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Funnily enough the ACG errata is what made me decide to never play PFS again.
** spoiler omitted **
The ACG was the final straw that made me cancel my RPG sub.
** spoiler omitted **
The crane wing nonsense did it for me.
Bought everything before, nothing since.ACG bait & switch confirmed my stance.
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I'll agree that some of the nerfs/errata have been overkill but the game is full of bad options. I'd rather have one more bad option than something that's drastically imbalanced.
I mostly play PFS but even in my non-PFS games the only errata I've rolled my eyes at and ignored was the silly flurry of blows ruling that required you to use unarmed strike (which was reversed a couple weeks later).
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We've kept using the original Divine Protection and Scarred Witch Doctor in Reign of Winter, mostly because we had already rolled the characters when the errata hit. My poor brother had to figure out how to Frankenstein the original Con casting in HeroLab, while I just had to add an extra bonus to saves in the adjustments tab.
Bought everything before, nothing since.
ACG bait & switch confirmed my stance.
Being a volunteer now, I don't have to pay for my content anymore. The updates do make it problematic if I want to keep previous versions around. But I mostly don't bother.
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Never. We almost always nerf harder than the development team.
1. Witch's sleep hex only exhausts enemy if they are higher HD than caster level.
2. Power Attack doesn't get more bonus damage on 2handed than one handed.
3. Dex to damage is an abomination.
I gave a little dance when Divine Grace was purged.
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Never. We almost always nerf harder than the development team.
1. Witch's sleep hex only exhausts enemy if they are higher HD than caster level.
2. Power Attack doesn't get more bonus damage on 2handed than one handed.
3. Dex to damage is an abomination.I gave a little dance when Divine Grace was purged.
I would love to play with your group!
Why is that the only choice though?
It's not, but if the only options are one extreme or the other, I'll take bad/useless over overpowered.
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Why is that the only choice though?Why isn't "make a feat not completely garbage when you nerf it" not an option?
Why is "not ruining good feats and class features that aren't breaking anything in the first place" not an option?
Why is "don't rip apart a bunch of interesting options in a new book right after its sales start dipping" not an option?
Why is "deal with things that are actually broken, poorly written or unclear before you start wholesale nerfing things" not an option?
It feels like there should be a lot more on the table than "Better to have a garbage feat than an overpowered one".
Though even then I'm not sure I'd even agree with that. I'd rather take the overpowered feat. At least you can work with those.
That's always been and will remain a problem with the devs. Almost no proper middle ground. Either something is not worth the paper it's printed on. Or too broken that it risks causing problems during the campaign. Matched only by great fluff, lousy mechanics style of development. A option had great fluff but the crunch is not simply not worth taking IMO.
house rules are a treasured and encouraged part of the game. The Devs present a vision for the game and a set of tools and unless you are in PFS then you make of it what you will. I see no difference between using a 3pp and coming up with your own house rules - all equally valid.
Thanks Feral. We have fun. Shame you don't live in Maidstone, England. Each player is careful to show restraint, otherwise the pack drag them down lol. In all seriousness we have played together for 15+ years so we have probably got all the munchkining out of our system back in the nineties.
A few other chestnuts
- max stat is 16/18 before racial mods (depends on campaign)
- no divine casters in the Carrion Crown.
- guns only reduce armour by max of BAB rather than hitting on a touch at close range
- absolutely no gestating or variant multi-classing
I relented and let the unchained rogue through in my current shattered star campaign. Up to sixth level and the jury is still out.
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This would make Fred the Paladin and Delma the Cleric sad in my game.- no divine casters in the Carrion Crown.
My cleric of eristal from the shudderwood would be sad as well.
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Our group occasionally allows two archetypes that both alter the same feature on a case-by-case feature if the two alterations seem orthogonal or like it doesn't affect the balance of the trade-offs of either archetype.
I think it's important to run things that way that works best for your group if you know what that way is. It's not a partisan thing or vs. mentality; I think you guys are all awesome for running the things the way that makes the game more fun for your individual dynamic, whether you are making certain options more powerful, like many people in the thread, or weaker, like Feral or The Sword, or both. The ability to have a living game like this with major customizability to fit a group's style is one of the big advantages of a game like Pathfinder.
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Our group occasionally allows two archetypes that both alter the same feature on a case-by-case feature if the two alterations seem orthogonal or like it doesn't affect the balance of the trade-offs of either archetype.
I think it's important to run things that way that works best for your group if you know what that way is. It's not a partisan thing or vs. mentality; I think you guys are all awesome for running the things the way that makes the game more fun for your individual dynamic, whether you are making certain options more powerful, like many people in the thread, or weaker, like Feral or The Sword, or both. The ability to have a living game like this with major customizability to fit a group's style is one of the big advantages of a game like Pathfinder.
Mark, this is why I love you man. :-)
The large number of second-printing changes in the new releases is why I adopted a policy of no longer buying a Paizo books until it would be immediately helpful.
When a friend decided to play a skald in my newest campaign, I purchased the Advanced Class Guide. She looked through the book and her first-level skald used a spare 2 gp to buy the Footprint Book from the Adventuring Gear section of the ACG. And the skald used the book to identify a footprint found in a cave and that made the player very happy.
But the errata says that that entry was supposed to be Footprint Cast instead. It had the price and weight of a Footprint Cast, but the name and text of the Footprint Book from Ultimate Equipment, which costs 50 gp.
I will ignore the errata and let the skald keep her favorite book in the reduced price, reduced weight version.
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Mark, this is why I love you man. :-)Our group occasionally allows two archetypes that both alter the same feature on a case-by-case feature if the two alterations seem orthogonal or like it doesn't affect the balance of the trade-offs of either archetype.
I think it's important to run things that way that works best for your group if you know what that way is. It's not a partisan thing or vs. mentality; I think you guys are all awesome for running the things the way that makes the game more fun for your individual dynamic, whether you are making certain options more powerful, like many people in the thread, or weaker, like Feral or The Sword, or both. The ability to have a living game like this with major customizability to fit a group's style is one of the big advantages of a game like Pathfinder.
You guys (by which I mean customizing groups in general) are a big part of what makes the game great (I may be biased, though, since my love of customization is what made me want to do this as a career).
Although it can be demoralizing for me personally to read things couched in a negative tone or adversarially, I try to strip them out to something more like "Here in our local group dynamic, we've looked at the available options and how they fit, and we've decided that <Option X>, which isn't the official option, is the best for us" and then use it as data the next time around. Every group is different, and even some of the more extreme ones (recently a poster said that in their group, trading the human's 1 extra skill rank per level for a +10 bonus on all skill checks starting at 1st level was a balanced option that opened up more RP opportunities, which is a particularly interesting data point, since in most groups, it would break the math of skills wide open) are good to know when it comes to designing new things!
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Our group occasionally allows two archetypes that both alter the same feature on a case-by-case feature if the two alterations seem orthogonal or like it doesn't affect the balance of the trade-offs of either archetype.
This is one I do in my home games a lot. I sort of break class features down into parts and if two archetypes change the same feature but in different ways that don't conflict with each other, I let them stack.
Like.. Master Summoner and Shadow Caller summoner both change your eidolon and your summon monster SLA, but in ways that don't conflict with each other (shadow caller alters your summon list and changes your eidolon's marking, master summoner changes how often you can summon and the eidolon's stats).
As an aside, that FAQ made me wish there actually was a mime bard.
I also tend to ignore the FAQ on renamed class features. If an archetype replaces a class feature with a more specific class feature with a different name but the same benefit, I let it count. So archer fighters with AWT and all that. I even like to do it with other classes that have similarly named and functional features.
We've kept using the original Divine Protection and Scarred Witch Doctor in Reign of Winter, mostly because we had already rolled the characters when the errata hit. My poor brother had to figure out how to Frankenstein the original Con casting in HeroLab, while I just had to add an extra bonus to saves in the adjustments tab.
I've never used HeroLab or the like for exactly that sort of reason; past experience with similar tools means I automatically assume a lack of the sort of flexibility I prefer.
Being a volunteer now, I don't have to pay for my content anymore. The updates do make it problematic if I want to keep previous versions around. But I mostly don't bother.
Being someone with internet access, I don't either (and I'm not talking about the morally and legally questionable sources here)
Although it can be demoralizing for me personally to read things couched in a negative tone or adversarially, I try to strip them out to something more like "Here in our local group dynamic, we've looked at the available options and how they fit, and we've decided that <Option X>, which isn't the official option, is the best for us" and then use it as data the next time around.
I'll preface this with saying I've nothing against you personally, and the demoralization is regrettable (your interactions with people seem to be pretty honest and forthright, you don't seem shy about explaining things so people have a better understanding of how and why you come to decisions which is super-helpful, and I'm happy to take what you say at face value), but you understand where that negativity is coming from, right?
The staff are more-or-less always professional, I wouldn't call them polite; there's too much treating everyone else like they're stupid and outright dishonesty for it to be considered polite, and they get the natural consequence of that back.While it's great that you're enthusiastic about people customising, you must get that for some people it's just outright frustrating having to 'customise' to ignore changes which would break a loved character and invalidate something they spent money on only a few months ago, and which are never explained in ways that aren't treating them like they're stupid or are outright dishonest.
("There is no caster/martial disparity, that's just people pushing an agenda!")
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Our group occasionally allows two archetypes that both alter the same feature on a case-by-case feature if the two alterations seem orthogonal or like it doesn't affect the balance of the trade-offs of either archetype.
I think it's important to run things that way that works best for your group if you know what that way is. It's not a partisan thing or vs. mentality; I think you guys are all awesome for running the things the way that makes the game more fun for your individual dynamic, whether you are making certain options more powerful, like many people in the thread, or weaker, like Feral or The Sword, or both. The ability to have a living game like this with major customizability to fit a group's style is one of the big advantages of a game like Pathfinder.
Mark, this is why I love you man. :-)
Dang it, Covent, beat me to it!
Although it can be demoralizing for me personally to read things couched in a negative tone or adversarially, I try to strip them out to something more like "Here in our local group dynamic, we've looked at the available options and how they fit, and we've decided that <Option X>, which isn't the official option, is the best for us" and then use it as data the next time around. Every group is different, and even some of the more extreme ones (recently a poster said that in their group, trading the human's 1 extra skill rank per level for a +10 bonus on all skill checks starting at 1st level was a balanced option that opened up more RP opportunities, which is a particularly interesting data point, since in most groups, it would break the math of skills wide open) are good to know when it comes to designing new things!
First and foremost, if anything I've said is demoralizing or adversarial: I'm sorry! It's certainly not intended to be that way.
While I find myself disagreeing with the errata of a lot of things, I do think the PDT has a lot - and I mean a lot - of stress put on them to make good decisions... stress that I can definitely see leading to decisions made differently than I would prefer. It's understandable, even as I disagree with it; and I want you to know, that, no matter how much I vocally disagree with things, I do respect you and the PDT for doing what you're doing and being as responsive to feedback as you are.
For the second thing, this is exactly why I love you guys. You take everything as a "data point" and try and learn from it. That open responsiveness and willingness to interact with, talk about, think about, and even sometimes reply to your own fans is... incredible. It's one of the primary things that has drawn me so thoroughly into Paizo, in general. You guys are great: keep up the good work!
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Oh, and soundbites, amirite?!
You say the one thing that one time, and then you're stuck listening to it on repeat from everyone forever. Man, fame suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.
(Remind me to do nothing to gain fame for the rest of my life. >.>)
Funnily enough the ACG errata is what made me decide to never play PFS again.
** spoiler omitted **
The ACG was the final straw that made me cancel my RPG sub.
** spoiler omitted **
The crane wing nonsense did it for me.
Bought everything before, nothing since.
ACG bait & switch confirmed my stance.
Okay - what happened with the Advanced Class Guide that I missed?
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Being a volunteer now, I don't have to pay for my content anymore. The updates do make it problematic if I want to keep previous versions around. But I mostly don't bother.Being someone with internet access, I don't either (and I'm not talking about the morally and legally questionable sources here)
I was really talking more about the art and setting material when I said content, sorry for the confusion. It's helpful being able to pull the images for my online games, and they don't put the adventures up for free anywhere either.
I was really talking more about the art and setting material when I said content, sorry for the confusion. It's helpful being able to pull the images for my online games, and they don't put the adventures up for free anywhere either.Being a volunteer now, I don't have to pay for my content anymore. The updates do make it problematic if I want to keep previous versions around. But I mostly don't bother.Being someone with internet access, I don't either (and I'm not talking about the morally and legally questionable sources here)
Ahh, gotcha.
My TT group has just started on Way of the Wicked, which is a) our first real attempt at an AP since we stopped buying books and b) not Paizo.Our DM is generally more of a 'homebrew setting and story' guy, so withdrawing support is likely less onerous for us than it would be a group that absolutely loved running APs.
The real sucky part is that I'm a bit of an obsessive-completionist, and I've got a bookshelf that's ever more incomplete.
But, y'know, them's the breaks.
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Oh, god, a list. Well, in addition to my extensive House Rules:
1. Crane Wing's original version is allowed.
2. Ditto Scarred Witch Doctor.
3. Slashing Grace works fine with TWF, spell combat, or shields. Ditto Fencing Grace now.
4. Juju Oracle's original version is cool with me.
5. Halfling Warslinger works on all sling type weapons.
6. Since someone mentioned it, I'd definitely allow an Oracle to use spiritual Weapon with Cha. That's not actually an errata, though.
7. Again, this isn't really errata, but I'd be willing to be flexible on just barely overlapping archetypes too.
Other than that, I'm mostly in agreement with Paizo's erratas.
I mean, I House Rule things to the point where many martial Classes (Fighter, I'm looking at you) get half their abilities from my House Rules, but the errata mostly seems very solid.
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Okay - what happened with the Advanced Class Guide that I missed?
The book was a rush release at Gencon to get more sales even when it was known that errors were in the book. Hell the first print run has Adventure Path on the cover.
Paizo took way too damn long to get errata out for the book. When it did it was nine pages. As usually either they nerfed stuff that did not need nerfing. Ignored stuff that needed nerfing. In some cases something like Divine Protection that was pretty strong nerfed into almost being useless. What was too good of a feat is now not even worth taking if your DM offers it to you for free imo. It also revealed how much of the book need errata. It feels like almost a quarter to half the book imo. Might as well wait for the second printing.
Nor was there ever a really apology imo either. Of course they are not forced to apology. Yet with the mess and fiasco that was the ACG if I was in there place I would have apologized. Even with their reason for getting it out at Gencon. To me and some others here it left a bad taste in our mouths. In some cases it led to some fans cancelling their subscriptions and no longer trusting Paizo quality at face value. Really I can't blame them.
I'm sure what I wrote will bother some of the fans here. I'm not lying to protect their feelings nor the devs at Paizo.
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Nor was there ever a really apology imo either. Of course they are not forced to apology. Yet with the mess and fiasco that was the ACG if I was in there place I would have apologized. Even with their reason for getting it out at Gencon. To me and some others here it left a bad taste in our mouths. In some cases it led to some fans cancelling their subscriptions and no longer trusting Paizo quality at face value. Really I can't blame them.
I'm sure what I wrote will bother some of the fans here. I'm not lying to protect their feelings nor the devs at Paizo.
There's the thing; you'll get people saying 'well they don't need to apologise', and they don't. Or that they don't owe anyone any explanations for the heavy-handed and ham-fisted way they seem to go about errata, and they don't.
No business needs to provide good customer service. But there's sure as hell a sound business reason to do so.
When the meat of what they produce is legally freely available, while they don't need to avoid disincentivising people from giving them money, it's probably not a bad idea. I've got lots of disposable income that I'd be happy to spend with them if they didn't have such a god-awful business attitude towards their customers, and I'm certain that's true at least a hundred times over, because I'm not a special and unique snowflake.
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The real sucky part is that I'm a bit of an obsessive-completionist, and I've got a bookshelf that's ever more incomplete.
But, y'know, them's the breaks.
I got rid of my AP collection (From the first all the way through Kingmaker) because it was taking up space and I wasn't reading it. Not sure if that was the right move, but I much prefer a digital collection for casual browsing.
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I'm not lying to protect their feelings nor the devs at Paizo.
That's good. You shouldn't.
But, uh...
Nor was there ever a really apology imo either.
I've read James saying how embarrassed he was.
In fact, here.
That might not read like an apology to you - and that's fair, everyone has their preferences for formality - but it reads like one to me, including a statement of correction for future products. Again, it might not be one to you, but it works for me, personally.
Paizo has faults, and being able to call them out on it is important, but so is being able to recognize when they make good steps, too, I think.
(I think that's true of any person or group, for that matter.)
I've got lots of disposable income that I'd be happy to spend with them if they didn't have such a god-awful business attitude towards their customers
Okay, I'm really, seriously, genuinely curious: when was this, and with whom?
Are you speaking more generally (i.e. the FAQ/Errata) or more specifically?
If you want, we can PM, but I cannot, for the life of me, imagine this is a standard thing for the whole company, when almost everyone I've dealt with the majority of the situations I've dealt with them has been different.
To be clear, I'm not trying to call you "wrong," or really call you out in any manner - you're free to decline, and there's nothing wrong about doing so. I accept that this is what happened from your perspective.
I'm just... surprised, and really curious. This is especially interesting to me since one of my big "things" is that people try to communicate similar concepts often running afoul of using different emotionally-laden words compared to what they're attempting to get across.
Thanks!
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I've had to call them before, a few times, and they have always been the most pleasant people to talk to, so I don't get it either.
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I've had to call them before, a few times, and they have always been the most pleasant people to talk to, so I don't get it either.
I think there are some people that look for fault in everything, so that they can take the "high road" and feel better about themselves.
It's a frickin game, the people making I am sure love working on it. They also need to make money to stay in business, so maybe the ACG got pushed out to fast and wasn't proofread to well, stuff happens.
I imagine no one in this thread that is on their "high horse" has EVER done a rush job on anything ever right???
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And sometimes there are people who just plain don't like being lied to, treated like they're stupid, given transparent PR spin in place of answers and then censored (and censured) for calling it such.
Crazy world we live in, right?
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Specifics! C'mon!
If you're not going to specifically say what your beef is how can it be dealt with. :-)
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Specifics! C'mon!
If you're not going to specifically say what your beef is how can it be dealt with. :-)
Firstly, it's a general issue, not a matter of specifics, and secondly I don't expect it to be dealt with, ever. I'm sure they're making plenty of money, doesn't matter if they lose a few customers along the way, always more where they came from.
Are you speaking more generally (i.e. the FAQ/Errata) or more specifically?
Yeah, it's a general thing, and common enough that if it's not the written SOP then it's an unwritten understanding.
I'm not going to try and invalidate and dismiss your experiences... if you've had nothing but positive interactions, that's great, I'm not going to do the equivalent of what happens to people who dare question or complain about the Pi Golem.It hasn't been my experience, personally (obviously). I don't consider being lied to a 'positive interaction'. When the official company stance is 'there is no caster/martial disparity, that's just people pushing an agenda' then the official company stance is one of dishonesty towards its customers, and so blatently that they must think people are stupid to even try.
Especially when they come out and say things like 'we consider power attack the upper-end of the curve for things martial characters should find desirable, and Wish for casters' (Jason Bulman, iirc, around the time they weren't nerfing Crane Wing because of PFS, honest guv).
So they lie, insultingly badly, and have people censored (and censured) for not falling into line behind the lie. Or they just ignore you outright. That evidences (and maybe even breeds) a culture where the customers aren't seen as valued, but something unimportant, a nuisance, expendable even ('doesn't matter if we lose some customers, plenty more suckers where they came from'). I'd rather not pay for the dubious privilege of that treatment.
And they disincentivise people from actually giving them money for stuff by the heavy-handed and ham-fisted way they go about 'fixing' things. Say my favourite character type is a an agile martial. Given the team's track record, I'm not going to trust any book they put out with good stuff for the type of character I like to play. I can't trust that the things I buy the book for are going to survive the first round of errata. That sense of mistrust and frustration might be eased if they came out with convincing arguments or explanations why two-weapon fighting with dex-to-damage or original Crane Wing are so world-shattering (a world they share, let's not forget, with Wizards....) so people can be left thinking 'well ok, that sucks, but I can see why they did that', but we don't get that. We get silence, or we get 'we had to nerf Crane Wing, it's OP because it forces the DM to build the encounter around the PCs abilities' 'but DMs should be doing that anyway?' 'yeah, but they can't in PFS' 'but this isn't a nerf for PFS?' 'no' '. . .'
(Crane Wing is only the best example of this I can think of, because it sticks out personally due to the large swathes of conversation - mine, other posters, Jason Bulman's - that were deleted for not towing the party line and needing swept under the rug when it happened. It's certainly not the only incident)
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Exactly. PFS rules should be just for PFS!
No one mentioned that Crane Wing wasn't the problem back then either. It was Monk of Many Styles that was the issue. Now, three different Crane Wings later, the archetype gets a terrible nerf but we don't get the old Crane Wing back...
Not surprisingly, I'm now comparing Paizo's changes with Blizzard's changes to Hearthsone. "Nerf not the actually problem, but the fun option" shouldn't be a thing."
The few times I've actually GM'd, the big thing I allow is, as a couple people have said, archetypes that affect the same ability in different ways to be combined. Like if one Magus archetype gave you diminished spellcasting, and the other made you spontaneous casting, but no other features were touched, I'd allow that. Case by case basis, of course. But that's my big thing. For the most part, I don't think anyone in my playgroup really used a lot of the options that were nerfed or affected by Errata anyways, so those dont come up. Though I'd definitely let people use the old Scarred Witch Doctor if they wanted.
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Now, three different Crane Wings later, the archetype gets a terrible nerf but we don't get the old Crane Wing back...
Master of Many Styles wasn't nerfed. The 2 level dip into Master of Many Styles was nerfed (which is good) and the class itself was made reasonably solid (also good). MoMS is now the go-to monk archetype if you want to mix unarmed & natural weapon attacks. (Tengu make excellent MoMS monks if you can grab Agile.)
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Now, three different Crane Wings later, the archetype gets a terrible nerf but we don't get the old Crane Wing back...Master of Many Styles wasn't nerfed. The 2 level dip into Master of Many Styles was nerfed (which is good) and the class itself was made reasonably solid (also good). MoMS is now the go-to monk archetype if you want to mix unarmed & natural weapon attacks. (Tengu make excellent MoMS monks if you can grab Agile.)
Yup. As I said before, the only problem is that the wildcard feats should ignore prerequisites. Even as written, it's a solid class, but you REALLY need to plan your build in order to qualify for the styles you want.
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The actual changes made in most of the errata don't really bother me so much as the fact that they're changing stuff without any real need. I don't mind any of the versions of Crane Style; thematically I actually liked no.2 the most, since it was the only one that didn't require getting 'hit' before getting a riposte, which made it more reliably aggressive as well as defensive; why in the &$%&$ are we on no.3 now?
The only two errata/nerfs/clarifications that immediately come to my mind as for the best were the Sacred Fist's pseudo-full-BAB and the whole Precise Strike Magus thing. I only say that out of the fact that by straight numbers those things were a little comparatively absurd, and the Magus hardly needed a massive damage boost - for only it's most cliche form - through looting the core feature of another class. Though in the case of the Magus it was more a clarification than a change anyhow, regardless of how insistent people were about getting level-to-damage.
Why they care so much about dex-to-damage feats when Agile is a thing is beyond me. Personally I would prefer it if there was no way to do general dex-to-damage without a feat and some kind of minimal strength requirement, but we're already long past that.
The only two errata/nerfs/clarifications that immediately come to my mind as for the best were the Sacred Fist's pseudo-full-BAB and the whole Precise Strike Magus thing. I only say that out of the fact that by straight numbers those things were a little comparatively absurd, and the Magus hardly needed a massive damage boost - for only it's most cliche form - through looting the core feature of another class. Though in the case of the Magus it was more a clarification than a change anyhow, regardless of how insistent people were about getting level-to-damage.Why they care so much about dex-to-damage feats when Agile is a thing is beyond me. Personally I would prefer it if there was no way to do general dex-to-damage without a feat and some kind of minimal strength requirement, but we're already long past that.
The Precise Strike thing with Magus didn't bother me at all, it never seemed reasonable that they should be able to.
The collateral damage making pretty much the whole arcane deed set useless, however, was just another example of 'good idea, now what's the worst possible way we can implement it?'.(the OP&R 'fix' bothered me more. 'I know, let's make that deed the swashbuckler's signature deed, and then let's bar it from Signature Deed! Drinks are on me!')
Dex to damage for two weapon fighting? Yeah, you can still do it, you just have to jump through some irritating hoops.
Dex to damage for a Magus who wants to actually use his key class feature? Yeah, you can do it. I hope you like scimitars! (until they get around to taking Dervish Dance to the vet, of course. Anyone trust them to leave that alone?)
Neither thing is game-breaking. Neither thing has been removed as an option completely. If that's the sort of character you want to play, though, they're going to keep on making it as irritating and frustrating to achieve as they can.
Deliberately setting out to make their game frustrating to play for their customers is another one of those 'terrible customer service that makes you think they consider you a nuisance rather than valued' things.
I don't use the nerf to Crane style. We didn't find it broken. Found bigger issue with Clustered Shot.
Not surprisingly, I'm now comparing Paizo's changes with Blizzard's changes to Hearthsone. "Nerf not the actually problem, but the fun option" shouldn't be a thing."
I'm wondering if they happen to use the same nerf bat. We should compare the marks on Starving Buzzard's back to those on Dex to Damage.
Actually, it is weird that Dervish Dance still exists... i am glad for it but still it seems like someone must stay awake at night trying to think of ways to "fix" the game and remove that option.
Dervish Dance isn't usable for TWF, so it's pretty much in line with other dex-to-damage stuff as it is. Though I'll be quite annoyed if they make it impossible to use with Flurry of Blows, since it's so appropriate thematically and it's hardly easy to pull off.
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Am i off on it though or is Dervish Dance the only DEX to damage feat that allows Spell Combat now though? They went out of their way to remove that option from Slashing Grace and Fencing Grace so i imagine there is a desire on the PDT to cut it from this one as well.Actually, it is weird that Dervish Dance still exists... i am glad for it but still it seems like someone must stay awake at night trying to think of ways to "fix" the game and remove that option.Dervish Dance isn't usable for TWF, so it's pretty much in line with other dex-to-damage stuff as it is. Though I'll be quite annoyed if they make it impossible to use with Flurry of Blows, since it's so appropriate thematically and it's hardly easy to pull off.
Dervish Dance (feat) or Agile weapon property. I am really not a fan of the latter, for mechanical, thematic, and "table-practical" reasons.
And I have to say, the Slashing/Fencing Grace changes along with other ACG erratas really look like someone's trying to make the Swashbuckler look better than it is by nerfing all of its imitators.
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All you other swashbuckler's just imitatin'; won't the real swash please stand up, please stand up, please stand up...?
And I have to say, the Slashing/Fencing Grace changes along with other ACG erratas really look like someone's trying to make the Swashbuckler look better than it is by nerfing all of its imitators.
Hammer, meet nail.
In the same way that some people have blamed the Crane Wing nerf on an attempt to make OP&R comparatively better. I wouldn't be surprised if all the people saying 'well Daring Champion makes a better Swashbuckler!' influenced decisions somewhere along the line.The really annoying part is that, in my experience and that of most of the playtesters I read, saves are probably their biggest weakness. Having the bad save as their only good save, and the joke that is Charmed Life trying to mitigate that, hamstrings the class (above and beyond the regular martial pitfalls). This was pointed out during the playtest at great length. Just give them good fort (like both their parents) and ref (like the gunslinger), bury a new class ability (let's call it Blasé) at lvl 4 which allows them to use Charisma instead of Wisdom for Will (because Panache alone is rarely enough reason to invest in Charisma, which is clearly the intention), ditch charmed life and reap the benefits. But no....