Yes, this hex and several others need to be looked at again. Basic information about these hexes is missing. Did the editor fall asleep on the job?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Please clarify this Paizo. The fact that this has been in print for nearly two years with no indication of targeting or how the effect really works is kind of appalling. If you're gonna make an ability core-usable in your gaming world, at least have the responsibility to make it function like its supposed to. I have never preached 'wow, Paizo doesn't care about what people want, only their own personal agendas', but the lack of errata on this nearly two years after the fact is making this post a first in that regard. Please, prove me wrong and anyone else who is beginning to be infected by this attitude. Errata, please.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
APG might as well be considered Core, and when I have a player in my Carrion Crown game ask me if he can take this Hex, I feel really stupid responding, "No, cause even the developers don't know how it works"; it belittles the integrity of how the game system works as a whole.
I'm a little confused on what you're trying to accomplish here. Are you trying to get Paizo to errataon the spot with an FAQ, explain why the haven't errata'd, or both?
Because I really don't see them doing either in response to the OP and follow up. The OP is far too complicated for an FAQ candidate (as has been pointed out in the locked thread), and the demands for an explanation come off as somewhat entitled.
They got the message with the first thread, I'm sure. They'll get to it when they get to it; asking them again (and again) is just impatient.
I haven't been aware of the issue until today but it does look like there's some things which need addressing. Im pretty new to the faq process, but from reading up on it, my impression is, as I said in the other thread, that paizo don't intend it to address posts along the lines of: "this has a bunch of problems, please fix them".
They can't mark off a FAQ request until all of the issues have been addressed and they're not planning to address every question people identify as needing an answer - they believe a DM has an adjudication role and that's never going away (these impressions are from the How to frame an FAQ post).
Given theyve spelled out how theyd like faq posts to be structured, it seems counter productive to not follow those principles. Why not identify several questions and give each their own post? Lumping them all together is going to delay a partial resolution, perhaps indefinitely. For example:
"What's the range of the ice tomb hex?" and "what's the duration of the ice tomb hex?" Are both quick, easy things for the development team to consider, debate and answer (you'd expect).
However, it seems to me that "Are undead (who are immune to effects which have fortitude saves) immune to this effect (which has a fortitude save)?" is exactly the kind of question they don't consider require a FAQ. Or might be, anyhow - I think it's definitely of a different character to the first two.
Including the last in the same post as the first two may well result in nothing happening.
How is asking for basic targeting function on the ability 'coming off as somewhat entitled?'? Because you don't use it?
I wouldn't make ten threads. I'd make one thread with ten individual posts - according to the FAQ guidelines, each post is individually tracked, not each thread.
As for the undead part, they may well be immune to paralysis and unconsciousness but, to quote another poster:
"Undead and Constructs are immune to any effect that requires a fortitude save."
Is that right? If it is, this isn't a FAQ candidate (whether it makes sense or not). Or perhaps it suggests another worthwhile FAQ request: "Can the ice tomb hex target objects?"
| 2 people marked this as FAQ candidate. 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
This has been a known problem for a very long time. No one knows how it is meant to work, and I mean no one. As written, it's practically gibberish from a rules standpoint.
I mean, APG came out almost 3 1/2 years ago now?
As for the undead part, they may well be immune to paralysis and unconsciousness but, to quote another poster:
"Undead and Constructs are immune to any effect that requires a fortitude save."
Is that right? If it is, this isn't a FAQ candidate (whether it makes sense or not). Or perhaps it suggests another worthwhile FAQ request: "Can the ice tomb hex target objects?"
Undead are not immune to the unconscious condition. They are immune to sleep effects, which behave similarly to the unconscious condition, but don't actually grant the unconscious condition.
Further, the full quote on undead immunity to effects requiring Fortitude saves includes the caveat "(unless the effect also targets objects or is harmless)", which means that the question "does the ice tomb hex target objects as well as creatures?" answers a whole string of the issues, since if the answer is "yes", then undead can be entombed and unconscious by the hex.
Also, the Immunity universal monster rule states that
A creature with immunities takes no damage from listed sources. Immunities can also apply to afflictions, conditions, spells (based on school, level, or save type), and other effects. A creature that is immune does not suffer from these effects, or any secondary effects that are triggered due to an immune effect.
So a creature immune to cold cannot be entombed by the hex, since the entombing is a secondary effect triggered due to the immune effect.
For the fire creature question, if they have a damaging aura that stays on whilst they're unconscious, it will work on the tomb.
The paralysed condition says
A winged creature flying in the air at the time that it becomes paralyzed cannot flap its wings and falls.
So if the entombed creature is flying by wing power, it falls. Otherwise it will stay flying.
Which leaves outstanding the target, range, duration (I suspect instantaneous), and excess damage questions that aren't answered by existing rules.
[Edit] Oops, more questions arrived while I was typing.
I'm honestly of two minds about the naturally melting question. So I'll FAQ that one.
As for ongoing effects, if we apply the "does what it says on the tin" meta rule, then ongoing effects will continue to run, since the hex doesn't say otherwise.
That does clear up some issues, thanks.
However the problem still remains : Does a creature resistant to cold damage still get entombed? What if its resistance is enough to reduce the damage done by ice tomb to 0?
A fire elemental has no fire aura but it does deal fire damage when it hits an enemy. Would that auto-deal damage to the ice?
If a wizard is flying or levitating due to magic, would he remain afloat while entombed? Thats the question i was asking.
I can answer these!
If the triggering effect's damage is reduced to zero, so-called "rider effects" don't trigger. So if cold resistance reduces the damage to zero, even on a failed save, the target creature will not be entombed.
Since the fire elemental is paralysed, it cannot make attacks. Since it cannot make attacks, it can't use the fire effect on its attacks against the tomb, so it can't melt it. (Silly? Perhaps. RAW? Definitely.)
Yes, the wizard will remain flying. (Another application of "does what it says on the tin", this time with respect to the paralysed condition.)
[Edit... which I seem to doing a lot here]
Just want to note, I'm not shooting down your questions as a whole, the hex is badly written, and I've FAQd the questions that I think need it. I'm running on the assumption that the hex does what it says it does but has the minimum number of unanswered questions.
Perhaps I was being a tad hasty in my post above when I said "entitled." If I came off as jerkish, I apologize.
However, I don't think you're doing yourself any favors when you start chiding the dev team. It's one thing to raise concerns, it's another to sound accusatory.
Edit: I do agree that, as written, the ability is borked. So I'm FAQing the questions about range and duration, as they're the most important questions. The other ones seen more like corner-case questions, and are less likely to be answered in errata.
APG might as well be considered Core, and when I have a player in my Carrion Crown game ask me if he can take this Hex, I feel really stupid responding, "No, cause even the developers don't know how it works"; it belittles the integrity of how the game system works as a whole.
Hey, don't even worry about it man. Paizo fixed everything, remember?
I can answer these!
If the triggering effect's damage is reduced to zero, so-called "rider effects" don't trigger. So if cold resistance reduces the damage to zero, even on a failed save, the target creature will not be entombed.
Since the fire elemental is paralysed, it cannot make attacks. Since it cannot make attacks, it can't use the fire effect on its attacks against the tomb, so it can't melt it. (Silly? Perhaps. RAW? Definitely.)
Yes, the wizard will remain flying. (Another application of "does what it says on the tin", this time with respect to the paralysed condition.)
[Edit... which I seem to doing a lot here]
Just want to note, I'm not shooting down your questions as a whole, the hex is badly written, and I've FAQd the questions that I think need it. I'm running on the assumption that the hex does what it says it does but has the minimum number of unanswered questions.
There are some problems with this. For starters, elementals are immune to paralysis. So, that presents some odd questions about what, precisely, is happening to a fire elemental that fails its save on this hex.
Also, flying isn't automatic in all cases. A wizard with the Fly spell up still needs to make a DC 10 or 15 check to either move less than 1/2 his speed or hover, respectively. So, how does this work when you target a flying air elemental? It's not paralyzed, but it's also encased in ice? Can it make a fly check in such a circumstance or not? The wizard, should he have failed his save, certainly wouldn't be able to do so.
Lastly, it's not really that clear if sufficient cold resistance would prevent the paralysis in something that IS vulnerable to it. Take this line from the Resist Energy spell:
Resist energy absorbs only damage. The subject could still suffer unfortunate side effects.
This seems to be directly at odds with whatever clarification you're referencing that states that preventing all damage stops all further effects. If, say, a high level winter witch rolled low on the 3d8 cold damage versus a tiefling, I could see said character not being hurt, but also being encased in ice if he failed the Fort save.
If this problem wasnt more than 2 years old, nobody would have started chiding the dev team...nobody chides the dev team when a new book is released and someone spots a problem.Perhaps I was being a tad hasty in my post above when I said "entitled." If I came off as jerkish, I apologize.
However, I don't think you're doing yourself any favors when you start chiding the dev team. It's one thing to raise concerns, it's another to sound accusatory.Edit: I do agree that, as written, the ability is borked. So I'm FAQing the questions about range and duration, as they're the most important questions. The other ones seen more like corner-case questions, and are less likely to be answered in errata.
I don't see any problem with repeatedly raising this (and hopefully they'll soon address some of the "easy" queries). Nonetheless, they've also been clear about timelines not always being as quick as they'd like. The FAQ process is slow, largely since its not a core part of their business, I suspect (not only does FAQing not earn paizo any money, but the people who put time into a FAQ have to stop doing stuff which does earn them money).
"My question hasn't been answered yet. Is my question being ignored?
Regardless of how long it takes to get a FAQ posted, the design team is never ignoring FAQ issues. The team spends time each week looking at the queue and prioritizing which questions should be addressed sooner rather than later.
Sometimes other work duties interfere with answering FAQ questions, such as conventions or deadlines. Sometimes one member of the design team is out sick or on vacation (remember that FAQ posts require a consensus).
Sometimes answering a question takes longer because the post is formatted poorly, or it’s about a weird corner case of the rules that the design team needs to read up on before answering, or because there are more important questions--despite having fewer clicks--that the team wants to answer first."
Thats easy to say, but if your landlord isnt fixing your leaking roof for 2 years, do you think he will suddenly fix it this year? I mean he could also claim that he's "busy".
FAQs should be a core part of the business...its support for a product. You dont just sell something and say "yea we have your money now, run along". Imagine if microsoft never issued patches for windows because "we would have to pay developers to make the patches! that costs money!".
FAQs are a core part of Paizo's business, but they cannot always be the number one priority. In fact, Microsoft is not really a great example, because they often take a long time for "minor" patches that seem kinda important to the people that they are affecting. That said, I agree that two years is a bit much, and as such I'll be FAQing this as well.
FAQs should be a core part of the business...its support for a product. You dont just sell something and say "yea we have your money now, run along". Imagine if microsoft never issued patches for windows because "we would have to pay developers to make the patches! that costs money!".
I think software and book publishing are two different industries with different accepted practises. Book publishers don't generally publish errata/clarifications do they?
I don't think your "run along" quotation is a fair summation of the FAQ post I quoted. They have an active FAQ program - they just prioritise differently than you'd like them to.
It's arguable whether it should be more heavily skewed to "popular demand" (I personally don't think so, but I can see the merits) however, it's not fair to say they don't address questions or produce FAQs regularly.
There is no reason for the FAQ process to be slow. Lets assume there is someone looking at the FAQ queue. It should go like this :
1. FAQ guy : *checks FAQ for this week* oh wow there are lots of requests for this class ability and there looks to be a lot of problems with this. I will shoot the original designer an email so he can take a look at it.
2. Designer : *gets email the same day* Ah crap i left out the range, duration and a lot of things. Let me see if i have them in my notes *opens up .doc file, ctrl+f ice tomb* Hmm, i dont have it here, well based on other similar abilities at the same level, i would give it X, Y and Z. *copy pastes and emails FAQ guy*
3. FAQ guy copy pastes it and posts it up on the website, marks FAQ as answered.
And before anyone says that it would take months to have the designer make a ruling, keep in mind that random people can do it in a few minutes in the middle of a game, so a designer of all people should at bare minimum be able to make the ruling in the same time frame. It honestly does not take long to quickly skim through the witch major hexes and see that most are 60 feet and assign 60 feet to ice tomb, or that most combat hexes are 1 round per level and assign the duration more appropriately. And the designer should be the person most familiar with the book he designed, so the "i need to spend months reading this book" excuse doesnt fly...
And for the more niche situations that would be harder to answer, they could just mark it as "needs more research" and answer it later, but give the range/duration first since thats quick and simple. Actually they dont even need to do research, they can just make a poll, get the people here to do the research for them, and check back in a week...
And this process should be taking 5 minutes tops, so you dont need to pull a designer off another project to do it, thats like the duration of a coffee break.
Now obviously this assumes the process is designed to be efficient, if company policy mandates that you need to get 3 designers in a 2 hour meeting with someone from management overseeing and someone has to prepare and present a 5 page proposal outlining the benefits of issueing an errata and get buy in from accounting...then yea obviously it's going to take months to get a one line FAQ up on the website...
The number of different views I've seen posted about this issue suggests to me that its more complicated than you portray it here. There isnt a single Designer, but a team (no matter who came up with it first). Maybe Sean and Stephen think it should last ten minutes per level and Jason thinks it should last until it melts naturally. Paizo have a consensus based approach to rules design and errata (as I understand it) there are strengths to that, but one weakness of consensus design is speed.
As another possibility, they may think the range/duration thing is broader - maybe they think a better approach is to include more in the general hex descriptions (ie "unless otherwise stated, all hexes have a range of..."). If they're going down that route, it's going to take longer to look at all the hexes without a range and decide on what the default range should be.
Furthermore, remember that paizo don't want to obviate the need for DM adjudication. They don't want to establish a precedent of answering lots of niggly corner cases (it wouldn't surprise me if the "what about fire elementals" is marked as not needing a FAQ, for example). That's part of the reason I suggested breaking up the FAQs into different posts.
FAQs should be a core part of the business...its support for a product. You dont just sell something and say "yea we have your money now, run along". Imagine if microsoft never issued patches for windows because "we would have to pay developers to make the patches! that costs money!".I think software and book publishing are two different industries with different accepted practises. Book publishers don't generally publish errata/clarifications do they?
I don't think your "run along" quotation is a fair summation of the FAQ post I quoted. They have an active FAQ program - they just prioritise differently than you'd like them to.
It's arguable whether it should be more heavily skewed to "popular demand" (I personally don't think so, but I can see the merits) however, it's not fair to say they don't address questions or produce FAQs regularly.
Book publishers don't generally publish multi-hundred page game books with interworking and interconnected moving parts. The software example is apropos. That said Microsoft is a terrible example, particularly in their ancillary office products. Publisher has issues that have been getting carried over for 5 versions...
So that said, PAIZO, stop being Microsoft! Release updates for your product! This is borked! Cannot parse! Don't BSOD any more Witch builds! Help us Steven, Jason, and Sean!
Maybe there is something in the water up there in Redmond.
Book publishers don't generally publish multi-hundred page game books with interworking and interconnected moving parts.FAQs should be a core part of the business...its support for a product. You dont just sell something and say "yea we have your money now, run along". Imagine if microsoft never issued patches for windows because "we would have to pay developers to make the patches! that costs money!".I think software and book publishing are two different industries with different accepted practises. Book publishers don't generally publish errata/clarifications do they?
I don't think your "run along" quotation is a fair summation of the FAQ post I quoted. They have an active FAQ program - they just prioritise differently than you'd like them to.
It's arguable whether it should be more heavily skewed to "popular demand" (I personally don't think so, but I can see the merits) however, it's not fair to say they don't address questions or produce FAQs regularly.
I dont know - I have a bunch of legal and accounting books which pretty much fit that bill. I dont get errata, updates or anything - I have to buy a second/third/..../twelfth edition every year or so.
Are there RPG companies who do have a more rapid FAQ process than paizo? I must admit it seems pretty good to me - who's doing it better?
In all fairness publishers of law books probably aren't in an authoritative position (ie, the stuff they publish very well may be borked but they are hardly in a position to do anything about it) to make errata. Text book companies "errata" stuff all the time just to make you buy it.
I know that Rite has been superfast about helping me with issues of ambiguity in their products, whether that gets incorporated into errata I really don't know. On that point I don't think question really cares if he gets errata so much as he would like official answers to his inquiries.
On that point I don't think question really cares if he gets errata so much as he would like official answers to his inquiries.
Yeah, I certainly dont begrudge anyone asking for clarification (particularly where some essential thing like range/duration is omitted). Whether that's just a designer post or a genuine FAQ response - it would still be valuable.
My main point is that the FAQ process is there and is actively addressed by Paizo. They've spelt out the best way to utilise it and explained that their focus is not necessarily on answering those posts with lots of FAQs (although that's one factor which will push something to the top of the list). As such, something being outstanding for a long time doesnt imply that there's nothing happening or that Paizo dont care or are saying "run along, we've got your money". All it means is that they've prioritised other things higher than this one.
I also think that another point bearing in mind is that Paizo dont want to create a game with no DM judgement. That's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but people looking for an absolutely watertight ruleset with no ambiguity are (it seems to me) necessarily going to be disappointed. May as well know that going in, rather than asking for or expecting something that's not going to be delivered.
How abilities work is not (or should not be) a GM judgment. Can you imagine if every ability required GM adjudication as to how it worked? There would be no point in having a rule set in the first place. I don't think anything is asking for watertight mostly because that's impossible. However, if Paizo is going to have a playtest, have a problem presented during said playtest and then continually have that problem brought up for over 3 years, it does call into question either their ability to address problems or the point of having playtests. One or the other. I'm not saying everything brought up in playtest must be fixed prior to release, that may be impossible, impractical and stuff can slip through. But this is kind of well past the stage where those kind of reasons are still valid.
Are there RPG companies who do have a more rapid FAQ process than paizo? I must admit it seems pretty good to me - who's doing it better?
Steve Jackson Games (at least until recently).
How abilities work is not (or should not be) a GM judgment.
I can't speak for paizo, obviously, but I am of a very different view. I think they "should" be (in the sense that I prefer it if they rely a lot on dm interpretation).
I'm certainly not arguing with the fact that this ability is in need of clarification. I just don't think that clarification needs to be as broad or all encompassing as question wants it to be.
I also think that people shouldn't post an FAQ question expecting something beyond what paizo say they'll do. Better to address the FAQ process in isolation, I'd think, rather than mix discussion about "how complete should the rules be" in with discussion about "how does ice tomb work".
Sure if the design team cant get a agreement, then they should resort to the tiebreaker system. I do hope they have one there...more accurately there needs to be one or paizo doesnt release any products because the designers cant decide which products to releaes, so everyone sits at the table and looks at each other. That obviously does not happen, because someone makes the final decision...
Book publishers generally dont produce errata because there isnt any need to. When was the last time you picked up a textbook, flipped to a page and went "wow this paragraph is missing a key piece of information!"? If a textbook was missing, say, lots of key maths formulaes, then people would be bringing it back to the store, getting a refund and the publisher would be scrambling for a reprint.
The thing is pathfinder is a rules heavy gaming system, so if something like range/duration is missing on a major class ability, then its a significant problem. And its the year 2014, most of the pathfinder material is freely available on internet SRDs, and paizo can issue erratas anytime they want just by copy pasting some text onto the FAQ section of the website. This isnt like the old days where you had to do an expensive reprint to correct a typo.
I don't have much else to say without drilling down into minutiae and I'm wary of derailing your thread in case another one gets locked for going off topic. I think a broader discussion about "what is paizo's FAQ process and what should it be?" would be fruitful at some point.
Hopefully some/all of the FAQs you raised above will be addressed soon.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Steve, I certainly agree with you to a point, but there is a break where if the calls I make as a GM are at the point of authoring game content then why am I paying $30-$50 a pop for rulebooks? I don't want to play in a game where every DM has to make a call on how many d6 of damage my fireball does or at what distance can I fire a bow. I do however like the idea that as a DM I can say that the efreet melts the icy tomb even if he is immobilized by it.
Part of this issue is brought upon Paizo by themselves however. There are so many little nuances which are built into the game that get brought up by DEVs (one in particular) to indicate that anyone should be able to instantly be aware of multiple sections of rules text across 100's of pages and even different books to arrive at the obvious conclusion. This was far more prevalent before the PDT account and even more so before the FAQ system. It was a big part of what got that particular developer such a bad rap on the boards.
Anyway, when DEVs set a precedent of extremely fine detail being the answer to players questions that empowers the player base to demand that level of detail in the entire product line.
On the topic of timing; at some point it must be acknowledged that an issue as been back burnered to the point of being ignored. Suggesting that more than 2 years of FAQ's and 3.5 years of questions (not to mention multiple printings of the book in question) is just "getting around to it" makes you come of as an apologist. I know that you are not. I've been happy to read your posts for the last several years and get that you are just a passionate fan like the rest of us. But, this issue at this time is not a place to stand up and "block" for Paizo, this is the place to let them know there is a problem and it needs fixed before it becomes systemic. As question suggests the biggest breakdowns in this ability can be addressed very quickly and very easily. If Paizo wished to release a more robust set of hex guidelines later I am sure that would be welcome, but lets get a range and duration for this one, and lets not make it sound like that is an unreasonable request.