelligence." Because RAI is really obvious. But PFS needs RAW, because one recalcitrant GM refuses to see what is blatantly obvious and suddenly a character build is useless.
I would like to see something like the "Ask J.J." thread, but for rules. Because there are a lot of fairly simple things that just need someone to say, "Oh, our bad, it's X." And there are a lot of complex things--I nominate poisons on projectiles as a current issue, the monk/TWF debacle as an example in the past--where it would be useful to have one specific place to say, "What is the deal?" and hear "We will get back to you."
The Rules forum seems like it's shouting into the void when I need an official answer. If my idea of one thread doesn't work, I'd be happy to help brainstorm alternatives, but please consider making some kind of change.
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Maybe in addition to FAQ button there should be a more specific PFS-FAQ button that would notify people responsible for overseeing PFS about the PFS-relevant rule question?
I admit that after seeing a ridiculous number of "houserule it" responses to various question thread in rules section when the OP explicitly stated in the very first post that matter concerns PFS play, I seriously consider flagging further such posts but can't decide between personal insult/abusive, offensive content or breaks other guidelines flag.
It's not even unheard of for people to wander in to the PFS-specific section and advise people to house rule. We really do need separate sections for "rules interpretations" and "rules questions that need official answers."
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And then every one posts in this special forum because unlike all the other guys, their question REALLY needs Dev Clarification.
Which is why I prefer my original suggestion.
Actually it would work either way. If the endgame is getting dev clarification, other people can post links to documentation (rules, FAQs, forum posts, etc) if it exists ... and if it doesn't, this can be the "don't guess" forum. Guesses or "just house rule it" can be flagged for deletion, and threads that have gotten dev clarification (or were definitively answered with links to source) can be locked, since they served their purpose. The goal would be to have every thread locked.
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Or, hell, moved to an "answered" subforum. Then they're in one place for searching and the main forum can be its own to-do list.
If this idea is working even a little for the folks at Paizo, and an experiment were possible, I would gladly volunteer to do the scut work moderation for this.
I miss asking JJ rules questions. Always found the rules forum to be fairly useless. It's uncommon to get a dev response and when you do, it's usually much much later.
Not to say the rules guys aren't busy, however. I wouldn't want to demand them from their work just to answer a couple of questions. They do a good job and I like them for it.
Absolutely. But there are some rules questions that have simple answers that aren't published yet, and there are some complex rules questions that should be heard and considered, if continual improvement is the goal (which it is). Which is also why I'm offering to assist this effort: No need to put extra strain on moderators, and just having the rules guys do ... I dunno, even an hour a week of "yes, no, I'll get back to you" could go a long way towards settling things.
Pathfinder is a huge complex system and there's a lot of stuff that gets overlooked or slightly misprinted and that's not a criticism, it's an unavoidable side effect of the complexity. It's also something that's really easy to work around in a home game but it leaves PFS players in the lurch when they can't get any sort of answers.
So far in the thread we have demonstrated that I am not alone in my belief, we have come up with at least two functional plans, and we have at least one volunteer to help make the more complex idea happen. Since that amounts to a functional proposal with backing and a plan for implementation, can we get a response from Paizo, please?
The reasons why you don't see devs just jump in and say TADA here is your answer is two fold.
1) who would it be? SKR? Well it's not HIS game. OR anyone else at Paizo, it's YOUR game. They want to be very careful with out too much vine swinging and chop some nameless DMs foot off. PFS has it's own little hierarchy from what I understand, and the DM still has say at his table, in a lesser, limited way than non PFS. However if that DM says no bubble gum, and that makes your build useless.... use another character.
2) If a Random Dev just jumped in and said "X" it might contradict Y or something yet to be printed in Z thats already gone to press. I imagine this stuff gets memo'd, at which point there is a consensus to either a) let DMS interpret it or b) someone gets delegated to answer it. This would take a WEEK if not longer to generate an answer as such meetings at Paizo, I'm sure, are not convened on an emergency basis.
But people on here are much too impatient for that, and by the time an answer is possibly formulated, these boards have generated 202 posts of argument on the matter and it seems like the thread never gets an official response.
I think the Devs remain silent on the matter mostly because constantly making little rulings here and there is the DMs job, and if they did that all the time, it would ruin the game. IT would also just make more text people would quote, arguing over "But over here JJ said this, but on this day, when it was raining SKR, while standing on one foot said this" and the same thing would happen, but with just more random text to bring into an argument, so, most of the time.
They refrain.
There are situations in which the rules either (1) are clearly in conflict or (2) leave a gap. PFS culture at this point defaults to the least charitable interpretation of any given conflict or gap. This is problematic. It could also be fixed. I would like to see it fixed. I have offered ways in which it could be fixed. I have offered to help fix it. If it is never going to be fixed, I am hoping to at least get the courtesy of a moderator acknowledging that Paizo is intentionally not fixing it.
Chief Technical Officer
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The designers quite simply do not have the time to answer every question that somebody thinks "deserves" an answer. Our FAQ system is designed to make sure that when they do have time, the questions they see first are the ones that the most people want to have answered, as opposed to the ones coming from the people with the loudest voices.
A quick search reveals five threads asking if the White-haired Witch uses Int or Str for attack rolls. The earliest is from February of 2012, which is 11 months ago.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2nktr?WhiteHaired-Witch-and-stats#1
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2nno2?White-Haired-Witch-questions#1
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p1w6?WhiteHaired-Witch-Clarification-Qs#1
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2pa0h?White-Haired-Witch-and-Prehensile-Hair-He x#1
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2pcex?Whitehaired-errata-anywhere#1
This question has been asked at least five times over the course of nearly a year and needs a one word answer which has not yet been provided.
The people who need rules clarifications are the ones who go out and play your game in public to try to get new people into the hobby--they are your ambassadors. They are also the ones who feel like they're ignored because of this situations and others like it. The FAQ system to which you refer seems inefficient for its purpose. Please consider changing it.
Edit: Here's another, from even earlier, with more than twenty FAQ votes. Still no answer: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2njti?WhiteHaired-Witch-and-stats
Edit 2: Also, those threads are all by different posters.
Fair enough. Countless posts on I want this answered doesn't get you anything.
Patrick as far as the conflict/gap for rules, the DM will interpret that, and make a ruling, RL law works the same way. the DM is the Judge, and I have rarely (if ever) seen anyone from Paizo, WoTC, or TSR make a statement that outright trumps the DMs interpretations of things.
IT seems you're looking for a hard core fixed concrete "Im allowed to do what I want and I need it in writing to shove in the DMs face to make him let me do what I want" I'm afraid you will never get any support from the Devs in that regard.
In PFS society there are certain things that are undeniably part of the rules and you can do, anything that is gray is in the DMs hand. You have the choice to find another table to game at, or use a different character or rules combination that are not in contestation.
IT seems you're looking for a hard core fixed concrete "Im allowed to do what I want and I need it in writing to shove in the DMs face to make him let me do what I want" I'm afraid you will never get any support from the Devs in that regard.
No, I'm looking for answers. Look, debates on the PFS forums about areas where the rules are clearly lacking always seem to go like this: "Well, any sane person would houserule it, because that's obviously what was intended, but since we can't do that in PFS, I guess you just can't do that."
This wouldn't be a problem if we could just ask rules questions in PFS and get an answer for PFS. But since there's this insistence that PFS defaults to standard rules even when the rules aren't clear, threads that could easily get an answer in the PFS forums are bounced to Rules where they are ignored. It's frustrating. And pointless. And most of all it's fixable. Which just makes it that much more frustrating.
You basically just want a forum where you can get the Pathfinder Society ruling, not an official Pathfinder RPG ruling.
It's a Pathfinder Society specific issue, because in Pathfinder Society "house ruling" doesn't cut it.
In fact, such a ruling would even have to say "this only applies in Pathfinder Society" otherwise everyone would be trying to use it to get official rulings for general Pathfinder RPG tabletop play.
Instead of asking for an official ruling, perhaps what is needed is a forum for things that need clarification in the Pathfinder Society Organized Play Document. It lays out the variant rules for Pathfinder Society Organized Play, after all.
So there's a problem with the white-haired witch in Organized Play? Sounds like something for the Organized Play document to clarify.
That would eliminate all the "house rule it" replies, and make sure the answer is relevant to Pathfinder Society, and prevent people who want an official ruling on something in-general, since the ruling would only be the PFS ruling.
Awesome! That's a great plan. Let's do that instead.
If the Paizo staff didn't want to make a whole new subforum, could there be a sticky in the PFS subforum for Organized-Play related rules conflicts?
That would keep it from cluttering the other PFS conversations and be easy for everyone to find, to avoid repeated threads.
I think it also behooves both posters to be clear as they possibly can that they are talking about an issue that is borking PFS rules, and mods to read such posts carefully before they move a Pathfinder society-related issue into the Rules Questions forum. While this may not solve all problems, it can contribute to it.
FYI, if you FAQ-flag something in one of the PFS forums, it goes into a different queue than a FAQ-flag in any other forum. So PFS rules questions are already sorted separately from general rules questions... which is why Mike and Mark come to us out of the blue with certain rules questions.
Our FAQ system is designed to make sure that when they do have time, the questions they see first are the ones that the most people want to have answered, as opposed to the ones coming from the people with the loudest voices.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill (on democracy), that's probably the worst way of doing it...except for all the others. :)
Maybe the rules questions answering would be faster if paizo reduced the number of projects they are doing at the same time (and reducing the amount of new project they start).
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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So there's a problem with the white-haired witch in Organized Play? Sounds like something for the Organized Play document to clarify.
That would eliminate all the "house rule it" replies, and make sure the answer is relevant to Pathfinder Society, and prevent people who want an official ruling on something in-general, since the ruling would only be the PFS ruling.
This concept has come up before, and there's a problem with it.
Differences between Core rules and OP rules are already a barrier to entry for PFS. People have to un-learn/re-learn things to switch from home games to PFS, and that slows people down. We want to keep that to a minimum, making PFS-specific rules only where necessary for the sake of the campaign. The more exceptions and substitutions there are, the more work it is for someone to join the campaign, and that's bad.
Furthermore, suppose a rules question does get a PFS-specific answer. Okay, what happens when 8 months later there's errata or a FAQ on the same subject, which contradicts the PFS ruling? For example, when the monk thing started, people begged Mike Brock for a PFS ruling, but he abstained in favor of waiting for rules-level finality. What if he'd instead made a ruling for PFS? What if he'd banned or changed something? Then people would be rebuilding (and probably not happy about it). Then the big update comes along, and suddenly Mike's "ruling" is no longer necessary. Do we keep the PFS version anyway? Now you've got angry players playing a "Plan B" character when the actual rules would have let them play what they wanted. Do we instead revoke it? Okay, now we have to publicize the change, allow a second rebuild (yeah, no one will be irked at THAT...), and forevermore answer questions of "Should I actually follow PFS ruling X, or is it just going to get overturned later, like the monk thing?"
It frustrates me too, but these sorts of PFS rulings need to not happen.
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This is a terrible idea. Thje last thing I hope anyone would want if for a four hour session to turn into an hour of "But here it says this, and there this guy said that, and on this date this was posted, but over here it means.... and so on and so on. The DM is there to make these decisions. If you don't like that, then I put this very bluntly. Go play another game. If you can't deal with the fact that you are not always going to have things go your way exactly, you need to do something else. The point of playing is to have a good time with people. If you cant do that because a DM rules against you, play something else. I know I say that harshly, and three times times, but I mean it seriously. Don't waste you time and the other play's time by arguing, posturing, pulling out rules, etc. Go with the flow, enjoy the game, and if you can't, play something else.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill (on democracy), that's probably the worst way of doing it...except for all the others. :)
Ah, but that's only half a paraphrase! The quote is this: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
The current FAQ system is only one option. If others have been implemented in the past, I'm not aware of them, but I haven't been hanging out since Day 1, so if anyone can describe them here, that would help narrow down suggestions for alternates.
Because I consider the current system to be insufficient for its purpose, and I'm clearly not alone. The user base seems to want something new. So we need to keep coming up with ideas until Paizo sees something they're willing to try. Which got me thinking ...
The designers quite simply do not have the time to answer every question that somebody thinks "deserves" an answer. Our FAQ system is designed to make sure that when they do have time, the questions they see first are the ones that the most people want to have answered, as opposed to the ones coming from the people with the loudest voices.
First, I don't want the designers to spend all their time working on this. I asked for one hour a week. If that's still too much, how about one member of the design team for one hour a week, rotated between them? That's 52 man-hours a year, which amounts to one person doing slightly more than one and a quarter week's worth of work (assuming a 40 hour work week, of course). Since Paizo's user base just donated four years of full time work, I don't think a little give-and-take is entirely outside the realm of propriety.
Second, if you insist that these things be based on numbers alone, I have a new take on the plan I discussed above. It requires a little work from the web team up front, but it will add that democratic spin that you require:
Make a new forum. People post questions. If there's a documented answer, other users can link to it. If there is not, it gets put in a separate subform for the design team's attention. (Again, I volunteer to take care of that.) A simple up/down voting system can be utilized by people to declare whether they want that to be something the designer of the week focuses their precious single hour upon. When a designer sits down to answer questions, they sort by a something as simple as the percentage of votes that are 'yes' (Y/(Y+N)) and go down the list.
If they see something they can answer, they do. If they see something that is above their pay grade, they comment on it and say, "I am going to leave this for someone else." If they see something that is easily answered by one specific person and doesn't need design team input--like whoever wrote a specific archetype, for instance--they shoot that person an email, and post that they have done so. If they come across something big that is going to require deliberation, they acknowledge that this is the case and that it will have to wait until conversation has occurred.
If everyone who takes a stab at it resolves only two issues a week, that's 104 rules questions answered over the course of a year. I don't know how many designers you employ in house, but I'm guessing it's not less than four, so those 104 issues were resolved in one hour from each designer, what, per month?
Work with me here, guys. Let's try something new.
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We already are putting things into place to increase the number of FAQ responses and make them happen on a regular basis.
Patrick that's not a realistic way to run a business, especially one based on creativity. the math may seem to work for you, but it's not efficient or productive in a work setting.
You can't say I want you to paint this wall, then answer fan mail for an hour, then make coffee, then go back to painting.
Assigning one hour a week to something is nearly going to guarantee it never gets done.
We already are putting things into place to increase the number of FAQ responses and make them happen on a regular basis.
That would be awesome. Thanks for letting us know.
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We already are putting things into place to increase the number of FAQ responses and make them happen on a regular basis.
That sounds like great news. Thank you.
I wholeheartedly agree with the OP that we need a better method for rules questions, i.e. a method where there can be some feedback on the more popular questions without having to wait for geological timescales.
And while I am at it, I for one really miss JJ quick rules answers/advices/suggestions/interpretations on any rules questions that forum users would submit on the "ask JJ" thread.
As a DM, I found it extremely helpful and didactic (since it often helped me understand the motivations behind designing a rule in a certain way) and I find it frustrating that somehow JJ has now been restricted in what he can asnwer to.
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The only problem with James answering rules questions is they're often his opinion of how the rule should work, or even his house rule. Then people quote his answer as if it's the official rule, when it isn't, and that makes it harder for when the design team wants to give an official ruling on something.
This is not to say that James doesn't know the rules. He does, and he's a great GM. But he doesn't have to deal with the rules in the maddeningly-precise way that the design team has to.
Everyone uses house rules. Even me, even James, even Jason. But when we (the design team) are giving official rules answers, we need to make sure we're giving a ruling that we want to stick to and that is binding, including for PFS and future products. When we give an official ruling, it's after at least two of the design team have talked it over and reached a consensus. And we don't want to have situations where players (and freelancers) have been using James's ruling, and then the design team contradicts James's ruling—it confuses people and makes us look like the staff is not communicating.
The design team avoids defining things about the Golarion campaign setting.
James avoids defining how the rules work.
Thanks for the insight Sean, that does indeed sound like a solid policy!
The only problem with James answering rules questions is they're often his opinion of how the rule should work, or even his house rule. Then people quote his answer as if it's the official rule, when it isn't, and that makes it harder for when the design team wants to give an official ruling on something.
This is not to say that James doesn't know the rules. He does, and he's a great GM. But he doesn't have to deal with the rules in the maddeningly-precise way that the design team has to.
Everyone uses house rules. Even me, even James, even Jason. But when we (the design team) are giving official rules answers, we need to make sure we're giving a ruling that we want to stick to and that is binding, including for PFS and future products. When we give an official ruling, it's after at least two of the design team have talked it over and reached a consensus. And we don't want to have situations where players (and freelancers) have been using James's ruling, and then the design team contradicts James's ruling—it confuses people and makes us look like the staff is not communicating.
The design team avoids defining things about the Golarion campaign setting.
James avoids defining how the rules work.
Make sense.
(and to be fair, some people ignore James's answers anyway if it stop them from doing their cool characters.)