| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I recently came upon the unfortunate knowledge that their is A LOT of banned stuff in pathfinder (organized play, I mean). I already knew about some of the more obviously broken banned things, such as Undead lords or Holy guns, but the more I look into it, the more illegal my characters become. I just found out that 'heart of the fields' is banned, which kind of messes up my 4th level human fighter/barbarian build. He's already fourth level, but it specifically says:
"Updating your character means adjusting only the things that have changed, but not rebuilding the character."
So I can't rebuild him to be better. He is strictly a combat character, with terrible social stats, so I want him to be as effective in combat as possible. Heart of the fields was a big reason why I decided for him to be a barbarian in the first place (with heart of the fields, I can dismiss the fatigued effect that comes with the end of rage. Yes, that is really powerful, but it works for the character because he is multicalssed, and hence doesn't have as much rage as a barbarian of his level should. Also, it fits with his backstory of growing up in a farming community.)
Not letting me rebuild the character seems.. well, really unfair.
I also found out that my elf alchemist can't have dark vision, which was a significant part of his backstory... I wanted him to have some abilities that would make his drow heritage show in gameplay...
((Side-note: low-light vision is a really nerf ability, because most Gms don't even accommodate for it when appropriate, so obviously I'm going to try to replace it with an ability that is more useful if I can; as least give me some good, flavorful options...))
I understand there are reasons for banning these, as they are really powerful most of the time, but it's annoying at best that it's from a faceless company that doesn't explain it's reasoning and then says you can't accommodate for the banned things by changing other parts of your character.
Anyway, I know for a fact that other people don't play completely legal characters because they don't keep up with the new rulings, and it doesn't seem fair that I'm being punished for wanting my characters to be legal. At the same time, I know how much it sucks to make a character and then be told that you have to change it because of rulings you don't know about, so I don't want to ruin the game for these people; after all I'm not a GM so it really shouldn't be my job.
It seems a lot easier to just pretend to not know these, but that would be cheating and lying so obviously not doing that(not on purpose, anyway, there are still a lot of rulings I haven't read that might apply to my characters), even if other people do.
It just kind of sucks to spend my down time looking through all this errata when the only reward is finding out the the work I will have to do/redo. It makes me not want to look at it at all.
Is there anything I can do to make this less painful and annoying, or other abilities or errata that can give me back what I've lost?
I guess you mean "you can't have darkvision" as in an alternate race trait, instead of just using the appropiate extract?
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I really don't see an issue. Heart of the Fields hasn't been legal for ages, and the Additional Resources page has said so.
Before you make a character, check out the Additional Resources you're using and cross-examine with the page to see what's not legal. If you have friends who are cheating (knowingly or unknowingly), they may find themselves without a legal character if they encounter a GM who knows the rules. You're saving yourself a headache by making your characters legal now.
As for your elf not being allowed to have darkvision: that's because elves in Golarion with darkvision are drow or have drow ancestry, and those people don't become Pathfinders. That's Golarion canon.
|
This is not new to any one that looked at the additional resources. And it is a requirement for the players to know the rules for there character's. This is not a requirement for the DM. I'm really tired of people making illegal character's. Then coming to the boards complaining there banned. When it is much simpler to check the additional resources. To make sure the character you made is legal for play. Before it becomes a problem.
I as a DM do not go looking for problems with characters. When they do come up I let the people know. That they need to clarify it with the local VC. Then a few weeks later I will follow up. Or get it fixed that same day. I do not let them us there banned ability or ability's in any game I run. There has been more then one time when this has occurred. If you know some one is playing with a banned ability let them know. So it can be fixed.
This has been banned from the start as it gives a bonus to craft skill.
The following parts of the Advanced Player's Guide are NOT legal for play:
craftsman alternate Dwarven racial trait
practicality alternate Halfling racial trait
heart of the fields alternate Human racial trait
Not sure how long this has been up.
Elves: all alternate racial traits, except darkvision; all racial subtypes except arctic and dusk elves, are legal for play; all racial subtypes, favored class options, racial archetypes, elven special materials, feats, magic items, and spells are legal for play.
I really don't see an issue. Heart of the Fields hasn't been legal for ages, and the Additional Resources page has said so.
Before you make a character, check out the Additional Resources you're using and cross-examine with the page to see what's not legal. If you have friends who are cheating (knowingly or unknowingly), they may find themselves without a legal character if they encounter a GM who knows the rules. You're saving yourself a headache by making your characters legal now.
As for your elf not being allowed to have darkvision: that's because elves in Golarion with darkvision are drow or have drow ancestry, and those people don't become Pathfinders. That's Golarion canon.
I have been playing Pathfidner for a while, but I am still in many ways a new player; a "noob", if you will.
It's not very friendly to have resources online that you have to check before making a character. Not only is it a pain in the ass, but it can completely screw up a character concept. Pathfidner takes a lot of time to create a character especially if you re trying to utilize all the rules and make them as effective as possible. I already spent a lot of money on these books and shouldn't have to spend a lot of extra time as well; I don't have an internet phone or a laptop, so when I sit on my down time to make a character, I don't have the access to all the latest rulings.
I guess I'm just getting what's coming to me, because I'm the kind of player that gets excited when I find a way to make my character particularly powerful.
As for my fighter, there are reasons why he had Heart of the fields, and it was well before he became a barbarian. He is an unbreakable, and unbreakables kind of suck after level 3-4, so I put him on the slow path until I could figure out what to do with him. When I decided to go barbarian, the realization that I could essentially have tireless rage was pretty awesome.
The main reason I actually had Heart of the fields for gameplay reasons was because the first level early draft of the character died(high altitude encounter)... In this earlier version of the character the whole party went down and it was just him and the big bad and the fatigued condition screwed him big time, so I didn't want that to happen again.
And for the elf, as I said, low-light vision is most of the time completely useless, and darkvision fit with the character:
He is a CN alchemist. He was CG but he was banished from Kyonin because it was discovered that he had drow ancestry, even though he didn't know this or do anything evil. Since he was completely loyal and punished purely for racism, he has become jaded and angry with the elves(hence the alignment change), but he is not actually a drow in the moral sense. He just shuts up about his past and decided that becoming pathfinder would be the best way of utilizing his talents whole making good money. There is more to the story than that, but that was basically the concept in a nutshell.
I guess as for the darkvision I was just kind of griping... He's still first level so I can change this easily. The fighter is where the real problem and unfairness lie, since I can't retroactively change his build.
You don't have to check additional resources online to build a legal character. Just like you don't have to use resources beyond the core rule book to build a character. The same rules that tell you you can use othe rresources tell you how to find out which part of those other resources you can use.
You are happy to have online refermces telling you that some of these other resources are available for use, but not to idemtify the limits?
You are happy to take longer to type a message on a forum hosted through the same url front end than it would have taken you to check whether or not things were legal?
Nope. No sympathy available here.
The main point of the forum was to see if there is any legalities that would help me change my fighter.
Also, I have been playing pathfinder ror a year and a half, and did not know that the additional resources page existed until today.
|
|
I can see where you are coming from, it can be hard to figure out sometimes if something is legal or not.
A month or so ago I spent several hours trying to figure out how my relatively high level character could make use of harlot sweets without getting addicted. It is an item listed under "Poisoner's Miscellany" on a page cited by additional resources as having all poisons on that page legal. With it falling under the heading that it did, and having heard enough drugs are poison rhetoric, I didn't think anything of the subheading of "drugs" making it no longer a poison. It was pointed out by other players here on the boards to me that it was illegal before I actually played with it. But I had fully planned to purchase a lot of this stuff with magical items and academical items to mitigate the drawback.
These things are not always clear. Especially when the additional resources are listed the way they are. I don't even like the official srd site, there is an alternative one that is much more user friendly that has everything sorted by category with lots hyperlinks instead of being sorted by what book it was published in. I would love it if Piazo redesigned both their website and additional resources to match this other companies model. But I don't think that is going to happen. I don't see the new job or jobs being invested into that endeavor. Every time I make a character and look through that additional resources page I think "Who cares what is on page xx-xx of book xxxxx?" I don't want to go digging through all those books to find out exactly what is or isn't on those pages. There are much more efficient ways to get information.
But aside from the unfriendly nature of that page, the larger list of restrictions does make sense. Every GM makes his own house rules to some extent or the other (some more than others depending on where players fall on the unskilled to trying to break the game spectrum). If they are trying to make rules that can apply to everyone all over the world without allowing any further house ruling, I would expect that to be a difficult task and a pretty decent sized list.
|
I am fairly sure the PFS guide talks about checking the Additional Resources page when you make a character. In addition, your character can still be raised on a farm quite fine without the Heart of the Fields feat. It doesn't "totally screw up" your character concept at all.
I also don't know what you expect. Everything in Pathfinder RPG to be legal? Everything to be listed in the PFS guide? I dunno. I don't think it's really that much of a stretch to expect just about everyone to have regular enough access to the internet to double-check their characters...
By the way - check Archives of Nethys for PFS crunch. Everything that's legal is marked with a little symbol, although you should still double check with the Additional Resources page anyway.
There are many thing that I don't like about organized play, and the fact that the banned list is unwieldy and only available online is one of them. (Edit: I did print it. However, that doesn't account for any new rulings or changes that they make)
As I said, I don't have an internet phone or laptop, so couldn't they just print out a pamphlet or something and give it to the venture captains of each area to hand out? Maybe that's unreasonable to ask though. The LEAST I think it would be fair to ask is this:
Have the books have some sort of statement saying "These rules could be due to change in pathfinder organized play. Go here for more information: xxxxx"
It does say in tiny lettering at the beginning of each book:
"These rules can be found online as part of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Reference Document at at Paizo.com/pathfinderRPG.prd"
but that's all I can find. Nowhere does it say that these rules can be retroactively changed or where to find information of these changes.
Where would new players learn about this?
Lots of new players don't have all the books to make the characters they want to make, and therein lies the second problem, that they must own all the source material.
Why do they have to own it? Isn't providing it enough? Surely most GMs have copies of the source material that the players are using. Couldn't they just look at their own copies? What about their friends? I was in a game where I was using an item from the AA, which I did not have, but the person right next to me did. There was the source material. But the GM didn't let me use it because it was not mine. That seems utterly ridiculous to me. Someone explained to me that this was to make money, but this seems like a very poor reason for a company to instate rules into an organized game that do not allow new players to optimize their characters. Pathfinder books are EXPENSIVE. Not everyone has that much scratch laying around for purely entertainment purposes, and limiting new players is discouraging and sucky.
The third reason is that Gm's can not make rulings in their games. In a pathfinder organized game, GMs are not allowed to rule things that are against the rules stated in the book, and if they do, they should be reported to the venture captain. This severely limits the GMs ability to make necessary changes and rulings that make the game flow. Their are a lot of stupid rules in pathfinder that need fixing, and limiting the GMs ability to fix this is not cool. (Example: No matter what you do, you can never stand up from prone without provoking an attack of opportunity. There is even a rogue talent that allows you to standup as a free action, and it STILL provokes. If there is a monk ability that allows you to not provoke, I have never seen it written or played. You can use acrobatic to move away from an enemies square while prone, but it's at their CMD+5, it takes a full-round action, and you are STILL PRONE. There is a home rule that allows you to stand as a full-round action without provoking, but GMs are not allowed to do this in organized play, and if they do, you are supposed to report them.) These games are supposed to be about FUN, not rules.
My rant aside, the fact that my fighter only has seven rounds of rage at 4th level still needs fixing, and I don't know how to do it. Ive checked magic items and no items at my level provide me with the ability to dismiss the fatigued condition. It seem better to just not use my rage. Heart of the fields was the reason that I decided to go with barbarian instead of say, rogue, ranger or cavilier.
No one is making you play PFS. If you don't like it find else where to play.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
PFS sits down a group of adventurers of disparate levels, and asks them, without any consideration of what they can actually do, to go and handle a task.
Bonus if they do it, no cookie if they don't. It's supposed to take about 4 hours.
PFS isn't PF. It's built to accommodate random characters through one episode of action/adventure, not write a trilogy.
PFS sits down a group of adventurers of disparate levels, and asks them, without any consideration of what they can actually do, to go and handle a task.
Bonus if they do it, no cookie if they don't. It's supposed to take about 4 hours.
PFS isn't PF. It's built to accommodate random characters through one episode of action/adventure, not write a trilogy.
Nowhere did I every complain or argue with that. Bottom line, I just want help optimizing my fighter, please and thank you.
So...part of your complaint is that you need to bring books your using, so that the GM isn't REQUIRED to have every single Pathfinder book printed. And also that the GM isn't allowed to go against RAW, when doing so would create rules inconsistencies between games?
Nowhere did I every complain or argue with that. Bottom line, I just want help optimizing my fighter, please and thank you.
Perhaps you should accept the rules of the game, then. Save your super-special synthesist for the home game, where you can do it all, no holds barred.
PFS bans things. It would get crazy if they didn't.
So...part of your complaint is that you need to bring books your using, so that the GM isn't REQUIRED to have every single Pathfinder book printed. And also that the GM isn't allowed to go against RAW, when doing so would create rules inconsistencies between games?
Sigh....
A Gm should be able to fudge a little and make rulings. In the PFS games I've played, they do anyway, but technically they are not allowed to. Flow and fun are what's (should be) important in a game, not rules. RAW is important, but having to look up every rule whenever it comes up takes time and is incredibly tedious, and takes the fun out of the game.
Ever played with a rules lawyer GM who insists on looking up every rule question? Not fun.
The GM shouldn't be "required" to have all the source books every player needs, but most GMs do have more sourcebooks then most players, and yes, players should come prepared, but I still don't see why players can't share books in the situation I suggested. Obviously if no one has the book, no one has the book, and nothing can be done. But I digress.
Potion of Lesser Restoration 300gp, (removes fatigue) all barbarians should have at least one for emergencies.
Take 1 Oracle level with the lame curse gives you fatigue immunity at level 9, buy scrolls of Lesser restoration (150gp) once you have the oracle level as its now on your spell list you just need to make caster level checks to cast it (your CL1 the spell is CL3 so its not too hard).
THANK YOU!!
Potions sound like a good idea. I have tried scrolls, but they are a bit unreliable as they require a standard action from someone who can cast them, not always an option. I can't really go oracle because my charisma is abysmal...
Ever played with a rules lawyer GM who insists on looking up every rule question? Not fun.
No, it isn't.
Then again, characters who dominate every scenario with awesome things nobody else can do, and confound the GM, are equally not fun.
|
|
IQuarent, I know of no way you can get rid of fatigue without lesser restore. Im sorry you missed reading a rule that has been in affect for along time. I too have a character that I wanted that trait.
Now as for this thread. I think you may have worded it alittle better. It comes off challenging.
As for some other responses. WOW, feels like some anger coming accross. Can we all take a breath and maybe start this one over with some more positive words?
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm a bit sore that you're getting a lot of flak over this, though you didn't make it obvious in your original post that you were after advice about what else you can do with the character (it sounded more like you want PFS to change fit you, rather than the other way around).
If I see someone with a character who has an option they didn't realise was legal, I'd say just change that option to something else that is legal. I would never say that that character isn't legal, you can't change it, roll up a new character. That is horrendous. If I saw someone else doing it, I'd make it a priority to educate that person to be a little (a lot) more forgiving towards people who didn't realise a rule existed. This happens with both new and experienced players.
It just becomes a way of the game that you need to have a rough idea of what's available and not available in Additional Resources, and while it might seem alien at first, you do get used to it over time. If you really hate it, stick to the core rulebook - but I'm pretty sure that's the larger of the two evils. I'd rather check Additional Resources for all the options I want.
Sounds like a bad situation that your other abilities affect the banned ones, but just do your best to make fixes as appropriate. It's a bit hard to suggest alternatives; the ones you've lost - racial traits - are very specific. See if you can find a feat and take it down the line if one exists, that's probably your best bet.
Players should be able to share books, I'm not sure if the rules state they can't, or if the GM was just being unreasonable.
And if GMs fudge things, then rules are inconsistent. Players might have something work in one game, then have it work differently in another. And then the player might be confused, or argumentative (since he may have thought the old way was the correct one)
And I've played with the opposite--a GM who rarely looks up rules and fudges EVERYTHING. Makes it difficult to play the game, when half the time he'll give a different ruling than the one in the book.
Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
|
The books that are published by Paizo are for anyone playing Pathfinder RPG. Pathfinder Society uses most of those books for their campaign. Why would paizo bother printing extra lines in their books for a fraction of their consumers who most would probably never even see the line to begin with.
Its hard enough to get players to actually read the Guide to PFS Organized play, which you must not have, since it specifically says: You can view a frequently updated list of all campaign-legal Additional Resources online at paizo.com/pathfindersociety/about/
additionalresources. In order to utilize content from an Additional Resource, a player must have a physical copy of the Additional Resource in question, a name-watermarked Paizo PDF of it, or a printout of the relevant pages from it, as well as a copy of the current version of the Additional Resources list. So really without even that your characters wouldn't have been legal to begin with unless they were entirely from the core book.
PFS just like any home campaign has its own "house rules" just because you ignored them until doesn't mean they weren't there.
As for your fighter, well, you just got a new feat (since your alternate racial trait was never legal), make the best of it. Heck, take a level of cleric of Sarenrae with the restoration subdomain, or dip into oracle with the lame curse and once you get to Oracle 1/Whatever 8, you'll be immune to fatigue.
T
This has been banned from the start as it gives a bonus to craft skill.
The following parts of the Advanced Player's Guide are NOT legal for play:
craftsman alternate Dwarven racial trait
practicality alternate Halfling racial trait
heart of the fields alternate Human racial trait
Why would things that give a bonus to Craft be banned?
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
No one is making you play PFS. If you don't like it find else where to play.
That's a terrible attitude. First of all, if everyone took your "advice," then things would never improve. Games work best when everyone's input is welcome. Second, it's rude and dismissive...two things already in ample supply on the Internet.
Lame...but then you already knew that.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I understand there are reasons for banning these, as they are really powerful most of the time, but it's annoying at best that it's from a faceless company that doesn't explain it's reasoning and then says you can't accommodate for the banned things by changing other parts of your character...
"a faceless company that doesn't explain it's reasoning"?!? Dude, you can call Paizo a lot of things, but "a faceless company that doesn't explain it's reasoning" is completely, utterly, 100% , dead wrong. Far more than any other company in it's size, the staff at paizo are reachable and have a 'face". Most of the Devs drop by and answer questions, and several of them (including James Jacobs) have their own threads where you can just bop in in and ask whatever you like. Paizo is anything but faceless, and 'doesn't explain it's reasoning" is so off track it's not even funny.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Lots of new players don't have all the books to make the characters they want to make, and therein lies the second problem, that they must own all the source material.
Why do they have to own it?
PFS is an advertising tool for Pathfinder. It is the best kind of advertising tool, one that is fun on multiple levels, but it is still there to sell Pathfinder material, and to support the stores that support their product. It is more lenient that other companies, like Games Workshop. PFS doesn't say you have to use a Pathfinder branded miniature to use, and the rerolls for Paizo-produced t-shirts and Character Folios is additive. But ultimately, if PFS doesn't pay for itself, Paizo can't support it. You don't have to own every Pathfinder product to play, you barely need to own any, but it isn't asking too much that you own the products that contain the options you are using. This is more expensive for an optimizer, its true, but there are other rewards for optimization.
Conversely, you can play Pathfinder for free. Use the PfSRD for all your options, spend a day turning an old press table into a giant grid map, and write your own adventures. You don't get all the additional advantages of PFS, but again, that's a form of advertisement with a few rules to recoup costs and pay for a few salaries of some pretty swell guys.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Why would things that give a bonus to Craft be banned?PFS characters can't craft.
Huh? I know they can't make magic items, but they can't even make a basket? Even so, taking a +2 in a skill you can't use should be legal, even if it's a bad choice.
I mean, you could take a rank in Profession Seaman even if the campaign is going to be 100% on land, right?
This may help.
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Alice- While the contents of this post basically say "I disagree with you," I hope you'll interpret it as respectful disagreement rather than a put down. I realize that I can be pedantic but I wasn't trying to be insulting. I'm hoping I didn't offend.
I also don't know what you expect. Everything in Pathfinder RPG to be legal?
Actually, yeah. That really doesn't seem too outrageous to me.
It took me a while to realize that a lot of the prohibited stuff isn't prohibited because it's unbalanced; it's prohibited because it doesn't work within the specific framework of organized play. There are some setting specific limitations (like the no-drow thing), and some organized play specific limitations (like the no-evil-character and no-crafting thing). Some things that can be handled at the table by an individual GM CAN'T be handled from afar by people designing adventures. Things that would break the society have to go.
Though frankly, I still think the at-first-glance cynicism is valid on a case by case basis. Some of the archetypes seem to be banned only because they're too cheesy for even the company that designed them to accept. Something like the vivisectionist I get- evil is part of the inbuilt flavor. But banning three summoner classes and the packlord druid from Ultimate Magic has the feel of "Oops! Too powerful!"
Everything to be listed in the PFS guide?
For an electronic document that gets regularly updated and re-released, this does NOT seem in any way an outrageous request. I'd actually like to make a serious proposal to do just this. Maybe as the final section of the Guide to Organized Play.
I am fairly sure the PFS guide talks about checking the Additional Resources page when you make a character.
And because I'm the kind of person who wants to read every line, I found the additional resources link. Do you know where it was? It wasn't under a heading titled "what is legal to play" or anything similar. It wasn't in a relevant heading, nor does anything hint about it in the table of contents. It isn't under class/archetype selection, alternate racial trait selection, or skill selection. All of which would have been relevant.
The link to additional resources is in exactly three places in the Guide to Organized Play. Two of them are right next to each other, in the chapter that talks about modules and adventure paths. The only place that a character interested in creation would notice it is in the feats section of the character creation chapter.
Paizo.com/pathf indersociety/additionalResources
contains a book-by-book listing of all campaign-legal
feat choices beyond the Core Rulebook. Check there before taking any feats from a non-Core Rulebook source.
So unless you have a question about a feat, which the OP didn't, you'd never notice it. And sure, all players should read all applicable sections of the recommended books before creating characters. All video game players should read the instruction manuals that come with their games. I am completely not surprised to find someone who didn't.
I don't think it's really that much of a stretch to expect just about everyone to have regular enough access to the internet to double-check their characters...
Internet access is a literal requirement to participate in PFS. You have to sign up on the website in order to play. So the idea of having rules of play that are only available online isn't that much of a stretch. After all, they had to get to the website to sign up...
So yeah- it's not a stretch to expect people who need to access the website at least once anyway to swing by another part of the website and check out some additional rules.
However, it is a stretch to assume that every person who visits one page of your website will automatically find another page. Even if the two pages are in the same section- and they are- there are any number of people who won't have either the time or interest to explore. It's completely possible to get online at most local libraries. That doesn't mean that it's possible to get online for long. Or to assume that people are going to want to have a look around instead of moving on to whatever is next on their to-do list.
So here's my suggested solution: make reading the additional resources page a requirement of the sign up process. It's pretty standard to redirect users to a legal page before allowing them to sign up to a website. It would not be hard for Paizo to redirect someone to the additional resources page before/after sign-up. Or simply to end the sign up process with a page that says "hey, be sure to read this: (link to additional resources page."
By the way - check Archives of Nethys for PFS crunch. Everything that's legal is marked with a little symbol, although you should still double check with the Additional Resources page anyway.
Oh, cool! See, I didn't know that was there. I learned something. :)
Edit: And in the time it took me to write this, there were twenty four posts. Yeesh.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Obviously if no one has the book, no one has the book, and nothing can be done.
And I imagine that's exactly the reason they've written the PFS rules the way they have. If you have made a PFS character, then you can bring that character to any PFS game anywhere in the world.
In many situations, a character will be brought to a table where noone knows eachother, and possibly where everyone (GM included) only brings the specific books they know they'll need (because lugging around tons of books is impractical, especially if you travel, and not everyone can afford to buy all the PDFs or an iPad/Tablet/Laptop to view them on).
If the situation you described then does occur, the player will suddenly be unable to play in the game. Since Paizo would prefer such situations to happen as rarely as possible, they've placed the burden of bringing rules relevant to their characters on each player. That way, everyone knows that if they do have a question regarding a rule or character option, the relevant reference will be available at the table.
Alice Margatroid wrote:
By the way - check Archives of Nethys for PFS crunch. Everything that's legal is marked with a little symbol, although you should still double check with the Additional Resources page anyway.
Oh, cool! See, I didn't know that was there. I learned something. :) hope you'll interpret it as respectful disagreement rather than a put down. I realize that I can be pedantic but I wasn't trying to be insulting. I'm hoping I didn't offend.
Alice Margatroid wrote:
I also don't know what you expect. Everything in Pathfinder RPG to be legal?
Actually, yeah. That really doesn't seem too outrageous to me.
This gets long:
It took me a while to realize that a lot of the prohibited stuff isn't prohibited because it's unbalanced; it's prohibited because it doesn't work within the specific framework of organized play. There are some setting specific limitations (like the no-drow thing), and some organized play specific limitations (like the no-evil-character and no-crafting thing). Some things that can be handled at the table by an individual GM CAN'T be handled from afar by people designing adventures. Things that would break the society have to go.
Though frankly, I still think the at-first-glance cynicism is valid on a case by case basis. Some of the archetypes seem to be banned only because they're too cheesy for even the company that designed them to accept. Something like the vivisectionist I get- evil is part of the inbuilt flavor. But banning three summoner classes and the packlord druid from Ultimate Magic has the feel of "Oops! Too powerful!"
Alice Margatroid wrote:
Everything to be listed in the PFS guide?
For an electronic document that gets regularly updated and re-released, this does NOT seem in any way an outrageous request. I'd actually like to make a serious proposal to do just this. Maybe as the final section of the Guide to Organized Play.
Alice Margatroid wrote:
I am fairly sure the PFS guide talks about checking the Additional Resources page when you make a character.
Primary point- if nothing else, read this one:
The link to additional resources is in exactly three places in the Guide to Organized Play. Two of them are right next to each other, in the chapter that talks about modules and adventure paths. The only place that a character interested in creation would notice it is in the feats section of the character creation chapter.
Pathfinder Society Guide to Organized Play wrote:
Paizo.com/pathf indersociety/additionalResources
contains a book-by-book listing of all campaign-legal feat choices beyond the Core Rulebook. Check there before taking any feats from a non-Core Rulebook source.
So unless you have a question about a feat, which the OP didn't, you'd never notice it. And sure, all players should read all applicable sections of the recommended books before creating characters. All video game players should read the instruction manuals that come with their games. I am completely not surprised to find someone who didn't.
Alice Margatroid wrote:
I don't think it's really that much of a stretch to expect just about everyone to have regular enough access to the internet to double-check their characters...
Trying to keep the wall of text down.:
So yeah- it's not a stretch to expect people who need to access the website at least once anyway to swing by another part of the website and check out some additional rules.
However, it is a stretch to assume that every person who visits one page of your website will automatically find another page. Even if the two pages are in the same section- and they are-there are any number of people who won't have either the time or interest to explore. It's completely possible to get online at most local libraries. That doesn't mean that it's possible to get online for long. Or to assume that people are going to want to have a look around instead of moving on to whatever is next on their to-do list.
So here's my suggested solution: make reading the additional resources page a requirement of the sign up process. It's pretty standard to redirect users to a legal page before allowing them to sign up to a website. It would not be hard for Paizo to redirect someone to the additional resources page before/after sign-up. Or simply to end the sign up process with a page that says "hey, be sure to read this: (link to additional resources page."
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
hope you'll interpret it as respectful disagreement rather than a put down. I realize that I can be pedantic but I wasn't trying to be insulting. I'm hoping I didn't offend.
A..
Friend, you have got to learn to use the quoting functions on this MB, this is not readable.
Thank you all for your input. I found the potion of invigorate and the Cord of Stubborn Resolve very helpful. It is getting late and I have spent almost my entire day off on the computer, and I didn't intend to(sigh). I will read the rest of some of the particularly long post later. I appreciate that most of you were respectful and informative. I did not know that the 'guide to pathfinder organized play' existed, which was part of my earlier argument of how would I, if I, like most new players don't frequent the website often? I just started reading up on the website a week ago.. but anyway, I don't want to provoke anybody, and reading this guide will probably make me eat my words. However most of what I said were just opinions so I own up to the fact that some of them may be wrong (and some definitely were wrong; Paizo is definitely not a faceless company). Goodnight everybody.
Did you sign up for the Pathfinder Society on the site? On the same page where you do that, there are links to the Guide to Organized Play as well as a good deal of information for new players.
In addition, the "Welcome to PFS" page (linked by the Pathfinder Society logo at the top left of every page on the site) has a sidebar featuring links to several resources, including the Additional Resources page.
|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Lots of new players don't have all the books to make the characters they want to make, and therein lies the second problem, that they must own all the source material.
Why do they have to own it? Isn't providing it enough? Surely most GMs have copies of the source material that the players are using. Couldn't they just look at their own copies? What about their friends? I was in a game where I was using an item from the AA, which I did not have, but the person right next to me did. There was the source material. But the GM didn't let me use it because it was not mine. That seems utterly ridiculous to me. Someone explained to me that this was to make money, but this seems like a very poor reason for a company to instate rules into an organized game that do not allow new players to optimize their characters. Pathfinder books are EXPENSIVE. Not everyone has that much scratch laying around for purely entertainment purposes, and limiting new players is discouraging and sucky.
I'm not even sure I can verbalize how strongly I disagree with this.
Paizo set up a system of organized play. They designed it. They produced the documents for it. They hired people (at the top, at least) to run it. They did all of this, and it is completely free. They're pretty much only asking one thing in return: don't pirate their books.
This is not unreasonable. If I decide to go through the effort of designing a campaign and then invite players into my home, I don't think the rule "hey, don't steal the silverware" would draw many complaints. Likewise, if Paizo is designing and organizing a massive gaming event, having a rule that boils down to "please don't pirate our material" doesn't seem outrageous.
Expecting someone to produce a boatload of FREE bonus material for their core product, and then balking at actually having to pay for the core product? THAT seems unreasonable.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with playing Core until you can afford to buy an Ultimate book here and there. And those books are available in PDF format for $9.99 a piece. I fully realize that PDFs are of limited use to someone without a smart phone or computer. But you can buy them from a library computer and keep them in your gmail/yahoo/whatever account. It nicely solves the problem of "how do I play this in PFS" because you honestly own the material. Just print out the applicable section and bring it.
And yeah, it sucks that you have to go out of your way to do something that is much easier for someone who owns a computer. But it's still the cheaper option if buying the book is that big of a hindrance.
|
|
darkorbit, if you were talking to me, I can't parse your post(s) whatsoever. Please try again; use the quote function or remove the extraneous material if you can!
Alice- While the contents of this post basically say "I disagree with you," I hope you'll interpret it as respectful disagreement rather than a put down. I realize that I can be pedantic but I wasn't trying to be insulting. I'm hoping I didn't offend.
Of course not! Same back at you (and everyone else).
Actually, yeah. That really doesn't seem too outrageous to me.
But it is pretty 'outrageous' to expect that everything is allowable. Four points in question:-
1. Crafting - PFS pretty closely adjudicates wealth by level and what you can buy/have access to, and Crafting has the potential to throw that completely out the window.
2. Leadership - Do I need to say more? This feat throws PC balance completely out of whack unless a GM can account for it - and you can't expect organised play GMs to be able to do so.
3. Stuff that isn't appropriate Golarion (e.g., drow) - kind of self-explanatory, but perhaps not so obvious to those without familiarity...
4. Alternate races - Power imbalance is very possible with races like strix and androids in the same game as elves and halflings, plus there's #3 to consider as well.
Those four points cut out a fair number of options themselves just for the matter of keeping PCs relatively balanced across tables (a necessity for organised play) and reasonably likely to make sense within the setting.
But banning three summoner classes and the packlord druid from Ultimate Magic has the feel of "Oops! Too powerful!"
Actually those are banned because they put too many bodies on the table more so than power (...although Master Summoner is generally considered to be quite strong...) There's a restriction on the amount of companions you can have purely because of logistics - if you have to make moves for 5 animals plus yourself each round, your turns grind to a halt and you might hold the mod up in an already stretched time limit.
I honestly don't think there are many things that are banned because they are OP. The vast majority of banned things aren't OP, ultimately.
EDIT: Oh, and some things are banned because they marginalise other characters (e.g., vivisectionist to rogue and synthesist to the fighter-types). This is perhaps more a comment on the state of the Fighter and the Rogue than anything else... :p
For an electronic document that gets regularly updated and re-released, this does NOT seem in any way an outrageous request. I'd actually like to make a serious proposal to do just this. Maybe as the final section of the Guide to Organized Play.
It might be handy, but I wonder if just making a separate PDF that is clearly linked to (both within the guide and on the Additional Resources website) might be enough.
Primary point- if nothing else, read this one:
Actually, I recall looking for it recently and having trouble finding it myself - I agree that it should probably be more publicised (i.e. a big link on the main PFS site)
Oh, cool! See, I didn't know that was there. I learned something. :)
Yay! Archives of Nethys is awesome for PFS purposes. Especially since d20pfsrd's recent (and utterly frustrating/stupid) changes.
As for help for the barbarian, you can bypass the lame oracle route, by purchasing a 'cord of stubborn resolve'. It's found in Ultimate Equipment, in belt magic items.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, Contributor
|
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Pathfinder books are EXPENSIVE. Not everyone has that much scratch laying around for purely entertainment purposes, and limiting new players is discouraging and sucky.
Pathfinder books are cheap.
With 4 books a player can cover 90% of the options they will use for the life of their character (I figure Core + APG + ARG + Pathfinder Society Field Guide). That's $45 for the PDFs or roughly $150 for hardcopies. You have been playing PFS for 18 months, if you figure 2 games a month that's about 150 hours of gaming. So... you've paid Paizo $1/ hour for participating in this hobby or $.35/ hour if you bought PDFs. Compare this to nearly any hobby and it's a bargain.
If you took the bus to and from the game shop, you've spent more on bus money than you've spent on Paizo gaming material. If you have a couple sodas and a snickers bar at the gaming shop, you've outspent your Paizo spending 2:1.
It likely wouldn't seem so expensive if you'd read the PFS guide and realized this up-front before you built a character that relies on a bunch of material you don't own.
|
|
Actually, yeah. That really doesn't seem too outrageous to me.But it is pretty 'outrageous' to expect that everything is allowable. Four points in question:-
Yeah, I should have amended that to "At first glance, it really doesn't seem outrageous to me." Because I later pointed out 1, 3, and 4. (Though granted, it was like two lines in a wall of text post.) I hadn't thought about 2 though, and that's another good one.
My response to the rest of your post is either "Agreed" or "Oh! That's interesting." ;)
|
|
When you talk about the expense of the books, are you talking about buying all the hard covers at once? You can save a lot of money by 1) building core PCs to start off with as you learn Pathfinder and the differences that come into PFS play and 2) gradually buying mostly the PDF versions of the books. If you buy an inexpensive tablet (I have just found a used one for under $100 in two minutes of searching) and buy only PDF versions of books, you have actually saved money and also saved yourself the trouble of lugging several heavy books with you.