Well we just got some healing spells this Monday, so maybe we'll get more deets on healing in general soon! I particularly want to know about the Heal skill or Medicine or whatever they're calling it this time... I imagine Medicine just to separate it from the Heal spell :)
'Rip the bandaid off' and please do Paladin.
Compromise!
Do the Paladin as the Class of the Week, Alignment as the Mechanic of the Week!
I imagine they'll handle Alignment and Paladin in the same post just to get it all out of the way as quickly as possible XD
I wish they would just release the rules as they are now so we don't have to keep sifting through the forums for developer comments, watching play tests and wildly speculating.
I know they can't, but it is what I wish.
I wish they would just release the rules as they are now so we don't have to keep sifting through the forums for developer comments, watching play tests and wildly speculating.
I know they can't, but it is what I wish.
There are people who love PF so much that if Paizo found a way to crowd-source editing, they would have flawless products from people who work for free. In theory. Even the most generous of playtesting is just the tip of the iceberg compared to what could be accomplished, and is not even on par with beta tests for crpgs, which can track every single choice and do common factor aggregation that is in some cases more valuable than commentary. Indeed, playtesting can result in bad (a subjective term, I know) game design choices. For example, playtesting results indicated players thought D&D 3.0 barbarians shouldn't have rage points because it is too gamey (or at least barbarians should be simple enough that you shouldn't have to track points), so barbarians were modified to accommodate the feedback. I think the Iron Heroes Berserker, which was made using that original conception of rage points, is the best iteration of a barbarian/berserker in any D&D/PF version. Playtesters were, IMO, wrong.
However, even if the data is good, too much data from disparate sources is difficult to sort and integrate. If you put the 100 greatest ideas in a game, the game might suck because the greatest ideas don't work well together. I think that is the fundamental reason why game designers only expose pieces of it to the public. They can't spend all day sifting through feedback.
And then there is marketing, which is the enemy of good design. It doesn't hurt the game to expose all of its fiddly bits to gamers. If you get too much feedback, ignore it. However, I imagine there are some folks who are experts in marketing who can show you a chart indicating lost profits for sharing too much information.
If you put the 100 greatest ideas in a game, the game might suck because the greatest ideas don't work well together. I think that is the fundamental reason why game designers only expose pieces of it to the public. They can't spend all day sifting through feedback.
This is very true. You can have systems that control their one thing flawlessly in a way that everyone loves... But then they either don't work with the rest of the game system, or by keeping all these disparate systems you make the rules impossible to learn / remember for the average person. Part of the compromise of game design is trying to find a best fit solution that models everything as well as you can get it while still being manageable in the context of everything else.