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The distinction between whats in an RPG line so it can get an FAQ and things that aren't in the RPG line so they can't seems a little... weird? Arbitrary? Why does that line exist? Is there a work around? Can we get periodically pondered queries for other items?
It's based on the way the teams are, it would require a massive convocation. Incidentally, the confusion is promulgated by the fact that people call the designers "devs" and so think we're on the development team. In fact, they are two different teams, with different bosses (Jason and Wes, though Erik is the boss of the bosses of both teams). The design team is in charge of the base game rules and the RPG line. The development team is in charge of pretty much everything else. So let's create a hypothetical situation:
Suppose that there's a new non-RPG line book, and in that book, there's a feat that says
Monster Identifier
Prerequisites: Int 13, Knowledge (any) 3 ranks
Benefit: You can use Knowledge to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s CR. For common monsters, such as goblins, the DC of this check equals 5 + the monster’s CR. For particularly rare monsters, such as the tarrasque, the DC of this check equals 15 + the monster’s CR or more. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information.
Special: Without this feat, no matter how high your Knowledge check result, you can never identify a monster
So people ask for a FAQ, since they think that you can identify monsters without this feat normally anyway. OK, but who answers it?
Choice 1: The Development Team since they worked on that book. In this case, the people who worked on the book get to decide what happens in their book. However, they are also implicitly ruling on the game as a whole, which would make the Design Team sad if we disagree.
Choice 2: The Design Team, since they are in charge of the rules of the game and weird adjudications. In this case, the nitty-gritty rules people are working on the issue, but not the team who actually wrote the book. As you might imagine, that's would make the Development Team sad.
Choice 3: Everyone. This is the only case we can really do, since it avoids the pitfalls of the other two choices. It has its own pitfall, though. Getting everyone is super-hard (and the development team is large and has different deadlines; at any given time, it is a general rule that at least one developer or set of developers will be totally swamped).
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Choice 4: Team Deathmatch. Winner takes all!
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Choice 4:
Team Deathmatch. Winner takes all!
Soooo...
Editor-in-Chief: F. Wesley Schneider
Creative Director: James Jacobs
Senior Developer: Rob McCreary
Developer: John Compton
Developer: Adam Daigle
Developer: Mark Moreland
Developer: Owen KC Stephens
Assistant Developer: Crystal Frasier
Assistant Developer: Linda Zayas-Palmer
Assistant Develop: Amanda Hamon-Kunz
vs.
Lead Designer: Jason Bulmahn
Designer: Logan Bonner
Designer: Stephen Radney-MacFarland
Designer: Mark Seifter
We're hugely outnumbered. Our only chance would be to design the deathmatch game ourselves in a way that biased toward us.
Hah! You're the designers! You can do it!
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I was thinking that Jason could use the fact that he's nearly size category Large to make a reach build, but then I remembered that as PDT members, we're supposed to hate martial characters, so I guess we'll all play arcanists?
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Jason is half-red dragon, half-minotaur and wields the Gauntlet. I think you're fine.
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We're hugely outnumbered. Our only chance would be to design the deathmatch game ourselves in a way that biased toward us.
So it's a plucky group of four reluctant heroes fighting a superior number of foes? I know who I'm betting on. Is there a conservation of ninjutsu-rule for designers and developers?
I was thinking that Jason could use the fact that he's nearly size category Large to make a reach build, but then I remembered that as PDT members, we're supposed to hate martial characters, so I guess we'll all play arcanists?
Jason should clearly be a spiked armor specialist. After seeing Stephen swing the gauntlet at Jason's moment of weakness there is no doubt that he is an anti-paladin at heart. You strike me as a summoner specialist for the sheer rules-savvy and mathmancy needed to play that role without grinding the game to a complete stop. Logan... Logan is trickier, I don't really have a feel for him. Don't see him much on the boards. My God, Logan must be a ninja!
YUS. THIS MUST NOW HAPPEN.
My and Kudaku's posts were made at the exact same second and they switch every time I refresh the page. Nice.
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My and Kudaku's posts were made at the exact same second and they switch every time I refresh the page. Nice.
Same here! I think we crossed the streams. O.o
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YUS. THIS MUST NOW HAPPEN.
I've been campaigning for a socker bopper death match battle royale for a while now.
My and Kudaku's posts were made at the exact same second and they switch every time I refresh the page. Nice.Same here! I think we crossed the streams. O.o
It's fine. My post works, regardless of who's it's under. This way it creates an interesting "random ending" effect ala the movie Clue in theaters. :D
I was thinking that Jason could use the fact that he's nearly size category Large to make a reach build, but then I remembered that as PDT members, we're supposed to hate martial characters, so I guess we'll all play arcanists?
What about a reach based Strength!Magus?
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Hi Mark! Been grappling with the Unchained Monk this afternoon. One thing I noticed is that Pummeling Style doesn't play nice with the Unchained Monk (since it's its own full-round action, not a flurry of blows, so you wouldn't get Style Strikes, which are key to the Unchained Monk). I understand Pummeling Style is up for erratta, wondering if that aspect might be addressed. Which isn't really a question as much as it's a, "just in case this wasn't on your radar," I guess.
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Been grappling with the Unchained Monk this afternoon.
D'ohohohohohoh~! I see what you did there!
Since you joined the team, did they tell you how Aroden died? You don't have to tell us how, just whether you now know or not (I suspect they haven't actually decided an official answer and are holding the whole "we'll never tell" card to foster interest in the history of the world).
I believe James Jacobs has already said they haven't decided it and probably never will.
Even though it would make a great idea for a Mythic game done right. A murder mystery, centuries old. Only Mythic Sherlock Holmes can solve it!
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Contributor
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I believe James Jacobs has already said they haven't decided it and probably never will.
Even though it would make a great idea for a Mythic game done right. A murder mystery, centuries old. Only Mythic Sherlock Holmes can solve it!
Aaand... I might have just figured out where my Crimson Throne game goes after Book 6. Thanks!
Mr. Seifter:
Are there any subsystems in Unchained that you're particularly proud of (or impressed by, for others' work)?
Any that you're going to implement in all (or nearly all) of your future campaigns?
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I believe James Jacobs has already said they haven't decided it and probably never will.
Even though it would make a great idea for a Mythic game done right. A murder mystery, centuries old. Only Mythic Sherlock Holmes can solve it!
Slight correction - how Aroden's death happened WAS decided, and the secret's only been shared with 10 or so people. I think Erik Mona, James Sutter, F. Wesley Schneider, and Sean K. Reynolds are on the list of folks who know (besides James Jacobs, obviously).
And a question for Mark - have you gotten to officially stat up any CR 20+ critters yet?
Slight correction - how Aroden's death happened WAS decided, and the secret's only been shared with 10 or so people. I think Erik Mona, James Sutter, F. Wesley Schneider, and Sean K. Reynolds are on the list of folks who know (besides James Jacobs, obviouslyI believe James Jacobs has already said they haven't decided it and probably never will.
Even though it would make a great idea for a Mythic game done right. A murder mystery, centuries old. Only Mythic Sherlock Holmes can solve it!
Yeah, they SAY that, but I still think they haven't actually decided and they're milking the mystery for interest in the world.
Which is why I asked Mark if they told him since he officially became part of the Paizo team. He seems an honest sort. He's held up to the FAQ promises, for example.
Not that JJ and the others don't seem honest, because they do seem such, but Mark came from the outside, so he gets "one of us" cred.
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I believe James Jacobs has already said they haven't decided it and probably never will.
Even though it would make a great idea for a Mythic game done right. A murder mystery, centuries old. Only Mythic Sherlock Holmes can solve it!
Aaand... I might have just figured out where my Crimson Throne game goes after Book 6. Thanks!
Mr. Seifter:
Are there any subsystems in Unchained that you're particularly proud of (or impressed by, for others' work)?
Any that you're going to implement in all (or nearly all) of your future campaigns?
I think my colleagues did a bang-up job, but in terms of stuff I'm proud of, I'm pretty proud that I managed to get removing, alignment, itemless bonus progression, and dynamic magic item creation into the book (remembering that by the time I arrived, everything had already been ordered and come back from the internal and external freelancers) when they weren't there already. Our group is very likely to use some variant of dynamic magic item creation (we already houserule magic item creation quite a bit, since the default Pathfinder item creation system is nearly as broken as possible for a creation system to be if the group has downtime). I'm also pretty happy with my new disease and poison system. Those are the only sections that weren't already in the outline before.
I believe James Jacobs has already said they haven't decided it and probably never will.
Even though it would make a great idea for a Mythic game done right. A murder mystery, centuries old. Only Mythic Sherlock Holmes can solve it!
Slight correction - how Aroden's death happened WAS decided, and the secret's only been shared with 10 or so people. I think Erik Mona, James Sutter, F. Wesley Schneider, and Sean K. Reynolds are on the list of folks who know (besides James Jacobs, obviously).
And a question for Mark - have you gotten to officially stat up any CR 20+ critters yet?
I've gotten to unleash some of my fiendish ideas for monsters, including a few 20+, but you guys won't see them for a while!
Slight correction - how Aroden's death happened WAS decided, and the secret's only been shared with 10 or so people. I think Erik Mona, James Sutter, F. Wesley Schneider, and Sean K. Reynolds are on the list of folks who know (besides James Jacobs, obviouslyI believe James Jacobs has already said they haven't decided it and probably never will.
Even though it would make a great idea for a Mythic game done right. A murder mystery, centuries old. Only Mythic Sherlock Holmes can solve it!
Yeah, they SAY that, but I still think they haven't actually decided and they're milking the mystery for interest in the world.
Which is why I asked Mark if they told him since he officially became part of the Paizo team. He seems an honest sort. He's held up to the FAQ promises, for example.
Not that JJ and the others don't seem honest, because they do seem such, but Mark came from the outside, so he gets "one of us" cred.
Zhangar is correct about a few people knowing, as far as I know; which is to say, some other members of the company have told me that they are among the ones who know the answer, but I don't know (the designers don't work in Golarion as much, so it makes sense for us not to be the ones who know). It seems logical that they need to have an idea of what the answer is so that they can keep the canon consistent and never publish something that contradicts it, at least.
Our group is very likely to use some variant of dynamic magic item creation (we already houserule magic item creation quite a bit, since the default Pathfinder item creation system is nearly as broken as possible for a creation system to be if the group has downtime). I'm also pretty happy with my new disease and poison system. Those are the only sections that weren't already in the outline before.
Any chance you could elaborate a little on those house rules? Ever since we started using the downtime and retraining rules, crafting feats have been causing problems. We've experimented with a few different solutions, but we haven't really found anything we're happy with yet.
Our group is very likely to use some variant of dynamic magic item creation (we already houserule magic item creation quite a bit, since the default Pathfinder item creation system is nearly as broken as possible for a creation system to be if the group has downtime). I'm also pretty happy with my new disease and poison system. Those are the only sections that weren't already in the outline before.Any chance you could elaborate a little on those house rules? Ever since we started using the downtime and retraining rules, crafting feats have been causing problems. We've experimented with a few different solutions, but we haven't really found anything we're happy with yet.
We leveraged our innate risk averseness as a group to put in a risk of failure in order to try to convince ourselves not to spend all our money on crafting. It essentially puts a floor on the failure chance of the craft check that mathematically equates in gp to the former XP cost from 3.0 and 3.5 (which was dropped in Pathfinder and replaced by no mitigating factor whatsoever) in the same way as wish went from 5,000 xp to 25,000 gp. Also, a Nat 1 is always cursed, since we wanted a better explanation for how cursed items came to be (nobody's going to fail it by 5 or more).
in my Reign of Winter campaign I let a group of gremlins cause a magic item to both be cursed and awakened (as a GM i figured an intelligent item that was also cursed would be far more fun for everyone than either just an intelligent item or just a cursed item) - the item in question is a handy haversack that now has an insatiable appetite for new items - and some abilities to sense items, identify them etc (though it probably won't share that information unless it is placated and in a good mood).
I never played 3.0/3.5 so how exactly does your floor on the failure chance work? For most crafting I haven't actually seen much risk of failure - my crafting characters have tended to focus on Spellcraft and typically only try to craft things they are pretty certain to succeed on crafting.
Yep, there's basically 0 risk of failure by default; with no other mitigator, that's exactly the problem.
other than the Crafter PC(s) spending feats on craft instead of other things (and yes a few classes get Scribe Scroll or Brew Potion as free bonus feats - in my home games I typically give people the option to take the PFS alternatives to those if they want) and the costs of the items crafted (which admittedly is less than buying the items - if the items were even available for sale anywhere.
Sorry, in my head, I was not including the cost of the item crafted in the gain. I meant the extra money generated; the difference in cost. So a group with full downtime can double all liquid assets, substantially bypassing the WBL expectations.
Hey Mark!
Just wanted to ask you about something that I'm kind of surprised that the Unchained Summoner didn't clarify. When an eidolon is given an item, does he drop it when it is unsummoned or does it stay in his possession? Or is this one of those things that we need to push up the FAQ stack in order to find out?
Personally, I hope that the items stay with the eidolon because it would be a huge hassle to have to have it re-equip a half dozen things each time it was summoned!
indeed - as a GM I find I have to adjust accordingly (when running an adventure path this isn't too hard sometimes as depending on player choices they may be fairly low on WBL - and if they overcorrect I can adjust (at least in the mid-levels) the difficulty of encounters (and their frequency).
I think PFS is actually somewhat of problem here - it is easy to get used to as a player being able to, within only a few restrictions, having nearly any items you want w/o many tradeoffs (limited in wealth to spend but not in time it takes to get the items or their availability)
In a home game I think the balancing act can be harder - between cool things that NPC's use and the risk of those items getting into the hands of the party. Crafting allows for a degree of PFS's flexibility - albeit with the additional constraints of only for those types of items that the crafter(s) in the party have taken the appropriate feats for (here wondrous items especially if custom items are allowed is far stronger than say Craft Ring or Staff etc. ).
Adding a new character either to replace a dead one or to replace a player who has to leave really shows the challenge of tracking WBL
(it is also somewhat unfortunate that making an item RP flavorful - like my cursed intelligent handy haversack technically also raises WBL by a great deal)
Yeah, intelligent items just cost way too much. I would tend to handwave a lot of the cost beyond the activated abilities that the item activates with its own actions.
We leveraged our innate risk averseness as a group to put in a risk of failure in order to try to convince ourselves not to spend all our money on crafting. It essentially puts a floor on the failure chance of the craft check that mathematically equates in gp to the former XP cost from 3.0 and 3.5 (which was dropped in Pathfinder and replaced by no mitigating factor whatsoever) in the same way as wish went from 5,000 xp to 25,000 gp. Also, a Nat 1 is always cursed, since we wanted a better explanation for how cursed items came to be (nobody's going to fail it by 5 or more).Our group is very likely to use some variant of dynamic magic item creation (we already houserule magic item creation quite a bit, since the default Pathfinder item creation system is nearly as broken as possible for a creation system to be if the group has downtime). I'm also pretty happy with my new disease and poison system. Those are the only sections that weren't already in the outline before.Any chance you could elaborate a little on those house rules? Ever since we started using the downtime and retraining rules, crafting feats have been causing problems. We've experimented with a few different solutions, but we haven't really found anything we're happy with yet.
Hm... The ratio between gold and XP in 3.5 was 25 to 1. So the failure chance would be about 4%? Do you roll a D100 to check if the item fails or is cursed? I'd love to hear more details if you have the time to spare. :)
Hm... The ratio between gold and XP in 3.5 was 25 to 1. So the failure chance would be about 4%? Do you roll a D100 to check if the item fails or is cursed? I'd love to hear more details if you have the time to spare. :)We leveraged our innate risk averseness as a group to put in a risk of failure in order to try to convince ourselves not to spend all our money on crafting. It essentially puts a floor on the failure chance of the craft check that mathematically equates in gp to the former XP cost from 3.0 and 3.5 (which was dropped in Pathfinder and replaced by no mitigating factor whatsoever) in the same way as wish went from 5,000 xp to 25,000 gp. Also, a Nat 1 is always cursed, since we wanted a better explanation for how cursed items came to be (nobody's going to fail it by 5 or more).Our group is very likely to use some variant of dynamic magic item creation (we already houserule magic item creation quite a bit, since the default Pathfinder item creation system is nearly as broken as possible for a creation system to be if the group has downtime). I'm also pretty happy with my new disease and poison system. Those are the only sections that weren't already in the outline before.Any chance you could elaborate a little on those house rules? Ever since we started using the downtime and retraining rules, crafting feats have been causing problems. We've experimented with a few different solutions, but we haven't really found anything we're happy with yet.
Actually the gold to XP ratio was 5 gold to 1 XP (5,000 XP cost became 25,000 gp cost). Since the XP cost was 1/25, that leads to a gp cost of roughly 1/5. One could simply add that on (just say things cost 70% instead of 50%), but the failure rate adds more of a psychological disincentive, which as a group we liked.
Okay, I see now. Thanks! :)
Is there any major reason why Ghoul Fever wasn't touched by your disease and poison system as an example or was it just page count?
I've got a question regarding the Perception DC to identify a potion. Under the Perception skill it reads that the DC is 15+Caster Level, while under the Identifying Magic Items section it states that the DC is 15+spell level. Which one is correct?
It seems counter-intuitive that a character/NPC with absolutely no magical training would have an easier time identifying a potion than someone who, bolstered by magic, would have using the Spellcraft skill to identify it.
I know, as a general rule, text trumps table and if this is the case then I hope that in the not too distant future we can get the Perception skill changed to reflect this. Otherwise you have two different possible DC's from the same sourcebook (the CRB).
Is there any major reason why Ghoul Fever wasn't touched by your disease and poison system as an example or was it just page count?
Twofold:
1) Not everything from diseases and poisons went in because of pagecount
2) Ghoul fever is not in the disease section of the CRB, which is where I went first for examples.
I've got a question regarding the Perception DC to identify a potion. Under the Perception skill it reads that the DC is 15+Caster Level, while under the Identifying Magic Items section it states that the DC is 15+spell level. Which one is correct?
It seems counter-intuitive that a character/NPC with absolutely no magical training would have an easier time identifying a potion than someone who, bolstered by magic, would have using the Spellcraft skill to identify it.
I know, as a general rule, text trumps table and if this is the case then I hope that in the not too distant future we can get the Perception skill changed to reflect this. Otherwise you have two different possible DC's from the same sourcebook (the CRB).
I am pretty sure it should be 15 + caster level.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Did you know that when different wizards make the same potion, that they taste exactly the same?
But only if the wizards are of equal experience and power. Otherwise, the more powerful wizard's potion will taste more bland and generic, making it harder to tell what it is.
I guess this means that there's a certain flavor to each spell, but then a separate (and stronger) flavor to the essence of magical power itself. The more magical power in your potion, the stronger the magic-taste, which overpowers the taste of the individual spell. So with a powerful enough potion, you mostly just taste MAGIIIIC!!! and have to have a pretty discerning palate in order to detect anything else.
Are we going to be blessed with a second FAQ this week, today?
Are we going to be blessed with a second FAQ this week, today?
I sure hope (and expect) so.
Shall we set up tables and take bets on who makes it in this week?
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Neat.
Even when I don't like the content I always have fun with the suspense of "What will it be?".
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Neat.
Even when I don't like the content I always have fun with the suspense of "What will it be?".
I actually do too. I almost always don't know the answer to the questions I pose about which FAQ will make it myself.