So, are colorblind people SOL?


General Discussion


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RAW: "Rarities for uncommon and rare treasures are usually indicated by the level box, which is black for common, red for uncommon, orange for rare, and blue for unique."

Never mind the guy at our table that can barely see colors, *I* find it difficult to quickly differentiate between a red/blue/black item level. Only the orange ones stick out.

Is it really that hard to put a letter code in there?


DavidJ wrote:

RAW: "Rarities for uncommon and rare treasures are usually indicated by the level box, which is black for common, red for uncommon, orange for rare, and blue for unique."

Never mind the guy at our table that can barely see colors, *I* find it difficult to quickly differentiate between a red/blue/black item level. Only the orange ones stick out.

Is it really that hard to put a letter code in there?

Pretty sure it was mentioned in another post that they'd be removing the color indicators.


Paizo has indicated that they're "100% changing" the colour tags.

Whether that entails doing away with the concept entirely or just choosing colours a bit friendlier to individuals who're colour-blind than: black, red, and orange, remains to be seen.


Crayon wrote:

Paizo has indicated that they're "100% changing" the colour tags.

Whether that entails doing away with the concept entirely or just choosing colours a bit friendlier to individuals who're colour-blind than: black, red, and orange, remains to be seen.

Where was this said? I have no objections, this was one piece of feedback I wanted to give as well. I figured it would be an issue for people who were colorblind.


Vlorax wrote:
DavidJ wrote:

RAW: "Rarities for uncommon and rare treasures are usually indicated by the level box, which is black for common, red for uncommon, orange for rare, and blue for unique."

Never mind the guy at our table that can barely see colors, *I* find it difficult to quickly differentiate between a red/blue/black item level. Only the orange ones stick out.

Is it really that hard to put a letter code in there?

Pretty sure it was mentioned in another post that they'd be removing the color indicators.

I believe they were saying that in the final product they will not indicate anything solely with color. So it might say "Uncommon" somewhere and also be red, for people who find that quick reference helpful.

Heres a Reference Post.


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I posted a similar observation in the Playtest Softcover product discussion board. Vic Wertz responded that they will not be solely relying on color-coding in the future.

My best guess is that they will use the format for monster rarity that's in the Playtest Bestiary: the description includes the rarity as a line in the statblock.


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
Haladir wrote:

I posted a similar observation in the Playtest Softcover product discussion board. Vic Wertz responded that they will not be solely relying on color-coding in the future.

My best guess is that they will use the format for monster rarity that's in the Playtest Bestiary: the description includes the rarity as a line in the statblock.

I'm fine with it being an additional notation, but agree that they shouldn't rely on it for the primary method of designating it. I'd also make sure that if you do use it, that it is mentioned in the description of the stat-blocks/how to read them. I'm pretty sure I looked through the description of the spells stat block several times just to figure out what the black and other colored numbers were, and the instructions only said it was the type of spell followed by the level. It would have been nice for the mention of the box being a color according to rarity.

I'd be fine with not repeating the color/rarity in each spot, just knowing it had to do with rarity, I could find a place to look it up. I couldn't find anything that indicated however.


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In addition to what other people have said Vic Wertz has come out and said that they will be getting an accessibility version of the play test pdf out.

Paizo Employee Director of Game Design

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So, yeah, this became a huge concern of mine the moment the book went to the printer and you can rest assured that we will be finding a better solution to indicate rarity for the final version of the game.

As for those with some form of visual impairment, who rely on a text to speech program to digest games, we have a version of the playtest rulebook that we should be releasing very soon that has no art, spells out all of the rarities and changes all of the symbols into their respective words.

We hope that will help, but we are still looking for better ways to do this in the future.


Jason Bulmahn wrote:

So, yeah, this became a huge concern of mine the moment the book went to the printer and you can rest assured that we will be finding a better solution to indicate rarity for the final version of the game.

As for those with some form of visual impairment, who rely on a text to speech program to digest games, we have a version of the playtest rulebook that we should be releasing very soon that has no art, spells out all of the rarities and changes all of the symbols into their respective words.

We hope that will help, but we are still looking for better ways to do this in the future.

that's wonderful news for at least one person in my group!

Paizo Employee Director of Game Design

3 people marked this as a favorite.

The more accessible version of the rulebook will be going up tomorrow according to my info.

Sorry for the delay.

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