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I first posted this proposal in the thread regarding the FAQ change, here. But I wanted to repost it in its own thread to facilitate discussion of the idea.
I think grandfathering without notice is great, but I hope that Mike and John will consider grandfathering all characters who have, as of today, at least 4 XP with at least 1 XP as player credit at 2nd level or higher.
That would allow everyone who is currently building toward a prestige class (and counting on early entry) to do so, and it would mitigate—if not eliminate entirely—concern of a mad dash to create your prestige class characters.
The only characters currently in play who couldn't be grandfathered in under this plan are those who are eligible for a complete rebuild anyway (1st-level PCs and GM babies).
This solution would go a long way to lessen the blow to those who are most affected by this decision while having little impact on the rest of us.
If the goals are (1) do the least amount of damage to characters who are built around that option, and (2) eliminate the potential of a mad rush like the planetouched rush, then I think this solution is better than just grandfathering those PCs who are already in prestige classes.
(1) Everyone who was actively working toward a prestige class will be able to continue to do so using the same plan they originally had (or retrain if they are still level 1 or a GM baby)
(2) No one who wasn't working toward a prestige class will be affected. The cost of retraining a character who wasn't on that path just so you can get in during the mad rush would be too onerous.
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I don't like how the current rule leaves some characters out in the cold.
I also don't like the complexity of your proposed rule.
Is it better to have a simple rule that is bad for some characters, or a more complex rule that is harder to explain.
What is complex about it? The rule would be: "If you have at least 1 XP of player credit at 2nd level or higher on the character before 2/18/15, you are still eligible for early entry to prestige classes using a spell-like ability."
How is that more complex than the current rule? "If you have a character who is already in a prestige class using early entry via a spell-like ability before 2/18/15, you are eligible to keep your character."
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How exactly do you determine whether or not someone was actively working towards a PrC?
My proposal does not include any stipulation regarding intention. I assumed that if you were not already working toward an early entry prestige class then your character would not be currently equipped to enter said prestige class. By removing any restriction based on intention it does not present a problem.
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Adding any sort of "This amount of xp or that amount of xp" option, just adds a layer of complexity that causes nothing but issues.
Just the "must have 1 played XP to make a new Aasimar/Tiefling" created probably 15 different questions of...
"What about..."
"What if..."
"how about..."
And so on.
So a clean break is best. It avoids any complexity whatsoever.
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Look, I have several prestige class characters. None of them were early entry. I was disappointed by the original FAQ ruling; I felt it was a mistake. I am happy that they have reversed it.
But I am also sympathetic to the large number of players this affects. Grandfathering is great for those who already have characters in their prestige class. But I'm sure it feels overly harsh to those players whose characters are almost there, but not quite.
I think my proposal is kind to those players while having no effect on the rest of us.
I know that you think it is more complex to look though a player's chronicles to see if he had 4 XP before 2/18/15 than it is to look through a player's chronicles to see if he entered into his prestige class before 2/18/15. I don't know how to address that for you.
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So a clean break is best. It avoids any complexity whatsoever.Wouldn't the cleanest break be to not grandfather in any characters at all? Just retire them? Zero complexity.
Exactly, or grant those already in a prestige class by way of SLA early access a full rebuild and be done with it. This is their way of allowing those who already were playing something to keep doing so. They are being kind.
I do not support the idea of adding a corner case rule when it seems the intent of the FAQ change was to eliminate corner case rules.
I am sorry that some people feel cheated or slighted or what have you, but adding in a special rule that can only be governed by expressed intent to do something is not the way to go.
Personally I feel that everyone should be on the same level playing field when it comes to options that affect character development and I applaud the change, and in doing so I feel that everyone should have to conduct a rebuild if their current build is no longer legal according to the FAQ. However, the campaign leadership has made a decision on the matter and I think it is a fair, if not ideal, one.
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Since I have no horse in this race, no character who could benefit from any kind of grandfathering, take this with a bit of salt.
I really don't care, if characters above a certain level want to finish their planned character arch, but considering that a level 2 character isn't that much of an investment, you might set your requirements a little higher.
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I know that you think it is more complex to look though a player's chronicles to see if he had 4 XP before 2/18/15 than it is to look through a player's chronicles to see if he entered into his prestige class before 2/18/15. I don't know how to address that for you.
I'm not asking you to address it for me. I'm not asking for you to try and convince me of your proposal.
I feel like you asked for feedback on your proposal, we gave it, and you told us we were wrong.
I'm perfectly happy to share my thoughts and explain what I like and don't like. I'm not too interested in having a debate about your proposal
How about a slightly broader question:
Removing existing rules elements can be quite painful to players making use of them, how do we do the least harm to the PFS playerbase when changes happen?
So far, this has come up 3 major times in PFS.
We had the vivisectionist/synthesist.
-Removed from campaign, no grandfathering.
Tiefling/Aasimar
-Removed from campaign, all existing ones grandfathered just need 1xp, long warning
SLA Prestige Entry
-Removed from campaign, all existing ones grandfathered, needed several levels, generally 3/4+, no warning
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I think a good general answer here would help guide individual policy.
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I feel like you asked for feedback on your proposal, we gave it, and you told us we were wrong.
I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to say "you're wrong." You said you did not like it because you felt it was too complex. I don't understand that sentiment, but if that's how you feel, so be it.
I apologize if I came on too strong in my defense of this proposal.
Yes, you are right that the goal is to introduce changes so that the least amount of harm is done to the fewest number of participants. That was the goal behind my proposal. I think a discussion about this, even if it is with some other solution entirely is good for the community.
I still think my proposed solution to this problem is a good one. But I will endeavor to exercise greater detachment to the idea. After all, I don't actually have any characters affected by this ruling.
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For what it's worth, I have an Aasimar Cleric 1/Sorcerer 1 on his way to MT who earned his 4th XP as a player on this past Monday. I'm 100% behind Mike and John's original ruling, as well as the Rules team responsible for the FAQ. The ruling as it currently stands is simple, and presumably came about after discussion by a group of people on the Paizo staff whose experience and judgement I trust.
While it was mildly frustrating to hear about the FAQ at first, that's all it was, and really all it should be for most players. To be honest, I was only going MT because I didn't have anything better to do with the Aasimar. Figuring out what to direction to take him in from here is actually a much more interesting challenge.
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I think a good general answer here would help guide individual policy.
Allow rebuilds more freely.
In this particular case, I'd allow something like one rebuild per campaign, that must be taken the first time the character gains a chronicle on 2/19 or later.
Sure, that allows a little abuse but it seems a good compromise.
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Allow rebuilds more freely.
I think a good general answer here would help guide individual policy.
Agreed. John mentioned that rebuilds are jarring to that character, but I think a lot of people who've been through retraining would disagree. It's a superior option to losing the character's focus and being able to do nothing about it.
As far as sorting out characters who "didn't quite get there", the honour system should apply here to allow a minimal rebuild, using the player's best judgement. Honour system applies, everyone's happy.
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They should have forced full rebuilds of all now illegal characters just like they should have forced the retirements of all now illegal races when they changed that back in August. They are being kind to keep the player base happy and sacrificing game balance instead.
You'd force someone who has been playing a tiefling or aasimar for two years and gotten it to, say, 7th level or something to retire immediately with no warning?
Wow, I'm glad you're not my GM.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Martinsville
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I believe that the grandfathering of the previous ruling is enough for those that already have vested the time in the character already in the PrC. I would instead try to see of Retraining characters who was setting up for the early access would be allowed for "free" to try and have that character do something within the rules but not be cornered into choices no longer usable for the purpose in which they were taken.
That's just me.
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John mentioned that rebuilds are jarring to that character, but I think a lot of people who've been through retraining would disagree. It's a superior option to losing the character's focus and being able to do nothing about it.
Even though I don't think a rebuild option is necessary here, and I think that The Fox's grandfathering addendum is a fine solution and support it fully, I do want to pitch in about retraining.
Personally, I LOVE the concept of rebuilds. I understand that it would get jarring if characters could change between every session like they sometimes do in home games, but the chance to completely or partially reinvent oneself once or twice in the course of the character's career is super fun to me.
My Warpriest of Zon-Kuthon gained a free rebuild due to the alteration of one of his primary stats between the playtest and the book. I took the opportunity to retrain into a cool prestige class and try out a "stock" Fighter like I've wanted to for some time, and didn't remotely compromise the story I had built for my character thus far.
Recently, I found out about an errata which unfortunately made my use of my primary weapon much less effectual. Gathering my mountains of prestige around me, I retrained four entire levels, again completely reinventing my character as far as class levels were concerned, but (in my opinion) furthering my character's story again in a very unique way.
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Allow rebuilds more freely.
I think a good general answer here would help guide individual policy.Agreed. John mentioned that rebuilds are jarring to that character, but I think a lot of people who've been through retraining would disagree. It's a superior option to losing the character's focus and being able to do nothing about it.
As far as sorting out characters who "didn't quite get there", the honour system should apply here to allow a minimal rebuild, using the player's best judgement. Honour system applies, everyone's happy.
TBH I agree with John and Im living proof of it
Retraining and rebuilding are 2 very different things
on my shelf is an 8th lvl PC that has been collecting dust since the Ban Hammer came down on Synthesists, Master summoners, Undead lords, Vivisectionests, and gravewalker witch (last one is an IIRC)
I've had some flitting Ideas with what to do with it ... but nothing has really stuck to the personality of the PC (it was an undead lord) and due to those rulings I have a full rebuild with the character other than the race
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If tieflings and aasimar characters are not appropriate for broad play they should not have been grandfathered and they certainly should not have been a forewarning given. Personally I think it was a really bad idea to have ever opened the races up at all but closing them off should have been done just like banning synthesists.They should have forced full rebuilds of all now illegal characters just like they should have forced the retirements of all now illegal races when they changed that back in August. They are being kind to keep the player base happy and sacrificing game balance instead.You'd force someone who has been playing a tiefling or aasimar for two years and gotten it to, say, 7th level or something to retire immediately with no warning?
Wow, I'm glad you're not my GM.
No one ever decided they were inappropriate for broad play. They decided to retire open access to those races so they could open up others while still only having a limited number of open race options.
Really, if I had been playing, say, a tiefling for a couple years and had just gotten the character into a higher tier or seeker or about to run Eyes of the Ten and suddenly got told, "Nope! No more character for you. You have to start over from scratch," that would be the last time I played PFS.
You said like banning synthesists, but no one playing a synthesist had to start over from scratch with a new character. Synthesists were able to be rebuilt, in many cases from the ground up, true, but still retaining the character level they were at before the ban.
Do you really hate aasimars and tieflings so much that you'd destroy all the time someone put into playing one as a punitive measure to make sure no one who liked to play such characters ever darkened the doorway of your FLGS again? (Ok, exaggerating a bit, but really - what's with the attitude?)
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Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Martinsville
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Ah... just saw the whole post. A character that was going for the early entry must retrain the various stuff that was for the now invalid qualifications for the PrC early entry for free.
Those that already played as the early entry are the ones grandfathered in. (I know, you already knew)
Just clarifying from what I offered in my previous post.
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I vote NO...
Id rather force those who built broken characters with cheese builds to retire the character
This is a moot point. The FAQ before specifically said that you could use SLA as prerequisites for characters. That did not have to be written by Paizo, and honestly it surprised a lot of people that they did. In fact, by writing that FAQ and putting the clause that they knew what this would entail, you can very easily argue that they condoned these types of build since they specifically put it in the FAQ that you can completely use SLA as prerequisites. Do you blame those who utilized Paizo-condoned builds and have contempt for them?
I will also never understand the attitude of "I didn't like it, therefore it was badwrongfun and all those who participated shouldn't be taken into consideration." How are you the arbiter of people's fun?
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Adding any sort of "This amount of xp or that amount of xp" option, just adds a layer of complexity that causes nothing but issues.
Just the "must have 1 played XP to make a new Aasimar/Tiefling" created probably 15 different questions of...
"What about..."
"What if..."
"how about..."And so on.
So a clean break is best. It avoids any complexity whatsoever.
Sometimes, the most fair ruling isn't always the simplest. A perfect example is the FAQ about ability score stacking. It works and I like how it was handled, but it took a while to wrap my head around.
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It doesn't seem complex to me. I'm not sure what's hard about "1 played XP at 2nd...
I have a little quip for this. I would say "Played at 2nd level" instead. It is entirely possible that someone had a mission fail and got 0 XP for a session, or that someone slow tracked and got 0.5 XP.
Nit-picky, I know, but all-inclusive. :)
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It doesn't seem complex to me. I'm not sure what's hard about "1 played XP at 2nd...
Intent.
While most of the combinations of classes need to achieve access to the PrCs most affected by this change are limited to a few more likely combinations, there is no certainty at all that that level 2.1 cleric was going into MT. However, if they happen to have a race/class with the right option and realize that they can use that to gain early access to something that will no longer be available, some will take advantage of it.
While we would all love to think that everyone would follow their "word of honor" in such cases, past experience has shown that people do not.
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It doesn't seem complex to me. I'm not sure what's hard about "1 played XP at 2nd...Intent.
While most of the combinations of classes need to achieve access to the PrCs most affected by this change are limited to a few more likely combinations, there is no certainty at all that that level 2.1 cleric was going into MT. However, if they happen to have a race/class with the right option and realize that they can use that to gain early access to something that will no longer be available, some will take advantage of it.
While we would all love to think that everyone would follow their "word of honor" in such cases, past experience has shown that people do not.
There's a couple of circumstances that need to happen for this to really matter.
1) Need to have the SLAs for it.
2) Need to have proper stats.
#2 is more likely to happen than #1, but even so, I would bet to imagine that it would be very rare for someone to just "happen" upon wanting to change. I mean, if they wanted to make a character who did that, why didn't they just plan it out that way in the first place?
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If you had a wizard with a good wisdom you could take a level of cleric with the right domains and abilities to get in early.
But yeah, this isn't a whole lot of characters. This would not be the zerg rush of the tiefling aasimar again for a few reasons
Tiefling/aasimar was the best option for almost every character. This is only a really good option for wizard/clerics.
You need a build idea that gets you the spell like ability. Since the biggest offender (see point 1) is closed, that leaves fewer ways to get it.
And you need the stats to make it effective.
Its a pretty rare confluence of events to happen.
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It doesn't seem complex to me. I'm not sure what's hard about "1 played XP at 2nd...Intent.
While most of the combinations of classes need to achieve access to the PrCs most affected by this change are limited to a few more likely combinations, there is no certainty at all that that level 2.1 cleric was going into MT. However, if they happen to have a race/class with the right option and realize that they can use that to gain early access to something that will no longer be available, some will take advantage of it.
While we would all love to think that everyone would follow their "word of honor" in such cases, past experience has shown that people do not.
If they happen to have a race that makes this possible, AND they happen to have a class that makes this possible, AND they happen to have the correct stat allocation to make it possible despite the fact that it's not optimal for most target builds, AND they weren't already planning on doing this? Frankly, for the 1 or 2 people that actually meet all of those requirements, so what? It's not worth screwing over everyone else to avoid the corner case of all corner cases.
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The mistake in the tiefling/aasimar change was announcing it and then grandfathering characters between the announcement and the actual change. If they'd just done it "as of now", there wouldn't have been the opportunity.
I don't see it as a big deal. It really wouldn't matter if someone stockpiled 4 aasimars or 40, they can only play one at a time. (I stocked up 2 playing 2 dming)
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You could even limit it further by saying you can only use this proposal to make one Early Entry toon. My concern is not for people like me or Andrew who have already have early entry toons grandfathered in. It is for that new guy who went "Wow I can have a viable Mystic Theurge? I have been trying to build one of those for years" and then never quite made it to that first MT level.
One of our local players was playing this crazy build that was going to be an "early entry" Oracle/Sorcerer/Paladin/Bard Mystic Theurge at 10th level. That guy is not going to be an MT under the new rules. People who want to abuse the system are going to abuse the system. Stopping one avenue of abuse is not worth disrupting legitimate use by people who just want to play the way they want to play while being respectful of other players.
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While we would all love to think that everyone would follow their "word of honor" in such cases, past experience has shown that people do not.
So what? How would they benefit?
Somebody decides to take what was originally a wizard and become a mystic Theurge. Who cares?
And do we really expect there to be a mad rush of this?
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While we would all love to think that everyone would follow their "word of honor" in such cases, past experience has shown that people do not.So what? How would they benefit?
Somebody decides to take what was originally a wizard and become a mystic Theurge. Who cares?
And do we really expect there to be a mad rush of this?
As someone who has a 11.15 MT, The issue would be the rush of Evangelists, not MT's. I actually blame Inner Sea Gods's power creep as the reason I won't be able to play the MT's and AT's without pulling down the party.
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While we would all love to think that everyone would follow their "word of honor" in such cases, past experience has shown that people do not.So what? How would they benefit?
Somebody decides to take what was originally a wizard and become a mystic Theurge. Who cares?
And do we really expect there to be a mad rush of this?
The point is where do you draw the line?
Mike and John already drew the line... and people want it redrawn further out, ostensibly so it is fair to group A, B and C.
Well, what about group D? I mean, once you redraw the line, someone else will have a reason why it would be more inclusive to extend it a bit more to allow for these other cases. And how could you say "No, this is where we say no more", when there would have already been an added allowance.
And if we really don't expect a mad rush of this, then the campaign leadership made the right call already, as this choice will impact the fewest people.