Now it sounds almost entirely contingent on the availability of Magic Guild rules from Inner Sea Magic (Esoteric/Eclectic training) -- or, I suppose, house rules as always.
Still possible, but it's a shame that it's pretty much defunct using just core rules.
Method E: Dual standard leveling.
Lost Spell Progression: 3/3, 3/4 or 4/4
The only route prior to the new SLA ruling is now our worst option, placing us at least 1 ½ spell levels behind every other caster on the block, and limiting us to 2nd level spells until level 8 at the earliest. This method is to be avoided at all costs, and will not be covered further in the guide.
Well, after the new FAQ, if Mystic Theurge is going to be used at all, this is going to have to be covered.
My god.. the FAQs are ruining many builds now. What a shame
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Well that FAQ was certainly surprising. It's been a good ride, but I'm probably not going to go back and correct the guide to account for it. At the very least not for a while. Having a years worth of writing pulled out from under my feet is dissuading me from working on it any more at the time being. I may just put a note at the top detailing what happened and leave it as is. There's still a lot of useful information in there, although everything relating to early entry is now suddenly useless. This is quite disappointing.
I was previously debating starting another guide, such as one for Hunters, Brawlers, or another large tome dedicated to natural attacking characters after I finished moving and posting the sample builds. Now I'm not sure if I should hop back on that horse yet or not. I'm doing my best not to be reactionary or coarse, but this FAQ doesn't make much sense to me, I've lost a lot to it, and motivation seems to be in small amounts today.
What do ya'll suppose should be the next course of action here?
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First off let me say how much I enjoyed reading your MT guide. I had planned to do one in PFS (not now) but may still do one in a home game.
I urge you to leave the guide up, just with a disclaimer explaining what happened. Even without early entry some people did play MTs, and will continue to do so.
Your guide is one of the best written out there and frankly is a joy to read.
I hope you go ahead and write another as I personally love the style and presentation.
As for what to do next? I would love to see some of the prestige classes that have no help get some. the guides would be smaller, and would fill a niche that currently is empty.
Again, thank you.
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Well that FAQ was certainly surprising. It's been a good ride, but I'm probably not going to go back and correct the guide to account for it. At the very least not for a while. Having a years worth of writing pulled out from under my feet is dissuading me from working on it any more at the time being. I may just put a note at the top detailing what happened and leave it as is. There's still a lot of useful information in there, although everything relating to early entry is now suddenly useless. This is quite disappointing.
{. . .}
What do ya'll suppose should be the next course of action here?
I would say mostly leave it as it is (except post any corrections that you had ready to go), but put a disclaimer at the top as you said, and then go to the part that lists entry methods A - E and annotate that part (which isn't all that long).
If they were going to do this, which hoses something that Mystic Theurge and Arcane Trickster (and to a lesser extent Eldritch Knight(*)), and probably a couple of other prestige classes of early publication dates needed to be usable, they should have fixed those prestige classes at the same time.
EDIT: Forgot the footnote:
(*)Eldritch Knight will still be pretty good in really high level campaigns, but is hosed for campaigns that never get beyond mid levels, including PFS.
First off let me say how much I enjoyed reading your MT guide. I had planned to do one in PFS (not now) but may still do one in a home game.
I urge you to leave the guide up, just with a disclaimer explaining what happened. Even without early entry some people did play MTs, and will continue to do so.
Your guide is one of the best written out there and frankly is a joy to read.
I hope you go ahead and write another as I personally love the style and presentation.
As for what to do next? I would love to see some of the prestige classes that have no help get some. the guides would be smaller, and would fill a niche that currently is empty.
Again, thank you.
Thanks for the kind words. I don't intend to pull the guide down, but neither do I plan on expanding it further with additional content.
What prestige classes are you thinking of in particular? I've been eying a few ideas for guides, and even started writing a guide to planar binding. However, I decided that wasn't something that needed publishing after I found my second or third infinite gold hole in that spell. That would probably be at least 50 or 60 pages if it were to be anywhere near completion, anyway.
A few local players have suggested that my next project be guides to the Hunter, Brawler, or Slayer, as there aren't guides to the Hunter or Slayer yet, and the Brawler's martial versatility is worth several articles of it's own.
I had also debated writing a guide to natural attackers, which could easily end up being quite large. This is another one that local players have asked about as I've played several of these and they typically end up being both bizarre in build, and oddly capable. There are a lot of odd spots in the rules here that need to be spelled out plainly in one location, which would make a singular guide quite useful for anyone pursuing that idea. I stumbled on them sort of on accident, when attempting to build a character who took no more than 2 levels in any one class, from 1 to 20. I've been playing with the ideas a lot since then, and they have gotten better and better over time. I worry about writing this guide, though. As many of the characters that would come out of it end up quite powerful, some of them overshadowing standard builds quite quickly.
I would say mostly leave it as it is (except post any corrections that you had ready to go), but put a disclaimer at the top as you said, and then go to the part that lists entry methods A - E and annotate that part (which isn't all that long).
Good point, I should post an addendum to that portion as well. I'll add that when I update the introduction to mention the new FAQ.
I would love to see hunter or slayer guide. Hunter one more. as there is none atm. So if you are planning to return to guide writing my vote goes to the Hunter.
Keep up the good work!
Not to downplay your feelings on the subject (because writing a guide does require quite a bit of work and personal investment) but to play devil's advocate... Building a guide factoring heavily on a FAQ that stated it was a deviation from what the rules intended and that it would be monitored, you can't be toooooo upset. It's not like they completely reversed their stance, they said we're going to let it slide and see how it goes, this isn't what we intended.
That being said, your guide is far from invalidated. The information is good information. It helps those looking at the PrC and educates them on the subject. Exactly what a guide should do. At worst it invalidates a tiny portion of it and has been mentioned, adding a little forewarning at the start indicating some of the information was outdated/no longer valid due to a change of the FAQ that was in review at the time is all that is required.
It sucks because you were excited about it and it doesn't work that way officially. That I can wholly understand. But don't let it keep you from writing more if you enjoy the subject matter. Basically, don't let it get you down, is the short of it.
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Thats depressing. I mourn early entry mystic theurge. To all those who had a chance to play one, congratulations, and treasure those memories. Sadly, I never had a chance to, even though I had the entire build crafted out(no time to play).
The whole problem was because paizo opened a window of opportunity, then closed it. Would have been so much better if they never opened the window at all.
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I offer a salute to this guide, in what it did and what (needlessly) happened to it due to the errata. Knowing exactly how much effort goes into a guide, I truly do offer my deepest condolences on this. I can understand if you wouldn't want to make another guide after this, and I wouldn't blame you one bit. If you do, let me know if I can help in any way, since I really enjoy the guide writing community on these boards.
So what, if any, ways are still available to make MT's good - or at least not crippling? If you started with one level of cleric (start with cleric for survivability) then take four levels of sorcerer you should be able to enter Soul Warden - take 4 levels of that - choosing sorcerer for the +1 level of spellcasting class - at 4th level soul warden you get two spells (spells plural) they look to me to be second level spells and - I think - Divine based on the class? I don't think anyone could argue that you are "casting" second level spells. The ability reads, "At 2nd level, a soul warden can expend a use of his channel damage ability to SPONTANEOUSLY CAST cast from a select group of SPELLS. At 4th level and every 2 levels thereafter, a soul warden gains access to a number of additional SPELLS HE CAN CAST..."
At 10th level you should be able to enter MT and only be one level behind a straight arcane caster for arcane spells (and be able to channel like a 5th level cleric).
At 19th, when you've completed MT, you'll be casting like an 18th level sorcerer/11th level cleric.
Not as good as early entry - but better than traditional 3/3 for a wizards or 3/4 for sorcerer with 3 levels of advancement lost.
I would love to see hunter or slayer guide. Hunter one more. as there is none atm. So if you are planning to return to guide writing my vote goes to the Hunter.
Keep up the good work!
As far as I know neither Hunter nor Slayer has a guide out, although comments on the Zenith Games Guide to the Guides indicate that somebody has a Slayer guide in the works.
I was unaware that a slayer guide was in progress, so I'll avoid that for the time being. It's probably best that I do anyway, as I've not truly got very expansive experience with them, only a few games and a moderate amount of theorycrafting. This really just limits it to the big two guides that I was considering writing before the old one exploded. Those being a unified guide to natural attacking and a guide to hunters.
I've heard several chime in here in favor of a guide to hunters, which definitely seems reasonable as they are one of the only base classes without one. It's a wonderful class, and I really enjoy it, but I repeatedly hear people locally bewildered as to why anyone would play the class. Natural attacking also seems to stump a lot of people on the board, and is one of the most interesting ways to play martials for me, so I have been gathering notes for that for some time. I'll likely end up writing them both eventually, but what would you prefer to see first?
The hunter guide would certainly be faster and more straightforward to write, as the natural attacker guide covers class features of a wide array of classes, in the same way that the mystic theurge guide did. However both would probably delve into my typical level of detail, although perhaps not as much as before. I may have gone overboard the first time.
Hunter guide. Kinda wanting to see how this
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/hunter/archetypes/paizo---hu nter-archetypes/primal-companion-hunter works out :)
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+1 for Hunter first, not because I have anything against natural attacks, but to fill half of a gaping hole in guides to the ACG/ACO classes (assuming for the moment that the blog poster is filling in the other half). Keep natural attacks in the queue, though.
Actually, IMO a guide to the martial versatility which Brawlers get is the sort of thing which no one else would do to your level of detail, and for which that level of detail would be useful. Similarly for natural attacks.
Not that I wouldn't read your Hunter guide with interest.
it appears that i'm a bit late to the party:
paizo why would you do this? you have thrown the eldritch knight, arcane archer/trickster, and mystic theurge back into the garbage bin for no reason.
oh well, just another trash ruling to ignore in home games (like crane wing's kneecapping)!
Because a class that makes a race or two the only valid options out of all the possible ones you could play, goes against the design principles they outlined when writing PFRPG, would be my guess.
But hey if you don't like it means it is "trash" maybe you could write a better game, get it published, widely accepted and played in organized play and make everyone happy who plays it?
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it appears that i'm a bit late to the party:
paizo why would you do this? you have thrown the eldritch knight, arcane archer/trickster, and mystic theurge back into the garbage bin for no reason.
oh well, just another trash ruling to ignore in home games (like crane wing's kneecapping)!
This FAQ was defining how spell-like abilities work. It was not a "nerf to prestige classes" by design. A side effect of the previous FAQ was that it essentially turned the prestige classes into base classes. Prestige classes are not and never were optimized options. If you look at the list, they are all themed and have more of a role-playing aspect to them than a power ramp.
I fully support this new FAQ, as it took things down a road, thematically, that made absolutely no sense what so ever. Why would one aasimar be able to become an eldritch knight early on while another could not, when the only difference between the two was that one was "Uncorruptable". The current FAQ doesn't ruin the game. you don't like it at home, houserule the old one. The original one had a disclaimer that said it may be revised, so no one can act like they didn't see it coming.
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Because a class that makes a race or two the only valid options out of all the possible ones you could play, goes against the design principles they outlined when writing PFRPG, would be my guess.
But hey if you don't like it means it is "trash" maybe you could write a better game, get it published, widely accepted and played in organized play and make everyone happy who plays it?
You mean, like racial archetypes?
Because a class that makes a race or two the only valid options out of all the possible ones you could play, goes against the design principles they outlined when writing PFRPG, would be my guess. {. . .}
Keep in mind that Paizo itself made a few prestige classes that are race-specific (Halfling Opportunist, Sun Seeker, and Lantern Bearer, the latter of which has really good story justification for being so), as well as quite a lot of race-specific archetypes (of which at least one, the Redeemer, really ought to be more widely available), as well as a handful of race-specific Bloodlines.
EDIT: Ninja'd!
Because a class that makes a race or two the only valid options out of all the possible ones you could play, goes against the design principles they outlined when writing PFRPG, would be my guess.
But hey if you don't like it means it is "trash" maybe you could write a better game, get it published, widely accepted and played in organized play and make everyone happy who plays it?
You mean, like racial archetypes?
Which were obviously intended to be that way. Making aasimar the go to race for a PrC like MT that had no racial bias and was completely race "neutral" before the FAQ... Is a completely different story, which I'm sure you realize.
The solution to the racial disparty issue was to allow more races early access to prestige classes, not less.
On one side there is your verisimilitude. On the other side there are dozens of players happily enjoying their character concepts. Celebrating the loss of those characters mechanically and thematically because you didn't have the creativity to adjust for a quirk of their mechanics, is a very selfish thing to do.
I can only hope that this is planned in pathfinder unchained, where they can finally mess around with some of the core expectations of prestige class entry. I doubt that will happen, though.
So, intended racial disparity is fine, but unintended racial disparity is not?
"This PrC is for elves, because it expands on the core thematics of the race and extends the racial abilities in certain ways."
"But I want to be a human and take it!?!"
"...."
My point being if you want an entirely open ended game system where you can make anything everything... Go play another game. This isn't that. If a prestige class is intended to be taken by a certain race, play the race for goodness sakes.
If you don't like it house rule it. If you are playing organized play, get over it already and realize it isn't all about you and what you want and how you want it, it isn't your sandbox at that point. The game has rules, you follow them and enjoy the game, easy enough right?
Sometimes rules are or seem arbitrary. Welcome to opposing points of view and interaction with other people. So I guess yes, in my games intended racial disparity is okay. It hasn't kept me or made me not enjoy PFRPG ever. I guess because I view it as options, it is nice to have additional options opened up by my normally rather unimportant race choice. I can play any race with any class I want in this game, it is nice for the race to play a more important role than it does normally. I don't look at race only options as restrictions or "the man trying to keep me down", like other posters tend to make it sound like. I guess I'm fortunate.
So, intended racial disparity is fine, but unintended racial disparity is not?
"This PrC is for elves, because it expands on the core thematics of the race and extends the racial abilities in certain ways."
"But I want to be a human and take it!?!"
"...."
Somewhat off topic, but hilariously:
Racial heritage.
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So, intended racial disparity is fine, but unintended racial disparity is not?
"This PrC is for elves, because it expands on the core thematics of the race and extends the racial abilities in certain ways."
"But I want to be a human and take it!?!"
"...."
My point being if you want an entirely open ended game system where you can make anything everything... Go play another game. This isn't that. If a prestige class is intended to be taken by a certain race, play the race for goodness sakes.
If you don't like it house rule it. If you are playing organized play, get over it already and realize it isn't all about you and what you want and how you want it, it isn't your sandbox at that point. The game has rules, you follow them and enjoy the game, easy enough right?
Sometimes rules are or seem arbitrary. Welcome to opposing points of view and interaction with other people. So I guess yes, in my games intended racial disparity is okay. It hasn't kept me or made me not enjoy PFRPG ever. I guess because I view it as options, it is nice to have additional options opened up by my normally rather unimportant race choice. I can play any race with any class I want in this game, it is nice for the race to play a more important role than it does normally. I don't look at race only options as restrictions or "the man trying to keep me down", like other posters tend to make it sound like. I guess I'm fortunate.
So, basically "I defend intended disparity, but not unintended disparity, and go f*ck yourself"?
I suppose that is a stance. I am not sure how you came to decide all the other unspoken opinions I have, but I am sure it was pulled out of somewhere.
When I said "you" in the middle paragraph it wasn't intended to be you personally, it was a general "you".
As for the go F yourself, I guess if you want to be crude about it, yeah. And to be fair, given the few posts I've seen from you lately on the boards with @sshat and F*# yourself, it would seem you are rather crude and ignorant. But hey, maybe you are a GREAT person who just likes throwing out inflammatory terms. Who knows? I dont care one way or another, just trying to have a polite conversation.
The game does have RULES, why do people have to be so ignorant about following them and take it so personal when they can't do what they want in the game knowing there are rules? Part of the fun is figuring out how to get the builds I want to work WITHIN the rules.
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I haven't actually noted I disagree with the rules on this subject.
I don't like the FAQ reversal, as it create a bit of mess, but it really ends there.
You assumed a lot.
Your post seemed like a crude personal attack.
I tried to convey this, but you seemed to take it as a personal attack.
That's actually a bit funny.
Even funnier, is that calling me crude, and ignorant, is a personal attack.
The previous post you mention, in another thread, was a failed attempt at humor, that I noted in that thread, and apologized about the misunderstanding.
I feel you chose a poster that didn't like the change, and sort made them a pariah.
Look, I am tired of these misunderstandings, and it looks close to getting ugly. Maybe, we can turn it down?
Also, not liking a rules change doesn't make anyone ignorant.
Ignorance would suggest they don't know they are not following rules, and I am not really seeing anyone saying that the rules change is a personal attack either.
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Because a class that makes a race or two the only valid options out of all the possible ones you could play, goes against the design principles they outlined when writing PFRPG, would be my guess.
But hey if you don't like it means it is "trash" maybe you could write a better game, get it published, widely accepted and played in organized play and make everyone happy who plays it?
Where ARE these design principles then? If you're going to speak of them, you might want to show what you're talking about, or else it just sounds like you're saying "Since this is the way I like things, it's how it was intended."
This was a ruling that stood for 2 years, so there was ample time to judge the effects. This unintentional oversight made people actually play these classes. That seems like a good thing for diversity, intended or not.
Design principles they stated way back in the play test of PFRPG, that they further stated in the FAQ when they said we're letting this slide to see how it goes, it wasn't what we intended?
We have a reversal, that takes us back to what was intended originally no?
The classes got played, maybe just not by those who normally run optimized builds or write guides or the vocal majority on the boards. Or do you have Society play data that shows they weren't ever played? Ive never seen anything like that on the boards, but I honestly haven't ever gone looking either. Sure they got played more after, but that doesn't really surprise anyone after numerous large threads were created on how to best take advantage of said ruling does it?
They haven't stated why they went back to their original intended stance on the subject. They might never because the boards tend to get hostile as of late, so I really wouldn't blame them for not doing so until this has basically blown over if ever. All we do know is they decided to go back to the way it was initially stated to be intended to work.
Post the design principles or admit that what you mean is that they are really just YOUR principles.
They mentioned in the faq allowing entry to prestige classes that it was intended.
Maybe you are forgetting that?
If that is to me, the FAQ said they were trying it out. If it had been intended all along, why would they "try it out" ?
Prior to the FAQ, you needed to have so many levels of an actual class to take these PrCs. That was absolutely, no questions asked how it was intended to work. That is how it now works, correct? The FAQ was an attempt to try something different than what the rules said. For whatever reason, that experiment in divergence from the intent from the original rules (where you needed class levels to qualify instead of SLAs), was not to their liking and they are now saying, go back to the original intent where you are unable to use racial abilities to enter PrCs early.
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Original discussions on the topic of prestige classes 6 years ago during beta Beta Playtest Discussions
The core prestige classes need a full rewrite. That is the main issue, when so much was put on backwards compatibility in the early stages. The SLA original FAQ created odd situations where a singular race would be the only one good for a prestige due to a normally near useless SLA. From a perspective of having things make sense from a fluff/roleplaying perspective, the SLA ruling was way out of place.
I am thoroughly in with BBT on this. In fact, I think I know exactly how this went:
One of the Devs (my bet is on SKR) built a PC that had an SLA and wanted to use it to qualify for Mystic Theurge. He presented his case to his GM (probably another Dev ...I'm going to say it was Jason) and the GM bought the idea. SKR had a convincing argument. In fact, it was so convincing that they decided to change the rules to allow for it. But before they did this they presented the idea to other Devs who weren't part of that game.So then JJ walked in and overheard the conversation and said, "Whoa whoa whoa. You can't just go changing rules willy nilly. We need to complete a play test first."
And the Devs responded with, "But we can't play test it. This is part of the Core Rules."
And then JJ said, "Don't you tell me what I can and cannot do. I'm doin' this thing!"
And that, kids is how this guide was born. It's death was short and sweet. Upon the gravestone of Blurring the Lines for Arcanes and Divines - A Guide to the Mystic Theurge appears the following passage, "Nope. It turns out this is unbalanced. - JJ"
I'm pretty sure thats how it went. *nod*
This was meant as a joke. I really liked your guide, Wiggles. I hope you continue to make more one day.
With respect to guides AngryWiggles was considering doing after this:
A prototype Slayer guide exists, but apparently hasn't been updated past playtest (aside from the fact that for practical purposes the final released ACG is actually the third playtest). The message pointing to this on the Zenith Games guide to the guides was dated May 21, 2014 (definitely before ACG official release). So for all practical purposes, I would no longer count this as being in the works, if you want to do a Slayer guide (but Hunter is still needed too).
Urgh, looking back on the playtest forums makes me sad. The same people arguing the same things without resolution for getting closer to 10 years now.
My biggest beef is that they didn't leave in the whole "you can't use the base classes if you use a hybrid class" thing.
^Doesn't bother me so much as seem weird given both that they had it in the playtest and that the Alternate Classes (Antipaladin, Ninja, and Samurai) retained it in final release.
It's best to avoid mt and be a witch, heavens oracle, or naga aspirant Druid. If you must go the mt route, use racial sla's and domain powers to get early entry.
Guessing you haven't been reading the thread in its entirety. The new FAQ prohibits racial SLAs from qualifying now.