Why is consistency when discussing the rules worthy of consideration even in principle? My entire point is that this discussion IS irrelevant, precisely because there is no value in your (or anyone else's) opinion on the rules beyond the limits of your home game. If you want to rail against the players in your game for "playing wrong", that's your business, but you seem to be trying to establish your opinions as "facts" in what I interpret as an attempt to "prove" players who disagree with you are "wrong". I don't know why this is such an important project to you - I can guess, but it doesn't really matter, because in any case I think the superior answer is not to try to establish your subjective opinion as some sort of "truth", but rather just admit to yourself that you shouldn't play with people who do things that make you unhappy.Lots and lots of stuff in reply to Darksol the PainbringerPlease listen for a moment. This thread already managed to survive one great purge without getting locked. Please don't try to drag it into the mud because it doesn't need to be locked.
Nobody is saying you can't interpret the rules differently than anyone else. The problem is, they are THE RULES. For the sake of consistency when discussing rules, THE RULES must be used. Otherwise any discussion becomes irrelevant.
*sigh*
Why is consistency worthy of consideration? Let me just direct you here.
The game has a rule book. The rule book contains rules that are to be used to play the game. The rule book, in essence, contains all of the facts used to run the game. Everything printed in the rule book is not my opinion, heck I don't even agree with sizable portions of it. But if someone says "I have power attack, that means I take a -1 to hit and my bonus to damage goes up as I level" that is wrong according to the totally objective rule book. The rules are THE RULES, and as such are the FACTS of the Pathfinder game. If you want to think of the entire rule book as a collection of developer's opinions on how a tabletop RPG should work, well bully for you.
Let's say you're running a game and you run into this scenario:
Player: I want to do action X.
GM (you): Well action X is covered by the rules to work like X.
Player: I don't agree, I think it should work like Y.
GM: I'm sorry, but the rules are clearly defined here and it can only work like X.
Player: I still don't agree, the way I read it it can work like X or Y.
GM: Not in this case, my interpretation stands that it only works like X.
Player: But the rules don't say it can't work like Y!
What do you do? As the GM you've made a ruling and the player decides to keep pushing.
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I've heard of PFS, I just don't make the mistake of considering it to be anything other than its own specific set of house rules that I have no interest in playing under, so it's utterly irrelevant to me.I'd say that's more reason to absent yourself from the discussion than it is to attempt a specious invalidation of it.
Why? His lack of interest in playing PFS has no bearing on his ability and right to have an opinion on how the rules work. This is not a discussion about PFS.
If this was the PFS forums, you might have a point. It isn't. It's the general discussion forums about Pathfinder, the game, not PFS, the specific campaign with a specific set of house-rules. If the project here is to establish how the game should be played in PFS, then the discussion should be there, not here. If the discussion is intended to be about the "best" way to play the game in general, then there is nothing at all specious about pointing out that PFS isn't necessarily any kind of guiding principle for the game in general.I've heard of PFS, I just don't make the mistake of considering it to be anything other than its own specific set of house rules that I have no interest in playing under, so it's utterly irrelevant to me.I'd say that's more reason to absent yourself from the discussion than it is to attempt a specious invalidation of it.
So if I may ask, why are you here trying to push that your opinion is right and I am wrong? I mean, if you don't care how others play the game, it's totally irrelevant to how you play as you said, what are you trying to accomplish?
Again, you are trying to prove that "red" is better than "trapezoid". We simply are talking past each other, because you don't realize that I'm coming from a completely different set of assumptions about the game than you do. I'm also not even slightly interested in defending those assumptions (just as I'm not interesting in "disproving" yours), and I don't think I should have to defend my right to have them. Instead, all I'm saying is the fact that people have different assumptions means your attempts to proscribe a general rule based on your assumption that there is one and only one "right" way to play any given rule is a project with no possibility of success.
Why is consistency worthy of consideration? Let me just direct you here.The game has a rule book. The rule book contains rules that are to be used to play the game. The rule book, in essence, contains all of the facts used to run the game. Everything printed in the rule book is not my opinion, heck I don't even agree with sizable portions of it. But if someone says "I have power attack, that means I take a -1 to hit and my bonus to damage goes up as I level" that is wrong...
Your assumption is incorrect, I understand perfectly what you're saying. Please don't assume that I'm an idiot that can't figure out what's going on. The fact is, I almost completely agree that the GM is the source of the rules and not the book.
That being said, there is a rulebook with rules and many (not all by any means) of those rules have one very definitive interpretation. The book doesn't contain house rules, it contains actual rules. Any GM can decide which rules to use, which to change, and which to toss. That doesn't make the printed rules stop being the rules though.
So if I may ask, why are you here trying to push that your opinion is right and I am wrong? I mean, if you don't care how others play the game, it's totally irrelevant to how you play as you said, what are you trying to accomplish?I'm not. You keep reading my insistence that you stop trying to tell me how to play as an attempt to tell you that your playstyle is "wrong". That's not what I'm doing. I have explicitly acknowledged that you are perfectly entitled to play your way. What you are NOT entitled to do is come on a public forum, proclaim that your view is the one true way, and expect people to fall in line. You are NOT entitled to mistake your certainty in your own position for an actual objective fact, and you are not entitled to your belief that I'm trying to convince you of anything other than the self evident fact that your way is not the only "correct" way to play the game.
BTW, I actually am fully entitled to present my opinion as the 100% correct one as you have just spent your posts doing with yours. I am certainly 100% entitled to say anyone who I think is doing it wrong is doing it wrong. If my belief that the rules are the actual rules was an opinion, you might have a point there. Certainly people can throw out their Pathfinder rule books and play any other game they like, but if they decide to play Pathfinder using the Pathfinder rule books then they have to accept that the rules in the book are the rules. A player should expect that all of the rules as they are in the book will be the rules followed regardless of whom they play with. The GMs job is to inform the players before play begins of any rules changes that he plans to institute in his game.
A) I'm not expressing my opinion as 100% correct, I'm expressing my opinion as 100% correct FOR ME, and trying to get you to understand that me taking such a position is not an attack on your play style.
B) You are not entitled to judge anyone else's playstyle. I'm not judging your playstyle. I'm saying I would not want to play with you. There is, in fact, a difference. I don't care how you play the game, because we will never play together. I DO care that you keep acting like you have some right to judge others, and that you keep asserting that I am doing the same thing. Me saying I don't want to play with you is no different than me saying I don't like carrots (which is a true statement). You are acting like anyone who doesn't like carrots is objectively doing it wrong, and that you have a "right" to attempt to "prove" them wrong, when really you should just agree to not eat dinner together.
C) Your belief that the rules are the "actual rules" IS just an opinion, and in my view an illogical one. I don't see how you can acknowledge that the rules are flexible and GMs have the right to change them, and yet still argue from the standpoint that there is still some objective "truth" to the rules. On face that idea is a contradiction to me. Since the rules themselves tell me that they are not absolute and objective, I don't see how I'm "wrong" to value them as a set of useful guideline,s instead of as a set of objective truths.
A) Surprising, but I'll take your word for it.
B) Sure I'm entitled to judge playstyles that I don't agree with. Judging other playstyles is how I make my decision on who I would or would not like to play with. Much as you've judged my playstyle as one you would not want to play with. Since I am perfectly entitled to make judgements on playstyles I don't agree with, I am entitled to present those ideas to the community much as you have just done. Some agree, some don't.
C) OK, you don't agree that the rule book contains rules. Even to the point that you call it an opinion that the rule book contains rules. Fine. However, the rules are objectively the rules which can be subjected to rulings by outside parties thus becoming subjective. The ruling of one GM doesn't make the objective rules stop being the objective rules. If I house rule something the rule books of every other person in the world don't change to include my house rule.
We did go over this, for over 1k posts, and it still comes down to a simple fact. Humans/Half-Orcs/Half-elves do not, within the rules of the game, come stock with a tail.
The bastards book has a section on non-human heritages and inheritable physical features. Wings, hooves ect.
"When humans manifest a trace of non-human blood, the results are never entirely predictable, but any given heritage is most often made apparent by one or two distinctive qualities, either physical or mental." Tails fall well within this.
Also, WOW they took an axe the the begining of this thread!
On the unwritten rule thing... Yeah, that's annoying.
We did go over this, for over 1k posts, and it still comes down to a simple fact. Humans/Half-Orcs/Half-elves do not, within the rules of the game, come stock with a tail.The bastards book has a section on non-human heritages and inheritable physical features. Wings, hooves ect.
"When humans manifest a trace of non-human blood, the results are never entirely predictable, but any given heritage is most often made apparent by one or two distinctive qualities, either physical or mental." Tails fall well within this.
And yet you do not gain hoof attacks either.
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I've heard of PFS, I just don't make the mistake of considering it to be anything other than its own specific set of house rules that I have no interest in playing under, so it's utterly irrelevant to me.I'd say that's more reason to absent yourself from the discussion than it is to attempt a specious invalidation of it.
If this were the PFS board, you'd be right. But it isn't, so you are just raging impotently that someone who disagrees with you is daring to post.
And yet you do not gain hoof attacks either.
We did go over this, for over 1k posts, and it still comes down to a simple fact. Humans/Half-Orcs/Half-elves do not, within the rules of the game, come stock with a tail.The bastards book has a section on non-human heritages and inheritable physical features. Wings, hooves ect.
"When humans manifest a trace of non-human blood, the results are never entirely predictable, but any given heritage is most often made apparent by one or two distinctive qualities, either physical or mental." Tails fall well within this.
Note the quoted section. "Humans/Half-Orcs/Half-elves do not, within the rules of the game, come stock with a tail." I was refuting the quote as untrue. Replace tail with hoof in the tail terror feat and do the math for yourself...
Note the quoted section. "Humans/Half-Orcs/Half-elves do not, within the rules of the game, come stock with a tail." I was refuting the quote as untrue. Replace tail with hoof in the tail terror feat and do the math for yourself...And yet you do not gain hoof attacks either.
We did go over this, for over 1k posts, and it still comes down to a simple fact. Humans/Half-Orcs/Half-elves do not, within the rules of the game, come stock with a tail.The bastards book has a section on non-human heritages and inheritable physical features. Wings, hooves ect.
"When humans manifest a trace of non-human blood, the results are never entirely predictable, but any given heritage is most often made apparent by one or two distinctive qualities, either physical or mental." Tails fall well within this.
And the book you cited says nothing about tails.
Note the quoted section. "Humans/Half-Orcs/Half-elves do not, within the rules of the game, come stock with a tail." I was refuting the quote as untrue. Replace tail with hoof in the tail terror feat and do the math for yourself...And yet you do not gain hoof attacks either.
We did go over this, for over 1k posts, and it still comes down to a simple fact. Humans/Half-Orcs/Half-elves do not, within the rules of the game, come stock with a tail.The bastards book has a section on non-human heritages and inheritable physical features. Wings, hooves ect.
"When humans manifest a trace of non-human blood, the results are never entirely predictable, but any given heritage is most often made apparent by one or two distinctive qualities, either physical or mental." Tails fall well within this.
Furthermore the quote you "cited" is completely taken out of context.
It's found in the section on adding features to humans using Race Points. After the quote, it describes how Bastard blood might manifest physically or mentally. None of the descriptions grant a mechanical effect nor a tail.
