Not to mention that unlike the slumber hex, it has no range given.
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They're too busy nerfing Monks and Weapon Cords to be bothered with silly things like this. =p
The hex can definitely use some work. I run it affecting undead. It lasts until the ice is broken or melts as the person inside can't be hurt until it is. It's all my interpretation of RAI.
Yeah.. Ice Tomb Hex is very poorly written... We get a vague idea of what it's supposed to do, but we have no clue about how it works. It's baffling that it hasn't been addressed yet.
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Let's face it - Ice Tomb is a major hex - only available at lvl 10+. It'll very rarely come online in PFS, which means it's not on the PF errata team's radar.
Weapon cords, Crane Wing and Flurrying with a single weapon on the other hand... All concepts that can come online at level one.
Let's face it - Ice Tomb is a major hex - only available at lvl 10+. It'll very rarely come online in PFS, which means it's not on the PF errata team's radar.
Weapon cords, Crane Wing and Flurrying with a single weapon on the other hand... All concepts that can come online at level one.
So the solution is lower the level?
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Rynjin isn't wrong, though. Ultimate Magic, where Ice Tomb came from, has been out for, what, 2 1/2 years now? For the woefully inadequate technical details of a very useful hex on a well-liked caster class to go unaddressed this long is odd, to put it mildly. As recently as a month ago, there were people posting in a thread on the Rules board that had 24 FAQ requests to fill in the holes on this ability. End result: nothing.
Now, contrast this with errata we've seen for feats, equipment, and other mechanics meant for non-spell casting classes that worked fine: crane-wing, weapon cords and the free action kerfuffle, the flurry of blows blow-up, brass knuckles, etc. These were changes that took perfectly well-functioning options and made them worse with errata. What kind of design philosophy prioritizes taking what works and making it less useful over taking what doesn't work and fixing it? I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt that there's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on that's prevented some errata getting out before others, but these getting addressed before Ice Tomb or Paragon Surge is still damned odd.
I hadn't looked at this ability expecting it to be as well-worded as most paizo stuff, and was caught off guard when the witch I DM for started using it. I haven't seen an ability that I've had to houserule as much as this for sure.
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Why is the presumption touch, considering it has 0 language about having to touch someone and it says that they get hit by a "storm of ice and freezing wind"? If anything the presumption is that has no range and is any target you have line of sight and line of effect to since it has no language limiting its range.
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Just for fun, I went through and put together a list of all the hexes which don't have ANY language on their range. The results are not pretty...
Hexes: Blight, Charm, Cursed Wound, Evil Eye, Peacebond, Unnerve Beasts, Ward, Water Lung
Major Hexes: Delicious Fright, Hoarfrost, Ice Tomb, Infected Wounds
Grand Hexes: Curse of Nonviolence, Dire Prophecy, Eternal Slumber, Lay to Rest
Keep in mind, this is leaving some hexes where range isn't important, like Cauldron or Witch's Hut, off the list. So, out of 61 hexes, a full 25% of them have no mention of the effective initial range. Considering it would be beyond silly to allow these as simply "Range: sight", I'm astonished that the various errata and dev team comments on various hexes hasn't touched this topic yet.
So the solution is lower the level?Let's face it - Ice Tomb is a major hex - only available at lvl 10+. It'll very rarely come online in PFS, which means it's not on the PF errata team's radar.
Weapon cords, Crane Wing and Flurrying with a single weapon on the other hand... All concepts that can come online at level one.
The ideal solution would be for Paizo to issue errata on books independently of whether or not they're reprinting them, since the current system actively reduces the amount of errata published over time.
Barring that option, I'm guessing that if Ice Tomb was a level one hex alongside the Sleep hex it would most likely be fixed a lot faster.
Since most players (PFS or otherwise) tend to play in the lower levels, low level issues tend to get noticed (and reported) more frequently. The more an "issue" shows up, the more likely it is to get rules team attention.
Just for fun, I went through and put together a list of all the hexes which don't have ANY language on their range. The results are not pretty...
Hexes: Evil Eye,
I just picked this one to check, because I was sure it had a range given and see:
Evil Eye (Su): The witch can cause doubt to creep into the mind of a foe within 30 feet that she can see.
Besides I always consideres 30ft to be the standard range for hexes.
There was a thread on the topic of hex ranges once that had quite some FAQ hits and was marked "answered in FAQ" but I could not find said FAQ.
So the solution is lower the level?Let's face it - Ice Tomb is a major hex - only available at lvl 10+. It'll very rarely come online in PFS, which means it's not on the PF errata team's radar.
Weapon cords, Crane Wing and Flurrying with a single weapon on the other hand... All concepts that can come online at level one.
The ideal solution would be for Paizo to issue errata on books independently of whether or not they're reprinting them, since the current system actively reduces the amount of errata published over time.
Barring that option, I'm guessing that if Ice Tomb was a level one hex alongside the Sleep hex it would most likely be fixed a lot faster.
Since most players (PFS or otherwise) tend to play in the lower levels, low level issues tend to get noticed (and reported) more frequently. The more an "issue" shows up, the more likely it is to get rules team attention.
Alternatively, you could get more people to run higher level games, thus making these problems more prevalent and getting the Devs to work on it.
But it seems like the issue is that people think higher level is broken, so no one seems to play it, so no one reports those issues. And people who do just get the whole "higher levels broken go home" routine, which leads to the issues STILL not getting fixed and fewer people playing the levels.
Vicious cycle.
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When I and others asked if they could play test errata like they do play tests for other material were told it's impossible. Or something along those lines. I just looked at weapon cords. They nerfed THAT. Really. Recovering a weapon with a swift action was too game breaking for some people so they made it a move action. Wow...just wow. I think people who are obsessed with balance who play this game keep missing the point. I buy a weapon cord to make sure to make it very hard to disarm any character. Otherwise why buy a weapon cordi n the first place. It's like Crane Wing. Hearing fellow gamers complain that a character using the non-errat version were too hard to hit. Again that's the point. I build a character around the concept of being hard to hit well he should be hard to hit. Tiny Hut provides cover to those inside of it's radius. That must be broken and needs to be nerfed then. Since sleeping characters have to be easy targets to hit at all times.
More time passes the more I'm unimpressed with the way Paizo handles errata. As well as those who need to balance and control everything within the rules.
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Well, I'm not terribly bothered about fixing things immediately or not. Paizo publishes errata with reprintings and that's fine by me. Their system is their own, despite how inefficient some people may think it. Seems reasonable for making sure your books are all up to date.
I'm just saying that there are some things they will not get to, as there isn't enough data on it for them. The whole catch-22 of "this probably won't get fixed because no one plays high level, high level isn't fixed so no one plays it" just frustrates me is all. So be it for this reason or for waiting for a reprint, you may need to wait a while for an errata.
Why not start a thread in the Rules question forum, and detail exactly what your questions are? then we can FAQ it (or not).
I have two rather interesting threads going on just that sort of thing.
There have been a number of threads on Ice Tomb in the Rules question forum and I suspect that such a thread will be meet with the same success as those 2 previously mentioned threads.
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Here's the thread I mentioned, DrDeth. Feel free to add more FAQ requests to the total, though I'm not sure what effect it'll have.
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SKR did indeed state that about historical crafting times.
Even after someone posted evidence proving him wrong on the realism front too.
And yes, Jason Buhlman decided to nerf the weapon cords because he had played around with his mouse all day, unsuccessfully.
SKR did indeed state that about historical crafting times.
Even after someone posted evidence proving him wrong on the realism front too.
And yes, Jason Buhlman decided to nerf the weapon cords because he had played around with his mouse all day, unsuccessfully.
I understood that that was a joke.
Well so far it looks like we have established that 40+ requests for a FAQ aren't sufficient to get one...
The design team have been pretty clear about that anyway:
"Is a question with more FAQ-clicks more likely to be answered?
No. The staff can see that some posts have a lot of FAQ flags, but the staff also evaluates the complexity of the question, how much impact the answer has on player characters, and other factors. Just because someone managed to rally a lot of support about a particular question doesn't mean it's the most important, urgent, or relevant question.
In other words, sometimes it’s better or more efficient for the staff to answer a question with fewer FAQ flags than one with many FAQ flags."
Also, given this bit:
"What's the best way to get a FAQ answered?
A short, concise question is much more likely to get a FAQ than a post that is a page of supposition, links to other discussions, with no actual question presented or with a question buried in the middle of a paragraph.
A post with one question on one topic is much more likely to get a FAQ than a post with multiple questions, especially if they are about different topics. This is because the staff can't clear a FAQ-flag for just part of a post, which means they have to answer all questions in that post to clear it, and some of those questions may be harder to answer (meaning “takes more research and time”) than others. In other words, the most difficult or complex question in a multi-question post tends to slow down getting any questions in that post answered.
Book names and page references help the staff find what you’re asking about. There are a lot of feats, traits, spells, magic items, and rules subsystems in the game now, and even something like “Ultimate Combat page 226” makes it a lot easier for the staff to look up what you’re asking about."
Maybe it's worth identifying the most essential bits that need clarifying (like one thread of "What's the range?" and another asking "What's the duration?" or something). Not sure if a flurry of individual queries is going to be more annoying to the design team, but it might identify which things are potential "sticking points" and which they currently have an answer for (or don't think needs an answer).
What I was suggesting was several posts along the lines of: "What is the range of ice tomb?"
Maybe there's one issue the design team are split over (or want to be consistent with some other, more complicated area). By bundling all the queries into one FAQ request, it's possible the quickly answered things are being held up by one sticking point.
I figure it's worth using the FAQ system the way it's set up to be used - ie for single questions at a time, rather than "this is broken, please address the following six questions". If I had a never ending list of FAQs to respond to, I could easily imagine ignoring those outside the published guidelines of how they should be structured. Just as an easy filter.
Well, it's not my FAQ system, so I'm not guaranteeing it will work. But that's what they said would make it more likely for them to answer.
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Paizo doesnt issue errata based on balance, if it did things like crafting would have been issued errata.
If you think that is the case I suggest you look at what they did to Crane wing. A option that while imo not broken because there was ways to counter it was nerfed to being not worth taking.
They issue errata based on what they think is "realistic". Hence the whole weapon cords thing, because, IIRC, a paizo staff member tried it out IRL and decided it was unrealistic to be able to do it with a swift action.
Yes because D&D is so very realistic as a rpg. When Wizards can create demiplanes. Totally "realistic". I'm also sure a staff member went out and bought a weapon cord just to practice with a weapon. Just like they were told proven wrong on craftingf being realistic by fans proving they were wrong.
At no point whatsoever did "this is overpowered" enter the equation.
If you say so Crane Wing and errata pretty much say it does. They altered a feat because some in the community thought it was too powerful. It's the very essence of "This is overpowered" as far as I'm concerned. Enough of the fanbase make a fuss and something will get a errata usually for the worse. Even when it's proven that what they altered was not remotely unbalanced or needing to be errata in the first place.
I can respect wanting to defend Paizo yet so far you have done nothing to change the way I view Paizo on how they handle errata. Either they go to far. Or they leave stuff that needs to be changed as is. They are unable or unwilling to find the proper middle ground with errata. Six years into developing Pathfinder they should be able to do errata in their sleep.
Well, it's not my FAQ system, so I'm not guaranteeing it will work. But that's what they said would make it more likely for them to answer.
One problem is that sometimes things get flagged as answered in FAQ without actually being answered, in FAQ or otherwise.