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Wow, lots of nerfs. Losing that +1 AC hat hurts, but it's just numbers. If they feel the need to change prices, the amount of bonus or type of bonus an item gives, whatever, that doesn't impact the concept of anyone's characters. Loosing items that grant new abilities however, can kill whole character builds. I guess Amelia is retiring early since she no longer functions without her featherstep slippers. That's the penalty for making a weird build in pfs I guess; you might get the rug pulled out from under you by errata.
I do have to say, I burst out laughing when I saw they upped the price of the mithral cooking implements. Seriously, at the old price it was a running gag in my home group how this one merchant had a mithral pan he kept trying to sell everyone, 'cause what kind of idiot would ever pay 1,000gp for a masterwork cooking tool? and now they cost double. Heh.
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Wow, lots of nerfs. Losing that +1 AC hat hurts, but it's just numbers. If they feel the need to change prices, the amount of bonus or type of bonus an item gives, whatever, that doesn't impact the concept of anyone's characters. Loosing items that grant new abilities however, can kill whole character builds. I guess Amelia is retiring early since she no longer functions without her featherstep slippers. That's the penalty for making a weird build in pfs I guess; you might get the rug pulled out from under you by errata.
** spoiler omitted **I do have to say, I burst out laughing when I saw they upped the price of the mithral cooking implements. Seriously, at the old price it was a running gag in my home group how this one merchant had a mithral pan he kept trying to sell everyone, 'cause what kind of idiot would ever pay 1,000gp for a masterwork cooking tool? and now they cost double. Heh.
... would that even work in the first place? I didn't think you could combine items in PFS.
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Seems like the Jingasa could have stayed a +1 AC 'luck bonus' hat and lost the crit/sneak piece if the price had been lowered to 2,500.. at least according to the 'creating magic item' rules.
As it is.. yeah.. it's kinda completely ruined. I always thought the item was broken so this is no surprise... but.. the fix isn't great.
By my calculations the item should have cost like 50,500 or something like that.
Moment of Prescience - (8*15*2000)/5 = 48,000
AC +1 (luck) - 1*2,500 = 2,500
Total = 50,500
For a single use of Moment of Prescience... it should cost like 6,000
Of course the item doesn't actually give full use of the spell, in fact I'm not really sure that the spell actually is being used at all there.. but it's something close to the spell I guess... which could allow for the price being a bit squishy.
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I'm pretty disappointed by the changes as well. Errata should be an opportunity to correct the wording on things that aren't functioning properly, or to correct obvious mistakes. Not as an avenue to weaken or completely rewrite items, feats, and so on.
These erratas rarely end up making options stronger, unless that option simply didn't function in the first place.
It's starting to feel like paizo is sticking these stronger, attractive items into their books in order to entice the item hunter/optimizer crowd and then removing those things in order to make their next release more attractive.
I'm not really going all paranoid conspiracy hat here. I don't think that's what is really going on. But that's what it's starting to feel like.
It's disappointing to me when I realize that a particular book is less valuable to me after errata than it was pre-changes. And it's happened multiple times. I've lost count of the number of actual characters I've had to retire because of errata or faq changes, not to mention the characters that have never gotten past the concept phase because they've been errata'd away before I got a chance to play them.
If there was one thing I could request from the paizo team here, it would be to make as many positive changes as negative ones. If you want to burn the jingasa to the ground, go for it. But in return add something interesting and USEFUL to another item.
Give us something positive, something that adds more value to our books, when you're going through and weakening or destroying options in them. Give me a reason to look at the release of errata as something to be excited about, instead of the day more character builds will die.
Just sayin'...
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I sure am glad I decided to stop buying first printings. Why don't they just ban everything that isn't the big six? Seems as though they don't want player options to have an impact on the game, maybe they'll ban feats next. At least I wouldn't have expectations of agency then.
Another slightly related piece of feedback: When admins delete posts from threads, please leave the post in their post history so that they can revisit and revise posts that may infringe some rule or other. I didn't particularly like that I had to retype my post from scratch.
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Designer
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Give us something positive, something that adds more value to our books
Good thought Magicdealer! I'm a big fan of this perspective, and we try to do this when we see something that's an obvious issue in that direction as well, but those tend to be less visible because the original option was usually weak, so no one really remembered it. Cunning, for instance, was a terrible purchase in the 1st printing even if your character was already going to have 5 ranks in Knowledge skills because it was still worse than just getting another +1. The new cunning is actually really nice for a crit-focused smartypants character (perhaps a shocking grasp magus who can get the enhancement bonus in other ways), but it hasn't gotten more than one mention so far (by an extremely thorough poster who went through every item as a line item) and it'll take a while for builds to start including it. I'm excited to see it show up more often and am considering it for my falcata-wielding lore warden fighter in PFS.
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Antimagic field is an emanation so... I guess the BBEG got instagibbed since they must have stood right next to the door? Seems like a bad play on the BBEG's part.Players never think to do that. They buff in combat positions around the door.Hehe, mine were mad when the up till that point unaware caster boss made the perception check to hear them buffing up and dropped an antimagic field right at the doorway :3
Custom mines that set it off for a few rounds.
Walked away, readied teleport, memorized PCs faces when they came in, and gone.
Edit: Sorry, this was a home game. I've been jumping back and forth between threads that I forgot this was the PFS thread. My bad.
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Ultimate Equipment came out nearly four years ago.
Thus, it seems safe to say that every item in the book has been thoroughly evaluated by the player base and subjected to every kind of unintended use imaginable... yet this errata made adjustments to a tiny fraction of the items in the book.
The vast majority of the content remains unchanged. Further, a good portion of the changes had been previously revealed as FAQs.
It seems unlikely that future printings will have many more changes as most which might be needed should have been uncovered by now. Maybe some interaction with a future option will prompt another change, but overall there shouldn't be major adjustments.
Thus, my general takeaway is... 'no big deal'. A handful of minor adjustments, several of which I was modifying anyway (e.g. instead of 24 hour attunement I usually apply 'once per day' to ALL items of a type so users can't just change to get extra uses), out of a huge book of items. So little has changed that I can continue using my first edition with just the errata sheets attached for occasional reference.
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Give us something positive, something that adds more value to our booksGood thought Magicdealer! I'm a big fan of this perspective, and we try to do this when we see something that's an obvious issue in that direction as well, but those tend to be less visible because the original option was usually weak, so no one really remembered it. Cunning, for instance, was a terrible purchase in the 1st printing even if your character was already going to have 5 ranks in Knowledge skills because it was still worse than just getting another +1. The new cunning is actually really nice for a crit-focused smartypants character (perhaps a shocking grasp magus who can get the enhancement bonus in other ways), but it hasn't gotten more than one mention so far (by an extremely thorough poster who went through every item as a line item) and it'll take a while for builds to start including it. I'm excited to see it show up more often and am considering it for my falcata-wielding lore warden fighter in PFS.
I agree, it would be nice to improve things at the same time as things get nerfed! But overall, that's not at all the pattern we see. I wish you luck in changing it.
Cunning is maybe the only thing that could have any effect on the general population of PF characters that I see in this batch, and even cunning is heavily limited by the low number of skill points most martial classes get.
Taking things away from someone hurts much more than giving them something excites them, as most of us know. The way that Paizo errata is typically handled is that the things taken away are the really good things that people get excited over, and there are a lot of those, while we only get a couple of formerly-bad-but-now-mediocre things in return. People don't generally use mediocre items, they use the best items for their build--especially when there's strong competition in that slot.
And the "nerf it from orbit" approach means there's no build continuity, so players just have options blasted away. Builds die, characters retire. Complete removals of anything are far more problematic than tweaks, and PF characters depend on equipment far more than in some other systems, so even item nerfs can have some pretty severe effects. It's even bad for PR because it means that most peoples' memorable interactions with Paizo design are all overwhelmingly negative. How many people are going to use Cunning vs. how many people lost something from the Jingasa or the slippers or the Brawling enchantment?
Heck, how many characters do most people have? I'd guess the average ratio of Pathfinder characters to players is on the order of 1.5. Eventually, one of the nerfs is going to hit a player's only character, but the odds of them getting something new and useful out of an errata are miniscule right now.
I'm happy that Pathfinder is a living system. I just find the "let's perform a full extraction!" approach idiosyncratic to Paizo and troubling from a player relationship standpoint.
(For reference, I have one character that lost gear to this and it wasn't important to the build. I survived mostly intact.)
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For reference, this was my quick list of improvements. Apologies in advance for any inaccuracies.
- The scorpion whip thing has already been mentioned. It's mixed; costs now but might help once people have a chance to build toward the new implementation.
- Advanced Firearms and rapid reload now explicitly interact
- Weapon Categories got updated, which was nice
- Cunning got a boost, and is potentially worthwhile now if for high-int, higher-skill-point characters that load up on knowledge skills
- Bonebreaker Gauntlets are now bracers
- The Harp of Shattering is no longer limited-use
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Give us something positive, something that adds more value to our booksGood thought Magicdealer! I'm a big fan of this perspective, and we try to do this when we see something that's an obvious issue in that direction as well, but those tend to be less visible because the original option was usually weak, so no one really remembered it. Cunning, for instance, was a terrible purchase in the 1st printing even if your character was already going to have 5 ranks in Knowledge skills because it was still worse than just getting another +1. The new cunning is actually really nice for a crit-focused smartypants character (perhaps a shocking grasp magus who can get the enhancement bonus in other ways), but it hasn't gotten more than one mention so far (by an extremely thorough poster who went through every item as a line item) and it'll take a while for builds to start including it. I'm excited to see it show up more often and am considering it for my falcata-wielding lore warden fighter in PFS.
So then, I guess the question is whether or not the total reduction in useful book options is offset by the total increase in useful book options. I'm not trying to be negative or insulting. The work that paizo has done with pathfinder overall has been amazing.
Everything from the beginning reworking of the basic classes, to the addition of new, flavorful classes, to archetypes, and on through the mythic and unchained content has been great to see, and I've spent hundreds of hours pouring over the content and working and reworking characters. It's not like I haven't gotten my money's worth :p
It's just this one, little area that regularly frustrates me.
The change you mentioned for cunning is a useful change, but it doesn't really open up new or different character types.
In return, this errata removed mistmail builds, conductive builds, ring of revelation builds... well, I could go on but this thread is full of examples. These are items that people could, and did, create entire character designs around. They provided unique, and interesting abilities. In comparison, a flat +4 bonus to confirmation rolls doesn't really match up.
Now, I understand that some things need to be fixed. I'm not arguing that. But maybe there are ways to do so that keep them interesting.
Take the Jingasa for example. What if, instead of making the critical negation a once ever thing, it had been changed to this: "Once per day, when struck by a critical hit or sneak attack, the wearer can spend an immediate action to delay the effects of the critical hit or sneak attack for one minute."
It's still useful, and useful daily, but now it requires more tactical use and possibly some hilarious last second scrambling for temporary hitpoints and such. Heck, you could drop the time delay lower and still have it useful. I mean, obviously I'm not a game designer so there are probably plenty of examples as to why this would be a bad change. Yet I can also envision a meta build using the delay and a friend with a kukri to set off some interesting on-damage events.
But this is a good example for the sorts of changes that I'd prefer to see. If there's an item that paizo thinks is too good, or too useful, instead of burning it to the ground it would be nice to see it reworked when possible to still allow for characters to be built around it. That way, we're not losing build variety or diversity when these changes come out.
I half-expect though that if someone tossed out something comparable to the jingasa rework I suggested, someone else would want to use it in a new book as a new item since new books are where paizo's operating budget comes from :D And I get that, too. If paizo doesn't make money, then we don't get any more pathfinder updates. But it leaves me saddened because I expect that's the reason errata releases will continue as they have been.
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I have updated the original post with updated clarifications and considerations regarding about half a dozen items.
I appreciate the effort you and whoever works on this are putting in to try and make this as painless for players as it can be. Lots of fair and friendly rulings.
Owner - D20 Hobbies
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it's much too expensive for the benefit it offers.
Think is, most of these items (I had feather slippers, cap of free thinker and jingasa on multiple characters) were too good for their price.
mithral pan he kept trying to sell everyone, 'cause what kind of idiot would ever pay 1,000gp for a masterwork cooking tool? and now they cost double. Heh.
All of those items deviated from mithril rules and cause a bit of a kerfluffle when UE was published. It came down to a misunderstanding of whether or not you pay the mithril cost per pound of pre or post weight reduction.
When admins delete posts from threads,
Is this a thing? Or is this a "feature requests go here"? I'm not sure I've ever had posts deleted, but knowing what was and why would help.
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It has a niche. My barbarian with an ac of 14 uses it. His AC is so low that adding to it makes no sense at all. I can add a +6 to His AC and the enemy will still hit him on a 2. For damage mitigation he has DR 7/- and that works great for survival vs multi-attacking enemies. However, large spikes in damage can do him in, so I use fortification to prevent those kinds of things.Fortification is just bad. For the price just increasing the +s will prevent more hits AND crits.
Rukk agrees with Rat. Fortification is very good for not getting crit. And I don't have any book learning like Lab Rat, but I think that the difference between AC of 6 and 12 is no difference at all at level 18.
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Give us something positive, something that adds more value to our booksGood thought Magicdealer! I'm a big fan of this perspective, and we try to do this when we see something that's an obvious issue in that direction as well, but those tend to be less visible because the original option was usually weak, so no one really remembered it. Cunning, for instance, was a terrible purchase in the 1st printing even if your character was already going to have 5 ranks in Knowledge skills because it was still worse than just getting another +1. The new cunning is actually really nice for a crit-focused smartypants character (perhaps a shocking grasp magus who can get the enhancement bonus in other ways), but it hasn't gotten more than one mention so far (by an extremely thorough poster who went through every item as a line item) and it'll take a while for builds to start including it. I'm excited to see it show up more often and am considering it for my falcata-wielding lore warden fighter in PFS.
While I appreciate the effort to try and make poor options better, the new cunning is still comparable to a +1 to hit in average damage dealt when using a high crit weapon with improved critical or keen, at least when you have 5 ranks in a knowledge skill, which isn't easy for most martial builds. And that's not including the +1 to damage a regular enhancement bonus provides, and it doesn't require 30 skill ranks to be universally useful. An enhancement bonus also doesn't become irrelevant when a creature is immune to criticals, and helps overcome DR. In any reasonable comparison of the two abilities, you have to accept you're going with the less optimal choice when taking cunning over the plain Jane enhancement bonus, because they both do similar things (boost damage) in slightly different ways, only one is clearly better.
I'll admit at 15 skill ranks, that +6 to confirm is nice, but 90 skill ranks to always be able to use an ability for a martial is asking a lot, and still only about even with a +1 enhancement for damage. Considering how little I see weapon abilities that most agree are really good, like ghost touch, cruel, keen or merciful, I don't expect to be seeing any more cunning weapons show up than before the errata.
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Give us something positive, something that adds more value to our booksGood thought Magicdealer! I'm a big fan of this perspective, and we try to do this when we see something that's an obvious issue in that direction as well, but those tend to be less visible because the original option was usually weak, so no one really remembered it. Cunning, for instance, was a terrible purchase in the 1st printing even if your character was already going to have 5 ranks in Knowledge skills because it was still worse than just getting another +1. The new cunning is actually really nice for a crit-focused smartypants character (perhaps a shocking grasp magus who can get the enhancement bonus in other ways), but it hasn't gotten more than one mention so far (by an extremely thorough poster who went through every item as a line item) and it'll take a while for builds to start including it. I'm excited to see it show up more often and am considering it for my falcata-wielding lore warden fighter in PFS.
I think it is awesome you buffed some items, but your team comparatively nerfed a ton more. Shouldn't rebalancing have a equal amount of attention for buffing those features never taken?
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These adjustments are all well deserved.
To people who think Paizo doesn't understand what they're doing: you probably have no idea just how much more Pathfinder they play than you. :)
I'm in the camp that thinks many of these items should have been nerfed but it would have been nice if they were not nerfed into uselessness.
But, given that the items were published in the first place with (in at least some cases) absurdly good and obvious value for money it isn't at all clear to me how publishing heavy handed errata like this shows that Paizo understands its game better than many of its customers. In fact, I'd say it is rather evidence in the opposite direction.
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I have updated the original post with updated clarifications and considerations regarding about half a dozen items.
Thank you sir, for the quick attention to requests. You just may be spoiling us... And I am grateful for the special attention to (almost) unique needs. (I don't think anyone else would have bought a Pearl of Power just because they had MistMail).
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Spellcasting is very noticeable thanks to that "strong voice" requirement.
I always think of Christopher Lee's Sarumann summoning up the ill wind in Fellowship when I read this. It does make me wonder how "Charm Person" could ever work... So obvious. I guess I need to get with the program and start making Occult characters :(
Vreva in Jackson's Pirates books seems to be able to mutter her spells.
