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Step 1. Pick up a copy of the Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of the Moon, at your friendly local games store. It, another softcover Player Companion, and the contents of the Beginner Box are the only Pathfinder books that you own.
Step 2. Discover the Lunar mystery for Oracles. Decide that it looks neat. However, it’s for a class that your books don’t cover, and it grants a lot of weird spells.
Step 3. Discover the following paragraph right at the start of the book, prominently displayed in legible font right under the table of contents:
This Pathfinder Player Companion refers to several other Pathfinder Roleplaying Game products and uses the following abbreviations. These books are not required to make use of this Player Companion. Readers interested in references to Pathfinder RPG hardcovers can find the complete rules from these books available for free at Paizo.com/prd.
Step 4. Go online and get the rules you need to play your character. Show up at the Pathfinder event your friend told you about, at your local games store, with a Lunar Oracle.
Step 5. Confess that you’d much rather be playing a Kitsune.
Step 6. Find out that Kitsune do in fact exist, and are in fact a legit choice for Pathfinder Society. However, you need to have a “boon,” which is essentially a signed permission slip from your parents, I mean the Venture-Captains, saying you’re allowed to play a fox instead of a crow. The only ways to get these are to go to a convention in another state, which you wouldn’t be able to afford unless you sold your own body parts, or to go to a certain thread on the Paizo forums to trade a different boon for the Kitsune one.
Step 7. Remember that you have an honest-to-Daikitsu signed “get out of death free” boon because you participated in the Beginner Box Bash a few years ago.
Step 8. Offer it up for trade, and get a response surprisingly quick.
Step 9. Receive, via US mail, a sheet of paper that looks suspiciously like a photocopy or computer printout, which contains the following sentence:
This Chronicle sheet must be the first Chronicle sheet for the given character, and you must bring a copy of one of the above-listed rulesbooks (the Advanced Race Guide or the Dragon Empires Gazetteer) to all sessions in which you play this character as if access to this race selection were granted by the Additional Resources list.
Step 10. Ask yourself, “WTF is the Additional Resources list?”
Step 11. Oh.
Step 12. Read the following sentence from that link:
In order to utilize content from an Additional Resource, a player must have a physical copy of the Additional Resource in question, a name-watermarked Paizo PDF of it, or a printout of the relevant pages from it, as well as a copy of the current version of the Additional Resources list.
Step 13. Track down all the books that you need to duplicate the content relevant to your character from the Pathfinder Reference Document, which is an official resource published by Paizo itself and explicitly endorsed by a prominent paragraph on page 1 of Blood of the Moon, which says that those books are not required to use it.
Breakdown of expenses:
- Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook. Rules for creating and playing a character. Not required; your GM is assumed to own a copy.
- Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary. Game stats for the animal companion one of your revelations grants, and for creatures that your spells can summon. Not required; your GM is assumed to own a copy.
- Advanced Player’s Guide. Game stats for playing an Oracle, and for three of the spells in the Lunar mystery’s list. $40 for a new hardcover, $30 non-mint, $10 for PDF.
- Advanced Race Guide. Game stats for playing a Kitsune, along with the awesome Magical Tail feat. $40 for a new hardcover, $30 non-mint, $10 for PDF.
- Ultimate Magic. Game stats for four of the spells on the Lunar mystery’s list, the first of which you obtain at level 2 after three sessions of play. $40 for a new hardcover, $30 non-mint, $10 for PDF.
- Ultimate Combat. Game stats for one of the spells on the Lunar mystery’s list. $40 for a new hardcover, $30 non-mint, $10 for PDF.
Step 14. Realize that you have to pay a minimum of $40 to play a character you like, using rules that you bought and paid for and contained a large notice from Paizo itself telling you where to fill in the blanks. These PDFs would contain a prominent watermark with your email address, which is not information you want to disclose to men that you're casually acquainted with. Adding insult to injury, the PDFs themselves would be basically worthless for tableside reference, because it’d take much longer to look up rules text in them compared to in the PRD, on your phone. Even though that is the stated reason why you have to bring them on the Additional Resources page:
... we cannot assume that every Game Master will have the products listed below. As such, it's up to players to bring these items in order to familiarize their Game Masters with the rules.
Step 15. Realize that if your Kitsune character ever dies, you’re going to have to go back and repeat the whole process of finding another boon, if you want those $40 worth of PDFs that you don’t want to buy to do you any good.
Step 16. Go on the Paizo.com messageboards, to see if there’s any sign of the PRD being added as a legit “additional resource.”
Step 17. Find a ton of people like (and like-ing) this guy, who condescend to people who asked about it, dictate their own priorities to them, blame Paizo’s mixed messaging on them, ignore the fact that Paizo’s policies burden some players a lot more than others, and in general infantilize and insult them even more than Paizo already does by requiring things like signed permission slips.
Step 18. Give up and play other games instead, using books that you bought at the local games store that welcomes you and treats you like a person, instead of PDFs that you bought online from a company that doesn’t.
This is only a partly fictionalized account. I already knew about Kitsune and the Additional Resources list going in. What I didn’t know was that there’s a boon trading thread (i.e. that I had any hope of playing a Kitsune ever), and that newer Pathfinder Player Companions were explicitly telling people to go to the PRD to fill in the blanks, instead of burying the reference in legal text like they used to. So I tried to imagine what it would be like, for a newb to go into it this way.
Also, I’m still playing in Pathfinder Society, and buying Pathfinder Player Companions that I think are cool and want to use for my character (like the Animal Archive,) instead of selling my Pathfinder stuff on eBay.
Why?
Because my PFS GM lets me use the PRD.
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Step 10. Ask yourself, “WTF is the Additional Resources list?”Step 11. Oh.
Step 10 should be Step 1.
Ideally, when someone is introducing someone else to PFS, the first thing they do is tell the person to download and read the Guide to Organized Play. It contains the relevant text on page 5:
In order to utilize content from an Additional Resource, a player must have a physical copy of the Additional Resource in question, a name-watermarked Paizo PDF of it, or a printout of the relevant pages from it, as well as a copy of the current version of the Additional Resources list. You must inform the Game Master that you plan to use Additional Resource material before play begins, so he has a chance to familiarize himself with the new material.
As frustrated as you may be by this, one of the best things you can do is help temper new players' expectations by making them aware of the rules.
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I understand your point, but I disagree with most of what you say.
The idea of boons is to make certain options more rare for the game. Because you do not agree though does not mean you are a majority.
PFS is an engine to sell PF stuff. Look at the folio and shirt rerolls. These are a perfect example of that.
Now to be honest very few DM I have ever encountered hold people to the PFS audit rules. I met two(I play at a lot of cons). As a DM I once told a player they could not use an ability for because they could not find me the rules for it, and to this day I still do not know what they were trying to do. I feel my job as a DM is to move the game along and if i have to review everything I should properly it would take too long. Just like you mention in your posts. I also have NEVER seen a paizo staff member critize ANYONE for failing to enforce these rules.
PFS is generallly like gold, you keep your own score.
I would agree that the pazio boards have condesending people on them, but find me a place on the internet that does not. I agree the staff of Paizo does get too defensive of their company at times(i am too lazy to find quotes, but you can look through my posts to see examples of things i commented on). But staff has personally messaged me and were amazing when time has settled. They are gettign better. Other people have commented and the staff have even told me directly they are working on it. I see the difference as well.
I buy the books and stuff for a few reasons. One I appreciate having them, just like a collection for other people. Two I get lotsa free stuff from them. I have been given free scenarios and modules, rule books, novels, and more. Three yuo vote with your dollars. We vote for PFS by spending money on them. There was somethings a few months ago that upset and I slowed my spending, but I noticed the changes inthe paragraph above and starte dbuying again.
Thirdly, people can setup cons anywhere. You can setup a con. There are plenty of people that will help you with it. Heck someone wrote a thread on it.
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Step 3. Discover the following paragraph right at the start of the book, prominently displayed in legible font right under the table of contents:
This Pathfinder Player Companion refers to several other Pathfinder Roleplaying Game products and uses the following abbreviations. These books are not required to make use of this Player Companion. Readers interested in references to Pathfinder RPG hardcovers can find the complete rules from these books available for free at Paizo.com/prd.
That text there is for people who are using the book for their home games. Many people play the Pathfinder RPG that are not playing Pathfinder Society Organized Play.
Pathfinder Society Organized Play, as a shared campaign, is a tool for Paizo to advertise and market their products. I understand that having to purchase the rules a player needs to play the game can be seen as too restrictive but in the grand scheme of things it is the best thing for the campaign and Paizo.
For players who find Pathfinder Society too restrictive the option to play non-PFS home games is always an option. Pathfinder Society Organized Play is not for everyone.
Also, I’m still playing in Pathfinder Society, and buying Pathfinder Player Companions that I think are cool and want to use for my character (like the Animal Archive,) instead of selling my Pathfinder stuff on eBay.
Why?
Because my PFS GM lets me use the PRD.
Please don't break the Pathfinder Society Rules. It's not fair to everyone who does follow the rules.
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The problem can be summed up in that you want(ed?) to play a niche, niche first character, hoping the regular rules of Pathfinder also apply to Organised Play - disregarding the rules in the PFS guide.
If a newbie tried to do what you're talking about, I'd strongly recommend to slow down so that they don't run into the same issues you're talking about, or if they insist, tell them about what to expect so they can be prepared to go through with it.
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I would hope that at steps 4-6 the established players would ensure that the new player was aware of the situation regarding the Core Assumption/Additional Resources, and advised the new player to read the introductory chapter of the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organised Play, so that expectations were be set correctly early on.
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One small correction: the Core Rulebook is required for all players. (See p. 5 of the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play.)
If you buy the PDF, that bumps your minimum cost to $50.
But you are also free to play a Core-only character. Then your out-of-pocket is a sawbuck. That is less than the price of a movie ticket!
Even at $50, I cannot think of too many hobbies with a lower initial investment. Hiking is about the best I could come up with, but even that requires a good pair of shoes.
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...One small correction: the Core Rulebook is required for all players. (See p. 5 of the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play.)
Further small correction. The only books that are required are the ones that your current GM asks you to present when there is a question. In practice, this is generally none, including the crb. (At east in my experience, it's never happened with the single exception of brand new books that not a lot have had the chance to read through yet, and even that is rare.)
Personally, and no offense to the fury's out there, but I am glad the Kitsune are not generally legal. They are just one of those races that smacks of "special rare snowflake character". I've had two players with the boon in my games, and both stated beforehand out of character something to the effect of "Hey, I'm a Kitsune, but your not allowed to know that in character unless I tell you (or you can beat my disguise, which I should get all sorts of free bonuses and stuff to, just because)."
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I just don't think it's unreasonable, personally, for Paizo to require that you own their materials to participate in their organized play program. If you want to play that Kitsune Lunar Oracle without owning all the books, your GM can run a home game for you. At the end of the day, Paizo is a company, and they need to make money. If they gave away everything they write for free, they wouldn't make money, simple as that.
Also, I’m still playing in Pathfinder Society, and buying Pathfinder Player Companions that I think are cool and want to use for my character (like the Animal Archive,) instead of selling my Pathfinder stuff on eBay.Why?
Because my PFS GM lets me use the PRD.
Please, please don't do this. Things like this will eventually ruin the program for everyone, because Paizo will begin losing money, and they'll have to stop the PFS program because they can't afford to support it anymore. Your GM should not be running PFS-official games for you if you aren't following the rules of the program. It's great that you're buying Player Companions to support the company, but you should still be following the rules for the benefit of the rest of us.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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I appreciate and sympathise with your predicament.
But PFS is *NOT* Pathfinder. It is a small subset of Pathfinder, in which only certain options are allowed.
To a certain extent, PFS is Paizo's "Home Game" (They just share it with a lot more GMs than most home games.) Paizo writes the books for home GMs. Then after they are written and published PFS goes through them and decides which part of the books they will use.
Also, remember that a lot of PFS games are played where there may be little or no internet access, and GMs may not have the option to look up the PRD. (For example, one of the games at our local store is played at a table with no electric outlets near by. By the end of the night, often the GM's laptop is out of power.)