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so a straight Mystic Theurge is unplayable in PFS. check.
edit - couldn't resist a little sarcasm. As for being "carried" - there is always the possibility of an under-powered character at the table. That does not mean they cannot succeed as a group where maximized characters would steamroll.
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so a straight Mystic Theurge is unplayable in PFS. check.
edit - couldn't resist a little sarcasm. As for being "carried" - there is always the possibility of an under-powered character at the table. That does not mean they cannot succeed as a group where maximized characters would steamroll.
True, but if you know you're needing to be carried because of you can't really do much in the session, doesn't sound like fun. And then you also are saying, I know that My character is needing to be carried, and it's possible that someone else will need that as well (especially if they don't realize they are underpowered), and then we can't make it.
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@Zach - sub-optimized is not a crime. I'm sorry if the 'group two' characters who retrain would not be maximized/optimized on stats. but that does not negate they have the option to finish out the same PrC path via normal entry.
I am looking forward to high tier games with my standard path mystic theurge. I will be happy to tell you about it next February :D
There's not optimized and then theres... well... mystic theurge. The underwhelming power of that prestige class seems to be why they didn't worry about the spell like ability entry shortcut.
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A standard entry mystic theurge isn't an unoptimised character. It's a cohort that gets a full share of xp and loot.
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The only reason it has no in-world reason is that the player has not chosen to assign one.
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I'm sure you don't mean it this way, but your post is coming very close to saying "if you're not willing to play the way I do then its your problem"
Unlike some prestige classes, things like Mystic Theurge and Arcane Trickster have no in world presence. All they are to me is a set of abilities.
Heck, my Arcane Trickster wannabe was actually a Divine Trickster. He had cleric levels only.
I am now in the position where I can no longer build several characters in the direction I'd intended. Even with a rebuild they'll be less effective than they would have been if I built them for their new role.
RP wise, my Mystic Theurge wannabe really was a cleric/wizard, blending the two roles. She is so much a wizard/cleric that I'm very likely to NOT retrain her and just live with my suboptimal build (its not as if a suboptimal wizard sucks)
But surely you can understand why I'm now mildly irked that I can no longer play the character I intended to? I didn't want this particular "opportunity".
I believe that very liberal rebuilds should be offered more readily than they are. I really don't see the downsides of it. I don't care if somebody rebuilds their barbarian claiming that it was totally built around arcane strike.
But Mike et. al. disagree for what are, obviously, to them good reasons. Its their call to make.
But don't expect those of us negatively affected by the change to like it and to not be at least mildly irked. Please don't tell me its a challenge that I should relish.
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With respect towards John & Mike, I find it sad that the choices of players who took the opportunity to play more than the PFS staff intended when staff chose to ban two very popular character races last year has caused the PFS staff to become leery of both grandfathering and (apparently) of reconsidering their prior decisions / rulings in these cases.
I hope that this trend doesn't continue, but I'm bowing out of this thread now as I still feel strongly that the ruling about aasimars & tieflings was a poor choice made for reasons other than that which was stated when it was announced. I've no desire to resume the level of bitterness towards PFS which that decision, its delivery, and the comments made by VO's at the time caused as I still regret having to tell potential players that they could no longer play the characters that interested them, which in turn meant I felt that I had to steer them away from PFS participation.
-TimD
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Not that your conclusion is wrong, but the logic here is a specific logical fallacy known as the golden mean fallacy. You can shift the middle simply by proposing more outlandish arguments for one side or the other, such as stuffing all of the mystic theurge players into a giant blender to make banning their characters seem like the reasonable middle.
So, reasonableness lies somewhere in between, and generally the PFS leadership has been pretty good at finding a way of threading the needle.
Well, I wasn't arguing that the two extremes implied that reasonableness was somewhere in the middle. I was simply stating that I feel that the middle route taken by the PFS leadership seems reasonable. It is certainly possible to disagree.
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Nonono, don't put the blender away! We can make margaritas. Lots and lots of margaritas. I think we could all use a drink.Sooo....your saying I should put away the ACME blender away... ;(
Man no one ever lets me use the giant blender.
We can use the special snowflake characters as an unending supply of ice. We just need a cleric of Cayden Caylen to cast create tequila, and a druid to make some giant sized limes.
Watch me cast conjure frozen drinks.
No early entry drinkers please...
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But surely you can understand why I'm now mildly irked that I can no longer play the character I intended to? I didn't want this particular "opportunity".
You have the right to be as irked as you please. I apologize for not being clear: I've been disappointed by game-stuff-taken-away myself, and I understand the feeling of frustration. Absolutely, bad things sometimes happen to characters.
The issue is: can we find an interpretation of this change that makes sense on a character level? Can we role-play that frustration with the PC? thejeff was arguing that we cannot. I was providing examples of how we could.
I didn't mean to suggest that this isn't a disappointment for people playing characters working towards an early-entry prestige class. I just think that those players can use that disappointment to build character.
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To those of you who hold MB/jc blameless for this ruling, I think you failed a save vs Delusional.
This ruling clearly weakened the value of several Prestige Classes.
Lower value Prestige Class = less books sold. You can argue all you want about the size of this effect, but I don't think you can deny it IS an effect. I know I won't be buying any PrC books again.
Less books sold is never a Paizo goal.
So, in my mind, this ruling could ONLY have originated from PFS Admin. And it probably came with a very big "pretty please!?"
It may have been an offhand comment at the communal coffee pot that got this rolling, but I'd bet my next Day Job roll the seed of thought BEGAN with PFS.
That being said, I hold more resentment for them allowing us to believe otherwise than I do for the actual ruling. My ranger 1 / diviner 1 / eldritch knight is so far down the assembly line (char #32?), it may be 2020 before I get to play him. So I'm going to flat out ask....
Hey PFS... did the about-face to the FAQ originate with you guys? Did you request this change to the FAQ? If so, why haven't you said so?
My sincere apologies if I've missed such a statement. I looked. I really did.
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To those of you who hold MB/jc blameless for this ruling, I think you failed a save vs Delusional.
This ruling clearly weakened the value of several Prestige Classes.
Lower value Prestige Class = less books sold. You can argue all you want about the size of this effect, but I don't think you can deny it IS an effect. I know I won't be buying any PrC books again.
Less books sold is never a Paizo goal.
That doesn't really make sense. Paizo doesn't even really have Prestige Class books. The Prestige Classes affected are all Core, aren't they?
The one "prestige class book" (Paths of Prestige) has far more "need 5 ranks in a skill" prerequisites than "need to cast 3-rd level arcane spells" prerequisites, and was largely untouched by either FAQ.
For what it's worth, I like the ruling.
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The FAQ that addresses the use of spell-like abilities to qualify for prestige classes and other prerequisite-based character options has changed, and in doing so, it invalidates some characters' class combinations by preventing them from qualifying for a prestige class early. Mike and I have discussed the change and how it affects many of the characters built to take advantage of the opportunity.
A character who has a) relied on a spell-like ability to enter a prestige class in place of conventional spellcasting ability and b) earned at least one Chronicle sheet as a result of playing that character after taking a level in that prestige class gets to keep the character as is. We're not interested in performing a massive character rebuilding operation.
A character who does not fulfill the conditions above does not retain the ability to use a spell-like ability to qualify for a prestige class or other character option, in accordance with the recent FAQ. That character must qualify for those options as normal.
A character who has a non-class option for which he qualified using a spell-like ability in place of standard spellcasting ability must retrain those features and any features that rely on them as prerequisites (e.g. Arcane Strike and Bloodied Arcane Strike) at no cost.
This one snuck in on me. Admittedly, I do have a personal vested interest in this as I used a tiefling for an Arcane Trickster build in PFS that I did use the previous ruling for. Her whole schick is using rays to get sneak attack damage, which she usually has to be invisible to begin her turn in order to get the extra damage. Sounds awesome but when you consider that it takes time and resources to be going invisible frequently, it balances itself out.
I think my main complaint about the change is that multiple PrCs just lost abit of luster. I wouldn't say that some of them are not viable, but the option certainly isn't nearly as attractive any longer. I know a player in my local area who has an 11th level Mystic Theurge and is very close to retirement. I know this change would make him abit upset because it's a character he's grown to enjoy playing over the course of two years. In his case, it would be better to let him finish the character out rather than have to either rebuild or simply just not play that character anymore.
I'm in the ballpark of "it really wasn't that big of a deal to let SLAs count as prerequisites". Granted, I'm no guru with all the PrCs in Pathfinder, however, I did find that most players only went that route unless there was something very specific to build towards. Ususally it limited a character towards having a couple nifty tricks but that was it.
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Tsiriel, according to the text from John that you quoted, this change doesn't affect anyone who already has taken levels in the Prestige Class. Why is someone in your local area playing an 11th Level character in PFS who intends to , but has not yet, taken a level in Mystic Theurge??
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This one snuck in on me. Admittedly, I do have a personal vested interest in this as I used a tiefling for an Arcane Trickster build in PFS that I did use the previous ruling for. Her whole schick is using rays to get sneak attack damage, which she usually has to be invisible to begin her turn in order to get the extra damage. Sounds awesome but when you consider that it takes time and resources to be going invisible frequently, it balances itself out.
I think my main complaint about the change is that multiple PrCs just lost abit of luster. I wouldn't say that some of them are not viable, but the option certainly isn't nearly as attractive any longer. I know a player in my local area who has an 11th level Mystic Theurge and is very close to retirement. I know this change would make him abit upset because it's a character he's grown to enjoy playing over the course of two years. In his case, it would be better to let him finish the character out rather than have to either rebuild or simply just not play that character anymore.
I'm in the ballpark of "it really wasn't that big of a deal to let SLAs count as prerequisites". Granted, I'm no guru with all the PrCs in Pathfinder, however, I did find that most players only went that route unless there was something very specific to build towards. Ususally it limited a character towards having a couple nifty tricks but that was it.
You might want to take a look at a later clarification I provided. Your friend should have no problem continuing to play his existing mystic theurge.
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From a design perspective the previous ruling must have been a nightmare. if you had a requirement for a prestige class feat, or ability you felt shouldn't be attained until a certain level of power had been reached you'd have to scour the spell like abilities out there for a loophole to getting it.
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I will say that if I were to redesign every PrC I would make the primary level gating skill point based in most every case, simply because it's an easy way to tie the PrC's to out of combat utility and the most concrete way to efficiently level gate, with additional secondary flavor requirements, sometimes mechanical in nature such as requiring a particular race/ethnicity/circumstance. I think that things like spell level and BAB should have little consideration in what is largely a flavor option with mechanical zest to fill it out, with the exception of those "dual class" PrC's that primarily exist in the CRB.
I'm not going to say I agree with how the design team handles PrCs in general, but I feel the PFS leadership aligning with their wishes is always a beneficial thing. I prefer for the PFS rules to be aligned with the base rules set of Pathfinder wherever possible.
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I always had the feeling the FAQ entry would eventually be reversed, so I never created a character using the "shortcut".
Intriguingly, I know a player who was actually waiting for rebuilding his early entry EK. I guess deep down we all knew this was going to change, which makes me really wonder how on earth did that FAQ entry get up there. I've yet to meet a Paizo staff member who sided with the early entry notion.
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which makes me really wonder how on earth did that FAQ entry get up there. I've yet to meet a Paizo staff member who sided with the early entry notion.
I would assume that at Paizo there were also strong opinions on both sides of the argument. It also explains why there would be no explanation. You probably wouldn't tell customers if your staff had a disagreement but in the end a decision has to be made.
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which makes me really wonder how on earth did that FAQ entry get up there. I've yet to meet a Paizo staff member who sided with the early entry notion.I would assume that at Paizo there were also strong opinions on both sides of the argument. It also explains why there would be no explanation. You probably wouldn't tell customers if your staff had a disagreement but in the end a decision has to be made.
This might a wholly cultural thing, but I wouldn't mind seeing disputed issues arise within a company. To me that's just positive transparency and shows discussions are held about the subject.
Regardless of the back stage talk, this shows there's something amiss; there are reasons to keep the early entry shortcut to promote previously unseen prestige classes, and there were reasons to reverse the decision because of its inconsistency. What I personally gather here is that there is room for growth regarding prestige classes; I have only glanced at the Paths of Prestige, and haven't seen it used much.
What strikes me peculiar is that these two prestige class in the epicenter of this discussion are both "hybrid prestige classes", as I dub them. Eldritch Knight is a Fighter/Wizard, and Mystic Theurge is a Cleric/Wizard. Paizo did release 10 hybrid classes, but would "hybrid prestige classes" still intrigue the crowd?
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With respect, if the theme of a prestige class is attractive, but the mechanics make it undesirable to a vast swath of the player-base, then I would suggest that the solution is to fix that problem directly, rather than find a loophole / shortcut / kludge involving spell-like abilities which pretend to be spellcasting.
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that the 3.5 versions of the core prestige classes were carefully balanced by the D&D team. (I remember reading a developer's article in Dragon magazine dissecting the Mystic Theurge.) I'm wondering if they became worse somehow, or if the improvements that Pathfinder bestowed on every class just improved the base classes to a point where they left the common core prestige classes in the dust.
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There were also multiple, 28 minute runs of Master of the Fallen Fortress (up to 8 a day).Does anyone know if the "grandfathering shenanigans" around aasimar and tiefling were all that prevalent, or were more of a messageboard phenomenon?
I know of three cities in the upper midwest where dozens of players ran through "The Confirmation" or "First Steps 1" with an aasimar / tiefling. Nobody considered it cheating or shenanigans.
for the sake of perspective, loads of people played their Lantern Lodge and Shadow Lodge characters through the respective retirement scenarios before the season end / deadline, and nobody considered that to be shenanigans. Years ago, lots of people ran their PCs through the announced-to-be-retired Season 0 scenarios, before the deadline, and they weren't accused of cheating, either.
Considering that,
A) This was legal.
B) Got games organized and people to play, including people who might not have played otherwise.
C) Clearly energized portions of the community.
D) Was a limited time issue.
I am not fully convinced this was actually a bad thing.
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Gulf
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I disagree Bill. A speed run in a tabletop game run in the amount of time it takes to read box text and fill out chronicles is unconditionally bad. It has one purpose to manufacture chronicles. It is cheese whiz. It's not role playing, and the purpose is not play, it is to get a piece of paper signed.
At a show, a person wanted to run MOTFF in an hour. I declined at the show to sanction it. I cited the same reason. People play PFS for many reasons, but none of them should be to churn out quick chronicles to meet some campaign deadline.
This is why there was no warning to anyone, it was announced and that's final. A bad segment of the campaign games the system.
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To those of you who hold MB/jc blameless for this ruling, I think you failed a save vs Delusional.
FWIW I'd like to declare that I'm in the camp that doesn't really see how playing the blame game is of any kind of importance.
Talking about what was done that caused an issue is productive. Complaining about who did it won't change anything and it makes people bitter.
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I disagree Bill. A speed run in a tabletop game run in the amount of time it takes to read box text and fill out chronicles is unconditionally bad. It has one purpose to manufacture chronicles. It is cheese whiz. It's not role playing, and the purpose is not play, it is to get a piece of paper signed.
If they all had fun doing this, was there really a problem?
At a show, a person wanted to run MOTFF in an hour. I declined at the show to sanction it.
I agree this was a good decision on your part because at a show you never know who is going to sit down at a table and you want to present PFS in an accurate light. I am speaking of events that were specifically designed and advertised for this purpose. Events where the participants are fully aware that this is a 'fast-run' limit occurrence event.
Think of this in terms of Bone Keep. Bone Keep is a non-Standard PFS adventure that will not appeal to all PFS player's and whose difficulty level and timed format are not representational of PFS. Bone Keep is clearly advertised for what it is and everyone sitting down at the table, especially after the blurb, knows what they were getting themselves into.
People play PFS for many reasons, but none of them should be to churn out quick chronicles to meet some campaign deadline.
Yes, and one of the reasons people play PFS is NOT to be sucker punched by PFS staff rulings that can radically effect their current or soon to be played character concepts. If the price of not making your player base feel cheated is to allow a limited run of quick chronicle churning events, then I feel that is a price well worth paying.
I am not saying such events are a fabulous thing and should occur with any regularity. I am saying that not allowing such events causes more problems then allowing them does.
This is why there was no warning to anyone, it was announced and that's final.
And golly-gee you now have people feeling cheated about it. Is that really better than a few people gaming the system?
A bad segment of the campaign games the system.
So we punish everyone for it?
It all basically boils down to one question:
Does the bad PR caused by people feeling cheated by sudden final announcements outweigh the bad PR caused by people gaming the system during grace periods?
I am not sure of the answer on this one. So I am little puzzled why so many other people seem to be.
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Bill not to belabor the point, this isn't a punishment. A specific instance of entering a PrC was removed from the campaign. If you want to allow it in a nonPFS game go right ahead. There was a concern about it being bad for the campaign. I like the campaign and I trust the leadership, so we soldier on.
I can tell you with almost certainty what happened at a 28minute speed run. They probably just ignored anything else, having played it before, and hand their hand out for a chronicle once they finished the final die roll with the GM. Games like this damage the integrity of the game, and degrades the value of a chronicle from MOTFF.
I have been on your tables and we have enjoyed RPGs played at its best, with an interested party, good role play, and a sense of peril for our characters. Ideally every game should contain these elements. A GM colluding to repeatedly rerun a speed run pisses off the campaign staff, because it hurts the campaign.
I did this in Everquest and WoW. We ground the content we already knew to get the drop we wanted, and repeated it for the numbers of drops needed. That is vending an item if you dance the "gimme dance". The difference is that on a tabletop we play slower than a computer. That isn't the direction PFS should take or tolerate.
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Games like this damage the integrity of the game, and degrades the value of a chronicle from MOTFF.
And, not to belabor the point, but the question is not whether such things damage the integrity of the game, but whether they damage it more than not allowing them.
Or do you not believe that the sudden removal of a valid option that people were either building their characters towards or were planning on playing in the near future does no harm to the campaign?