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Since the other thread about this was locked because it had drifted outside its original purpose, here's a new thread about it.
We know that grandfathering in general was disallowed due to the abuse of the extremely generous terms last time. However, we have had a number of people come in to that thread and mention they had an almost-ready Mystic Theurge under the old ruling that got screwed over by the timing. In that context, I have a very direct and targeted request for clarification from PFS Management or any relevant Paizo Employees. Why was no middle ground offered for grandfathering? Simply requiring that the characters already be locked from rebuilding at the date of the rule change would effectively eliminate any potential for abuse, while avoiding the current situation of causing direct harm to a subset of your players due to the decision. Just because a poorly implemented grandfathering in the past went as poorly as anyone could predict does not mean it cannot be implemented in a reasonable manner, and there is an extremely obvious middle ground available here that both prevents exploitation and satisfies those players who were already deeply invested in your previous published rule. Why not just allow these players to continue?
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John and I discussed grandfathering at length. As John and I both advised in the first thread, this is the decision that the PFS team has made and is what we are going with.Okay, this is a good answer.
Actually, it does not answer the OP at all. The question was "Why was this decision made?". Saying that it was made after discussion and that it won't change does NOT answer "Why".
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Actually, it does not answer the OP at all. The question was "Why was this decision made?". Saying that it was made after discussion and that it won't change does NOT answer "Why".John and I discussed grandfathering at length. As John and I both advised in the first thread, this is the decision that the PFS team has made and is what we are going with.Okay, this is a good answer.
"It's not changing" is a perfectly adequate response when providing a reason why is just going to get argued with. (Even if the OP isn't just fishing for something to argue with, that won't stop the nerdrage brigade from stopping in.)
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"It's not changing" is a perfectly adequate response when providing a reason why is just going to get argued with. (Even if the OP isn't just fishing for something to argue with, that won't stop the nerdrage brigade from stopping in.)Actually, it does not answer the OP at all. The question was "Why was this decision made?". Saying that it was made after discussion and that it won't change does NOT answer "Why".John and I discussed grandfathering at length. As John and I both advised in the first thread, this is the decision that the PFS team has made and is what we are going with.Okay, this is a good answer.
Peoples characters are stuck halfway through the process of becoming mystic theurges, leaving them somewhere between suboptimal to useless.
Of course they're going to try to change peoples minds about this decision.
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Okay, please forgive me for missing the boat on this, but I have three questions:
What was the old ruling? (Something about Spell like abilities and mystic theurge?)
What is the new ruling? (That something has a new interpretation?)
Why are people actually upset? (Character build is now borked? )
I went through a lot of the old thread trying to figure it out. But my search-fu is lacking.
Of course they're going to try to change peoples minds about this decision.
...and that's why they skipped to answering the inevitable follow up question.
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Okay, please forgive me for missing the boat on this, but I have three questions:
What was the old ruling? (Something about Spell like abilities and mystic theurge?)
Old Ruling: Spell like abilities counted as spellcasting for meeting prestige class requirements. The most common fall out was that aasimar wizards could pick up levels of mystic theurge with a 1 level dip into cleric instead of 3, or vice versa.
What is the new ruling? (That something has a new interpretation?)
Why are people actually upset? (Character build is now borked? )
The new faq ruling is that it only counts if it calls out your spell like ability specifically, ie, if dimensional dervish feat requires dimension door, a dimension door spell like ability is close enough, but any other spell like ability is not.
Global Organized Play Coordinator
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Actually, it does not answer the OP at all. The question was "Why was this decision made?". Saying that it was made after discussion and that it won't change does NOT answer "Why".John and I discussed grandfathering at length. As John and I both advised in the first thread, this is the decision that the PFS team has made and is what we are going with.Okay, this is a good answer.
It was already advised why the decision was made Here.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Okay, please forgive me for missing the boat on this, but I have three questions:
What was the old ruling? (Something about Spell like abilities and mystic theurge?)
There had been a FAQ which stated that having a spell-like ability counted as being able to cast that spell for the purposes of prerequisites, including for things like feats and even Prestige Classes. As a result, there were ways to get into Eldritch Knight at 3rd level and Mystic Theurge at 4th level, and so forth, using certain builds. Initially a certain population of GMs/players tried to say it didn't actually work that way or that it was ambiguous, but the Design Team systematically debunked all their counter-arguments and asserted with no ambiguity that yes, it really DOES allow those early-entry builds in exactly the manner people were talking about. The gnashing of teeth was (slightly) alleviated by an assurance within the FAQ that if there was ever any real, in-game evidence of overpowered builds, the FAQ would be reconsidered.
This was all put in place somewhere between one and two years ago.
What is the new ruling? (That something has a new interpretation?)
After a year or two of the above FAQ barely affecting anything, it was reversed. Basically, the Design Team changed their mind and what was thoroughly established a couple years back suddenly ceased to be the case.
Why are people actually upset? (Character build is now borked? )
The most heavily-affected Prestige Classes were the Eldritch Knight and the Mystic Theurge. Via traditional entry, a PC becomes really weak up until you finally actually enter the PrC, and it takes several levels for its benefits to finally start to balance out what you sacrificed. For instance, the EK is no better at attacking than the wizard for your first few levels, and doesn't catch up to other "cast/fight hybrid" classes' attacking potential until the end of their PFS career. (I can go into more detail on that if you like.)
Now, characters who had already gotten into their PrC's early got grandfathered in, so that's fine. But if you were, say, a Fighter1/Wizard1 who hadn't taken your first EK level yet, what do you do? There's not really a way to play the same type of character/realize the same concept without heading for the PrC, but to get there now you have to make a long, painful trek through some pretty terrible levels.
So a few people were left high and dry, with little choice but to retire their character or fundamentally alter (through retraining) what type of character it is. Or play the same character but substantially weaker, possibly to the point of feeling like a sidekick.
So, that's what's going on.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Ok I really have to ask, what character is "ruined" ? It seems that most of those characters will be about level 3-4 with a suboptimal stat allocation.
So at this point they have two choices, either continue on their path to MT or retrain one level, and have slightly less than perfect stat allocations (and not even that if you go Oracle/Sorcerer, or Cleric/Sorcerer with the right bloodline).
That is really not ruined, I recently played with a sorcerer/rogue/arcane trickster and that player had to go through a valley of suck to get there.
It might be quite bad for your proposed concept, but from a mechanical point of view, the character is hardly "ruined".
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Ok I really have to ask, what character is "ruined" ? It seems that most of those characters will be about level 3-4 with a suboptimal stat allocation.
So at this point they have two choices, either continue on their path to MT or retrain one level, and have slightly less than perfect stat allocations (and not even that if you go Oracle/Sorcerer, or Cleric/Sorcerer with the right bloodline).
That is really not ruined, I recently played with a sorcerer/rogue/arcane trickster and that player had to go through a valley of suck to get there.
It might be quite bad for your proposed concept, but from a mechanical point of view, the character is hardly "ruined".
Well, the plan was to have low spell DC's made up for by having a large number of buff spells available.
A mystic theurge walks into level 7-11 scenarios casting second level spells. That really isn't a viable party member.
Retraining makes a lot of feats and abilities useless, for example the tehurgy feat and the magical knack trait.
The valley of suck for a mytic theurge is most of PFS standard levels.
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I think the "why" was adequately addressed in the locked thread.
A small subset of players ruined grace periods for the rest of us.
Don't blame Mike or John. Blame those who abused their leniency in the past.
I think the biggest disconnect I have is that I just don't see how creating a bunch of Aasimar/Tieflings was really abusive. It was behavior that Mike explicitly expected to happen, he was just surprised at the scope. But I just don't see it as an issue that I have 5 (unplayed since they were no longer legal) banked Aasimars instead of one.
Granting for the sake of argument that was abuse, that just means that advance notice is a bad idea. It doesn't mean that either more liberal grandfathering (as suggested in a different thread) or more liberal rebuilds is automatically bad.
Its no huge deal. I have 3 characters affected. All are still viable if somewhat less powerful now. But I am mildly irked at the decision, especially since I really don't understand it.
Note: I am not blaming anybody. I know they put a lot if thought into it. I fully understand why they don't want to go into more detail as to their reasons. But I think they made the wrong decision and so I remain curious and mildly irked.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Ok I really have to ask, what character is "ruined" ? It seems that most of those characters will be about level 3-4 with a suboptimal stat allocation.
So at this point they have two choices, either continue on their path to MT or retrain one level, and have slightly less than perfect stat allocations (and not even that if you go Oracle/Sorcerer, or Cleric/Sorcerer with the right bloodline).
That is really not ruined, I recently played with a sorcerer/rogue/arcane trickster and that player had to go through a valley of suck to get there.
It might be quite bad for your proposed concept, but from a mechanical point of view, the character is hardly "ruined".
Well, the plan was to have low spell DC's made up for by having a large number of buff spells available.
A mystic theurge walks into level 7-11 scenarios casting second level spells. That really isn't a viable party member.
Retraining makes a lot of feats and abilities useless, for example the tehurgy feat and the magical knack trait.
The valley of suck for a mytic theurge is most of PFS standard levels.
I have played 7-11 scenarios where the second levels spells were quite important, but obviously I get your point the MT is not a great prestige class for pure casters (I can see some builds involving the magus class as viable though).
The fact that those prestige classes aren't exactly great for PFS levels isn't news to me, but the old rule wasn't really great either.
I think this really highlights the need for some retraining rules for traits, you can retrain traits gained through the additional traits feat, but not your regular traits..
Edit: Also I have yet to see any body asking for help to "fix" their character, but yeah this will somewhat negatively affect some characters.
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I have a level 3 wizard level 1 cleric that was 2 sessions away from theurgedom.
If i continue onto mystic theurgdom... i think we covered that.
If i ditch the cleric level i lose
The magical knack trait
The 16 wisdom and 14 charisma become pretty useless
The Divine barrier feat. Which is at least retrainable but at 5 prestige points? for the class and 7 for the class.
I have binders full of other characters, so just putting Argentum on the back burner isn't the end of the world for me but if he was my highest level character? I'd be hosed.
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I realize the problem they were trying to fix, but the lack of warning does make me a little leery about some other options. For example, do i need to chivy someone else into DMing or play a character that may not fit the scenario as well just because I want to be sure a character is locked in for sure.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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I have a level 3 wizard level 1 cleric that was 2 sessions away from theurgedom.
If i continue onto mystic theurgdom... i think we covered that.
If i ditch the cleric level i lose
The magical knack trait
The 16 wisdom and 14 charisma become pretty useless
The Divine barrier feat. Which is at least retrainable but at 5 prestige points? for the class and 7 for the class.
I have binders full of other characters, so just putting Argentum on the back burner isn't the end of the world for me but if he was my highest level character? I'd be hosed.
With those stats, I would actually consider putting the character on the back burner, maybe apply some GM chronicles an retrain him as a shaman. That way you would still get the mix or arcane and divine spells, the class uses wisdom and charisma, and the lore shaman requires intelligence.
Cleric to Shaman retraining would be only cost 5 PP (unfortunately there is no such synergy for the wizard levels)
The following character has the lore and life spirits (thus gaining access to wizard spells and channel energy - so you could keep the feat) but since I lack further details about your character..
Argentum
Aasimar shaman 6 (Pathfinder RPG Advanced Class Guide 35, Pathfinder RPG Advanced Race Guide 84)
LG Medium outsider (native)
Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +8
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Defense
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AC 18, touch 12, flat-footed 16 (+6 armor, +2 Dex)
hp 39 (6d8+6)
Fort +3, Ref +4, Will +8
Resist acid 5, cold 5, electricity 5
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Offense
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Speed 30 ft. (20 ft. in armor)
Melee longspear +4 (1d8/×3)
Special Attacks channel positive energy 3/day (DC 15, 3d6), hexes (evil eye, life link), wandering hex (arcane enlightenment)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 6th; concentration +8)
. . 1/day—daylight
Shaman Spells Prepared (CL 6th; concentration +9)
. . 3rd—dispel magic, fireball (DC 16), magic circle against evil; locate object[S] or neutralize poison[S]
. . 2nd—barkskin, flame blade, lesser restoration, spiritual weapon; lesser restoration[S] or tongues[S]
. . 1st—burning hands (DC 14), heightened awareness[ACG], hex vulnerability[ACG] (DC 14), shield; detect undead[S] or identify[S]
. . 0 (at will)—create water, detect magic, light, mending
. . S spirit magic spell; Spirit Life Wandering Spirit Lore
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Statistics
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Str 11, Dex 14, Con 12, Int 14, Wis 17, Cha 14
Base Atk +4; CMB +4; CMD 16
Feats Divine Barrier, Heavy Armor Proficiency, Selective Channeling
Traits fate's favored, magical knack
Skills Acrobatics +1 (-3 to jump), Climb -3, Diplomacy +13, Fly +3, Handle Animal +7, Heal +8, Knowledge (arcana) +4, Knowledge (nature) +8, Knowledge (planes) +8, Knowledge (religion) +8, Perception +8, Ride +2, Sense Motive +4, Sleight of Hand -1, Spellcraft +11, Survival +7, Swim -3, Use Magic Device +3; Racial Modifiers +2 Diplomacy, +2 Perception
Languages Celestial, Common, Draconic, Elven
SQ monstrous insight, spirit animal (rabbit named Arcane Familiar)
Combat Gear pearl of power (1st level) (2), pearl of power (2nd level); Other Gear breastplate, longspear, 150 gp
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Tracked Resources
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Daylight (1/day) - 0/1
Monstrous Insight (5/day) (Su) - 0/5
Pearl of power (1st level, 2/day) - 0/2
Pearl of power (2nd level, 1/day) - 0/1
Shaman Channel Positive Energy 3d6 (3/day, DC 15) (Su) - 0/3
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Special Abilities
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Arcane Enlightenment (Su) Add Charisma bonus wizard spells to your spells known list.
Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white vision only).
Deliver Touch Spells Through Familiar (Su) Your familiar can deliver touch spells for you.
Divine Barrier Use channel energy to have you and allies take reduced damage from elemental area effects.
Empathic Link with Familiar (Su) You have an empathic link with your Arcane Familiar.
Energy Resistance, Acid (5) You have the specified Energy Resistance against Acid attacks.
Energy Resistance, Cold (5) You have the specified Energy Resistance against Cold attacks.
Energy Resistance, Electricity (5) You have the specified Energy Resistance against Electricity attacks.
Evil Eye -2 (6 rounds, DC 16) (Su) Foe in 30 ft takes penalty to your choice of AC, attacks, saves, ability or skill checks (Will part).
Familiar Bonus: +4 to Initiative checks You gain the Alertness feat while your familiar is within arm's reach.
Fate's Favored Increase luck bonuses by 1.
Life Link (6 max bonds, 100 feet) (Su) As a standard action, establish bond that drains your HP to heal other below -5 hp.
Magical Knack (-Choose-) +2 CL for a specific class, to a max of your HD.
Monstrous Insight (5/day) (Su) As a standard action, attempt know check to ID monster and gain +2 to att & AC vs. that foe.
Selective Channeling Exclude targets from the area of your Channel Energy.
Shaman Channel Positive Energy 3d6 (3/day, DC 15) (Su) Positive energy heals the living and harms the undead; negative has the reverse effect.
Share Spells with Familiar Can cast spells with a target of "You" on the familiar with a range of touch.
Speak with Familiar (Ex) You can communicate verbally with your familiar.
Hero Lab and the Hero Lab logo are Registered Trademarks of LWD Technology, Inc. Free download at http://www.wolflair.com
Pathfinder® and associated marks and logos are trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC®, and are used under license.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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I realize the problem they were trying to fix, but the lack of warning does make me a little leery about some other options. For example, do i need to chivy someone else into DMing or play a character that may not fit the scenario as well just because I want to be sure a character is locked in for sure.
Not giving special dispensation to GMs is one of the real downsides of the decision, some GMs only rarely get to play. I have recently decided and offered to GM more, to make game days a little bit less of an endurance event for my regular GMs.
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With those stats, I would actually consider putting the character on the back burner, maybe apply some GM chronicles an retrain him as a shaman. That way you would still get the mix or arcane and divine spells, the class uses wisdom and charisma, and the lore shaman requires intelligence.
Thats an interesting possibility and worth considering. But the main point was to demonstrate that characters are an interconnected whole. You can't change one part, especially one as big as a prestige class, without changing the whole thing. Even small changes can ripple.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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With those stats, I would actually consider putting the character on the back burner, maybe apply some GM chronicles an retrain him as a shaman. That way you would still get the mix or arcane and divine spells, the class uses wisdom and charisma, and the lore shaman requires intelligence.Thats an interesting possibility and worth considering. But the main point was to demonstrate that characters are an interconnected whole. You can't change one part, especially one as big as a prestige class, without changing the whole thing. Even small changes can ripple.
Glad to option appeals to you. And obviously your point isn't lost on me, some characters will be hit harder than others. I recently played with a sorcerer that liked casting blindness on our enemies... the BBEG just turned to be immune to curses ..
Maybe it is just all the talk of "ruined" that tends to annoy me.
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Maybe it is just all the talk of "ruined" that tends to annoy me.
If the best option available is, as you suggested yourself, getting more prestige than i currently have on the character and blowing it all in order to retrain him, then i think ruined is an accurate description.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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If this were a home game and I came up with a character concept, received an 'ok' from the GM that my character progression was within the rules and acceptable, then had the GM change their mind a few levels in and proceed to tell me "tough luck, you don't get to rebuild your character", I would tell them where they could go and I would not play under that GM anymore.
Considering this is essentially what the official Paizo GM did, even though it doesn't specifically have any effect on any of my characters, it doesn't sit right with me. I will likely continue in the Core Campaign of PFS for a bit of entertainment, but I probably won't buy anymore Paizo products going forward. I don't monetarily support things I fundamentally disagree with. I don't expect this to make any difference as far as the decision goes, but I'm not one to hold back on voicing my dissatisfaction.
I'm sure someone will call me out on continuing to play PFS at all. As a preemptive answer to that, I have friends that really enjoy it and I'm not going to bail on them completely. That'd be crappy from a friend perspective, at least in my opinion.
It is worth mentioning, that not the PFS leadership changed that rule, it was changed by the Pathfinder Rules Team, which is essentially errata (especially since they created this loophole in the first place). The one prestige class I can remember, that came out around that time - the evangelist - already got a special disclaimer.
So usually your GM has the right to accept or decline an errata, but since PFS does respect every bit of errata, this wasn't really an option (based on their own guidelines).
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Okay, please forgive me for missing the boat on this, but I have three questions:
What was the old ruling? (Something about Spell like abilities and mystic theurge?)
There had been a FAQ which stated that having a spell-like ability counted as being able to cast that spell for the purposes of prerequisites, including for things like feats and even Prestige Classes. As a result, there were ways to get into Eldritch Knight at 3rd level and Mystic Theurge at 4th level, and so forth, using certain builds. Initially a certain population of GMs/players tried to say it didn't actually work that way or that it was ambiguous, but the Design Team systematically debunked all their counter-arguments and asserted with no ambiguity that yes, it really DOES allow those early-entry builds in exactly the manner people were talking about. The gnashing of teeth was (slightly) alleviated by an assurance within the FAQ that if there was ever any real, in-game evidence of overpowered builds, the FAQ would be reconsidered.
This was all put in place somewhere between one and two years ago.
What is the new ruling? (That something has a new interpretation?)After a year or two of the above FAQ barely affecting anything, it was reversed. Basically, the Design Team changed their mind and what was thoroughly established a couple years back suddenly ceased to be the case.
Why are people actually upset? (Character build is now borked? )The most heavily-affected Prestige Classes were the Eldritch Knight and the Mystic Theurge. Via traditional entry, a PC becomes really weak up until you finally actually enter the PrC, and it takes several levels for its benefits to finally start to balance out what you sacrificed. For instance, the EK is no better at attacking than the wizard for your first few levels, and doesn't catch up to other "cast/fight hybrid" classes' attacking potential until the end of their PFS career. (I can go into more detail on that if you like.)...
Of course, this is an explanation coming from someone who played his traditional EK through Eyes of the Ten. No SLA shenanigans.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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If the best option available is, as you suggested yourself, getting more prestige than i currently have on the character and blowing it all in order to retrain him, then i think ruined is an accurate description.
Maybe it is just all the talk of "ruined" that tends to annoy me.
Well I don't think that arguing semantics really helps. IIRC my hunter died at level 3 and it took a couple of sessions to get those negative levels removed. The character was playable, but the wallet puncture did hurt and I am still feeling the aftereffects.
For what it is worth, I would have given a limited rebuild to all those multiclass characters, but it is pretty difficult where to start and to stop. Essentially we are talking about the area between 3XP and 12 XP, I don't expect a huge chance for abuse in that range.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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If this were a home game and I came up with a character concept, received an 'ok' from the GM (but he explicitly warned me he reserved the right to reverse that decision) that my character progression was within the rules and acceptable...Fixed that for you.I really don't know the answer to this, so take it just as a question.
Did the FAQ entry explicitly state that it may be reversed or was that buried somewhere in the forums that you would have to actively search out?
They wrote something along the lines of " it is quite likely that we will come back to this issue and assess it again". That is pretty clear.
The James Jacobs comment, isn't quite as clear and rather well hidden, but the fact that no one expected early entry when they wrote the prestige classes is quite telling.|
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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If this were a home game and I came up with a character concept, received an 'ok' from the GM (but he explicitly warned me he reserved the right to reverse that decision) that my character progression was within the rules and acceptable...Fixed that for you.
You've actually made the analogy less accurate.
It's like if the GM announced that he was henceforth allowing a certain type of build (with the caveat that if it caused problems he could change his mind), then others in the campaign built those types of characters and the GM expressed no concerns for like a year and a half, then you finally build one of your own and the GM suddenly pulls out the old escape clause and then says you're stuck with your character with no rebuild.
That's pretty bad.
Is it a necessary evil/acceptable collateral damage? Maybe. I wasn't part of the decision-making process. But we should at least make some acknowledgment of the fact that it's a pretty crappy deal for some players (and definitely not follow the example of a certain demographic and act like it's some kind of well-deserved punishment).
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It was already advised why the decision was made Here.Actually, it does not answer the OP at all. The question was "Why was this decision made?". Saying that it was made after discussion and that it won't change does NOT answer "Why".John and I discussed grandfathering at length. As John and I both advised in the first thread, this is the decision that the PFS team has made and is what we are going with.Okay, this is a good answer.Michael,
Thanks for your responses. Let's put it this way..this sucks and you did hurt a lot of players by deciding on dropping the hammer without warning and adopt the FAQ as soon as it was released. However it is you and John who call the shots, so..okay.. moving on...
How about devising a policy on how the campaign will adopt the new FAQ as they come from now on to avoid such conversation in the future ??
* Will FAQ become in effect the day they are released if the PFS organizers decided to follow it ?
* Will it be in effect 2 weeks after the announcement is made ? to make sure all people are aware of it ?
* Maybe FAQ become in effect on set dates ? 4 times a year or something... so people check for new rules on Aug, Nov, Feb and May ??I would like you guys to decide on something, announce it and stick to it, that way it is law and we won't get this thing happening every time.... even if you decide on something that is not fair..if it is not fair but consistent then the majority will accept it because it is law.
Cheers
Inari (who is really pissed he will pay 15 PP)
There already is a general set rule for how this works. Its in the Guide to Organized Play.
FAQs and Errata come into play immediately. They always have.
In this case, they made a special decision on how this particular change would be handled as it relates to grandfathering and rebuilds. The grandfathering at all was also a decision the Guide to Organized Play does not support.
Per the Guide, everyone with an early entry SLA would have to make some wholesale changes to their characters, up to the point of what was illegal, nothing more. In other words, they would have had to change approximtely 3 levels of the PrC to 3 levels of one of the entry classes (the one that the early entry SLA mitigated). This would have caused a ton of confusion and chaos.
So they made a determination on how this particular change would be implemented differently than the Guide suggests.
I expect that all complicated changes like this, will deviate from the guidelines in the guide, as appropriate for each individual circumstance. This game is way too complicated to make a hard and fast rule for how everything will be handled, as there will always be something that doesn't fit nicely into the rule (see the multiple threads on the differences between what the guide says and what additional resources say for the advanced class guide playtest, and how drastically the warpriest changed).
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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It was explicitly in the FAQ.Well, that's a pretty bad FAQ entry then and probably should have never existed in the first place. That's someone not doing their job... at least not well.
However, the part that I fundamentally disagree with remains. Not placing fun as the primary objective of a game, including Pathfinder, is my objection. I understand that not everyone will be happy with every decision, but essentially screwing over a segment of the gaming population when other alternatives exist in which no one would feel cheated goes completely against the entire purpose of a game.
That said, it's not exactly this specific decision (it doesn't even affect any of my characters), but the entire philosophy of decision making. If fun isn't held as the absolute most important part of the game, who's to say that future decisions won't stomp all over my fun?
Well I think you are forgetting the large number of players who were not happy with that FAQ.
Want to play a Mythic Theurge, and Eldritch Knight etc. better be from a rather small subset of the available races and or classes .. if you don't well people will call you out on it "Why aren't you [enter option], your way to build this character is just stupid".
Not unlike the problem summoners have with haste.
Some players really don't like their viable options limited like this.
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I think the "why" was adequately addressed in the locked thread.
A small subset of players ruined grace periods for the rest of us.
Don't blame Mike or John. Blame those who abused their leniency in the past.
I think the biggest disconnect I have is that I just don't see how creating a bunch of Aasimar/Tieflings was really abusive. It was behavior that Mike explicitly expected to happen, he was just surprised at the scope. But I just don't see it as an issue that I have 5 (unplayed since they were no longer legal) banked Aasimars instead of one.
Granting for the sake of argument that was abuse, that just means that advance notice is a bad idea. It doesn't mean that either more liberal grandfathering (as suggested in a different thread) or more liberal rebuilds is automatically bad.
Its no huge deal. I have 3 characters affected. All are still viable if somewhat less powerful now. But I am mildly irked at the decision, especially since I really don't understand it.
Note: I am not blaming anybody. I know they put a lot if thought into it. I fully understand why they don't want to go into more detail as to their reasons. But I think they made the wrong decision and so I remain curious and mildly irked.
It wasn't that a bunch were made. It was the fact that some folks thought it was ok to get together and play Master of the Fallen Fortress 10 times in 8 hours and brag about how they were able to get the run down to 23 minutes.
I can't think of a single person with a valid opinion that would feel that isn't abusive.
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But we should at least make some acknowledgment of the fact that it's a pretty crappy deal for some players (and definitely not follow the example of a certain demographic and act like it's some kind of well-deserved punishment).
I acknowledged that elsewhere.
I played my first game as Fighter-1/Wizard-1/EK-1 two days before the ruling was reversed, with a character that I gave 9 boons to (including a certain retirement arc).
I can empathize that this sucks, but I just can't see a way to please everybody.
And I think the amount of ppl in the forums that are just putting all the blame on Mike or John is unfair.
But we should at least make some acknowledgment of the fact that it's a pretty crappy deal for some players (and definitely not follow the example of a certain demographic and act like it's some kind of well-deserved punishment).I acknowledged that elsewhere.
I played my first game as Fighter-1/Wizard-1/EK-1 two days before the ruling was reversed, with a character that I gave 9 boons to (including a certain retirement arc).
I can empathize that this sucks, but I just can't see a way to please everybody.
And I think the amount of ppl in the forums that are just putting all the blame on Mike or John is unfair.
And you think condescending posts, like this one...
If this were a home game and I came up with a character concept, received an 'ok' from the GM (but he explicitly warned me he reserved the right to reverse that decision) that my character progression was within the rules and acceptable...Fixed that for you.
will help?
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As an offbeat suggestion, what if campaign leadership issued a holiday boon that allowed each player who took the boon in the time it was offered the option to rebuild one character. Anyone with a proto Mystic Theurge could rebuild that. People who didn't want to do that could rebuild one other favorite character that didn't turn out the way they wanted
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As an offbeat suggestion, what if campaign leadership issued a holiday boon that allowed each player who took the boon in the time it was offered the option to rebuild one character. Anyone with a proto Mystic Theurge could rebuild that. People who didn't want to do that could rebuild one other favorite character that didn't turn out the way they wanted
We don't know what this Gen Con boon will offer:
But the last few years, Tier 1 GM's at Gen Con got a Boon that allowed them to build a particular race or get a complete and free rebuild of one character.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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As an offbeat suggestion, what if campaign leadership issued a holiday boon that allowed each player who took the boon in the time it was offered the option to rebuild one character. Anyone with a proto Mystic Theurge could rebuild that. People who didn't want to do that could rebuild one other favorite character that didn't turn out the way they wanted
I think one rebuild per season could be a solution, especially in regions where access to Gen Con and similar conventions isn't an option.
Maybe tie it into some kind of reward system for frequent players/GMs.