The point is to offer a hook that presents a reason you'd want to have a character from a certain place.
It's not a harsh restriction to say "my character is from Rahadoum" or "my character is from Taldor" or "my character is from Ustalav". It's just that you have to pick one of those places to be from, it's unlikely you're from all of them (unless you have a GM who likes your globe-trotting backstory, but the action that predates the game shouldn't be livelier than the action which takes place in the game.)
You can, after all, become a Pathfinder agent anywhere in the world there's a Pathfinder around to give you a field commission.
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Also worth remembering that access limits aren't designed to necessarily even be hard limits in the first place.
'Uncommon' just means 'talk to your GM about it' and access is just a way of indicating that characters that fulfill specific requirements can more easily take that option.
So it's not that people from Absalom can't become Pathfinder Agents, it's that if you're from Absalom you can pick up the feat whenever and if you aren't you're gonna have to work something out with the GM.
They're definitely not coded to be hard mechanical restrictions and they're definitely not harsh requirements.
Balance is there in a minor sense as people can only choose to come from 1-2 places.
But mostly it is just flavour. Also the attendant and agent aren't that powerful.
Good options for sure, but there are other near equally powerful dedication options.
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Uncommon (and Rarity in general) is mostly a flavor thing, with just a hint of mechanical significance inasmuch as it provides a way to prevent people from combining three obscure things from different books to make an "Unbeatable Combo(tm)" without at least discussing it with a GM first.
There is also Rarity being used to prevent potentially complicated elements from disrupting a campaign (Detect, Teleport,...).
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There is also Rarity being used to prevent potentially complicated elements from disrupting a campaign (Detect, Teleport,...).
Can't help but wonder if the issue the OP is talking about is someone mistaking the one type for the other and assuming these dedications are uncommon for power rather than thematic reasons, because the book itself doesn't give a lot of clear direction here.
Can't help but wonder if the issue the OP is talking about is someone mistaking the one type for the other and assuming these dedications are uncommon for power rather than thematic reasons, because the book itself doesn't give a lot of clear direction here.
There is also Rarity being used to prevent potentially complicated elements from disrupting a campaign (Detect, Teleport,...).
Honestly, there is no indication which is which: If there is something from an AP is it uncommon just because it's from an AP, from a region, it's potentially troublesome, some combination of the three or something else? I can understand someone being confused.
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Yeah, I really wish there was a sidebar breaking those spells down by type (ie: Alignment Spells, Problematic Divinations, Problematic Teleportations, Raising The Dead, etc.) and thus allowing you to port each type in as Common individually more easily.
One of the biggest missed opportunities of the corebook, honestly.
Yeah, I really wish there was a sidebar breaking those spells down by type (ie: Alignment Spells, Problematic Divinations, Problematic Teleportations, Raising The Dead, etc.) and thus allowing you to port each type in as Common individually more easily.
One of the biggest missed opportunities of the corebook, honestly.
I'm hoping the gamemastery books delves into this: it'd be a lot easier to say 'we're going with that optional rule/suggestion' and point to book.
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I'm hoping the gamemastery books delves into this: it'd be a lot easier to say 'we're going with that optional rule/suggestion' and point to book.Yeah, I really wish there was a sidebar breaking those spells down by type (ie: Alignment Spells, Problematic Divinations, Problematic Teleportations, Raising The Dead, etc.) and thus allowing you to port each type in as Common individually more easily.
One of the biggest missed opportunities of the corebook, honestly.
It does not.
In fact it ignores this side of Rarity completely.
I'm hoping the gamemastery books delves into this: it'd be a lot easier to say 'we're going with that optional rule/suggestion' and point to book.Yeah, I really wish there was a sidebar breaking those spells down by type (ie: Alignment Spells, Problematic Divinations, Problematic Teleportations, Raising The Dead, etc.) and thus allowing you to port each type in as Common individually more easily.
One of the biggest missed opportunities of the corebook, honestly.
It does not.
In fact it ignores this side of Rarity completely.
Sigh... Thanks for confirming that. I had a lot of hope for that book but so far all I've hear are things it doesn't have that I wanted to see. :(
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Sigh... Thanks for confirming that. I had a lot of hope for that book but so far all I've hear are things it doesn't have that I wanted to see. :(I'm hoping the gamemastery books delves into this: it'd be a lot easier to say 'we're going with that optional rule/suggestion' and point to book.Yeah, I really wish there was a sidebar breaking those spells down by type (ie: Alignment Spells, Problematic Divinations, Problematic Teleportations, Raising The Dead, etc.) and thus allowing you to port each type in as Common individually more easily.
One of the biggest missed opportunities of the corebook, honestly.
It does not.
In fact it ignores this side of Rarity completely.
TBH, there are many interesting things in the book. But those topics that are of greatest interest to me are indeed not there. Likely because they are the more complicated or subtle ones. So I am now hoping for an Advanced GMG ;-)
TBH, there are many interesting things in the book. But those topics that are of greatest interest to me are indeed not there. Likely because they are the more complicated or subtle ones. So I am now hoping for an Advanced GMG ;-)Sigh... Thanks for confirming that. I had a lot of hope for that book but so far all I've hear are things it doesn't have that I wanted to see. :(I'm hoping the gamemastery books delves into this: it'd be a lot easier to say 'we're going with that optional rule/suggestion' and point to book.Yeah, I really wish there was a sidebar breaking those spells down by type (ie: Alignment Spells, Problematic Divinations, Problematic Teleportations, Raising The Dead, etc.) and thus allowing you to port each type in as Common individually more easily.
One of the biggest missed opportunities of the corebook, honestly.
It does not.
In fact it ignores this side of Rarity completely.
GMG II: even gamier!
The Core rulebook states that no, balance is not a factor when it comes to assigning rarity. "These still have the same value and approximate power as any other treasure of the same Price"
The things is that the devs (and players) want those things in game, just not in every game. There was a reason Detect XYZ was not working in Ravenloft or similar settings. The twist being that in old editions those things were mostly limited by the setting while the CRB was free for all and now those limits are already in place for the "vanilla" edition.
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It really seems like it should not require handholding for the GM to figure out something like "teleporting, or being able to divine the truth really wrecks the plot here" since we've already been doing this sort of thing, just with magical solutions to countermand the obvious magical silver bullets, rather than "you don't have access to teleport."
It really seems like it should not require handholding
Not sure it's really handholding for a book designed around giving GMs advice to give insight on how the developers think a system is best adjudicated and what their intent is.
It really seems like it should not require handholding for the GM to figure out something like "teleporting, or being able to divine the truth really wrecks the plot here" since we've already been doing this sort of thing, just with magical solutions to countermand the obvious magical silver bullets, rather than "you don't have access to teleport."It's really important to remember that not everyone has the experience to know this upfront, nor is it handholding to help them figure it out -- especially with the launch of a new edition where they're going to hopefully be bringing in a lot of new players. It has nothing to do with how smart the GM might be. It's pretty easy for a GM who is doing a lot of prep and thinking through encounters to miss how these spell can hamper plot development.
These are the kind of thing you have to experience and play through IMO. Looking and reading about and seeing them in play are two different things. So that new DM might or might not have an issue, so it's questionable if matters much: if you don't have investigation type games, then Detect Alignment isn't an issue and if you ARE then you'd look at the divination spells they could use anyway without a tag to say so.
So IMO, the actual descriptive tags like [Teleportation] are MUCH better to point out certain spells than a generic [uncommon]:
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To be honest I fully understand the motivation to limit the impact of potentially plot killing spells or feat taxing "improved" weapons, however the system seems overdone in places, especially as there is no distincion in between lock down that is in place for roleplaying reasons or lock down due to powergaming reasons.
For example looking at the divine spell list for 4th grade gives a total of 16 spells and a full 6 of them are locked behind GM approval, which means that 37.5% of that grade will be locked away once you reach 7th level. Even the divine 1st level spell Protection that has been a bread and butter spell of all my clerics dating back to 2nd edition has now become uncommon. Really?