About official clarifications, erratas and FAQ'S

[Samir Sardinha]

After trying to find an answer from rules questions during the Paizo event and be pointed back to the forum over and over again, I checked most of the topics to look if any of them has official answers from the design team.
But I found only 1 post with a copy/paste from the rulebook and this: "we don't do official forum clarifications outside of FAQ or eratta" ( SIC)
So, if the design team don't answer us, why bother to even ask something here?
Why point people to this forum?
There is only 2 books with erratas right now ( core and bestiary 2 ) but many of the questions that came up here are from other books, many of them launched over a year ago and we still have many questions that came up frequently, for example Ancient Elf, Dhampir, grasping reach + Fatal, etc.
Even just the core rulebook that already have 2 erratas still have many points that have multiple unanswered questions.
Mark kindly answered one of my questions at the discord after other people had said it wouldn't happen and clarified some questions about reach of monsters at the bestiary that I hope get an official errata in the near future.
Please remember that the organized play needs all the clarifications possible because "up to the GM interpretation" is not a valid answer since we need a coese environment to players and DM's.
So my question is, why we don't have answers?

[thenobledrake]

They point people to the forum not to find a designer providing answers, but because we the community can answer many questions for ourselves if we elect to do so.

And no, organized play is not so stifling as to not have the GM at the table serve as a GM is expected to when it comes to smoothing over ambiguous rules.

[Nefreet]

If past (and quite frankly, recent) conversations are any indication, the regulars here in the Rules Forum often know the rules better than the Designers do =P

For Society, there are few character concepts that are ever truly dysfunctional so long as you take a conservative approach to building your character.

Will your Fighter/Druid's unarmed attack bonus fluctuate from game to game? Sure. Will a GM occasionally misinterpret Negative Healing? Guaranteed. Can you still enjoy your character and the story they're living? That's up to you.

[Ezekieru]

Also, the forums are usually treated as a source to gather up a bunch of stuff to address in future errata updates. It's not fast by any means, but it does help to contain the questions here VS searching across Reddit, Discord servers, and other sources on top of these forums.

Granted, the updated look and function of the FAQ page gave me hope we'd be receiving smaller, more frequent updates, or even at least more clarifications VS outright errata. But so far, that's not been the case. Seems like we're unlikely to get another update until another printing for any of the books come about.

[TiwazBlackhand]

Personally I agree with Samir's point of view, particularly that errata should come more often, and that we need standard answers to any CONTENTIOUS questions for PFS.

I personally feel that if the Dev team can't answer these questions, due to understandable work load and time issues, that PFS should at least issue PFS rulings until such time as official errata can be issued.
Especially since my current experience is if you go into the PFS forum and say "Hey I can't find a consistent ruling on this in the rules forum, how are people ruling it in PFS" you get "That's a rules question go ask in the rules forum."

You know, like how a Witch Dedication Familiar works.
Or what happens if you try to make an Ancient Elf Eldritch Trickster Rogue.
Or anything else that gets asked on Rules and results in a 10 page thread full of "No you're stupid" and Mod posts of "Deleted 47 posts don't godwin the thread".

That said, I do find the rules forum useful because it often provides a good idea of how people are LIKELY to interpret an ambiguous rule, helps when you are confused because you misread a rule, or simply can't FIND a specific rule because Paizo can at times be bad about things like mentioning something once in one spot not obvious to look in (I'm looking at you, PF1 throwing a two handed weapon being a full round action).

But lastly, to answer Samir's final question with the answer I have been given several times: The Paizo dev team is small for the amount of material they put out, and they don't always agree about how a specific rule should be interpreted, AND they don't have any one specific person granted official top authority over rules questions, SO any rules errata requires them to essentially STOP WORKING on new content and devote days or even weeks to meetings to hash out more detailed specific answers.

[Ascalaphus]

Samir Sardinha wrote:

So, if the design team don't answer us, why bother to even ask something here?

Why point people to this forum?

Because not all rules questions are cutting edge. Sometimes someone has a question to which a perfectly clear answer is available, you just need someone else to point out where to find it.

Sometimes it's less clear but you can get some viewpoints and then make up your mind as a GM, or at least get an idea of what kind of rulings you might run into as a player.

Samir Sardinha wrote:

Please remember that the organized play needs all the clarifications possible because "up to the GM interpretation" is not a valid answer since we need a coese environment to players and DM's.

This is really exaggerated. PFS aims for a level playing field and consistent experience, not robotic adherence to as-literal-as-possible rules. The Table Variation section of the PFS Guide gives lots of examples where it's totally fine for the GM to just apply common sense to make rulings in corner cases. And there's an appendix with even more guidance.

[Nefreet]

TiwazBlackhand wrote:

my current experience is if you go into the PFS forum and say "Hey I can't find a consistent ruling on this in the rules forum, how are people ruling it in PFS" you get "That's a rules question go ask in the rules forum."

And for many good reasons.

1) Each Forum serves a purpose and has posters that are most familiar with that topic.

The Rules Forum is meant for asking and discussing rules questions, such as "How does X work?" and "How do X and Y interact?". The posters here are going to be more knowledgeable about rules interactions than posters who are active in other Forums, and can either link you directly to an answer or explain the current state of affairs.

The Society Forums are meant for asking and discussing Society questions, such as AcP, Chronicles, Factions, Reputation and other Society-specific topics. The posters there are going to be more knowledgeable about the Society than posters who are active in other Forums.

When someone flags your post to be moved to a more appropriate forum, don't take offense to it (as many people seem to). It's meant to help you find the answer you're seeking. Just be patient, because as many of us have learned, that answer may not come for several years.

2) Society Developers and Paizo Designers have different roles, responsibilities and authority.

There was a time when PFS1 issued "Campaign Clarifications" for ambiguous rules questions. I spearheaded the Stickied megathread that eventually resulted in the Campaign Clarifications document, but there aren't plans to recreate that for PFS2. Why?

Society players don't want Leadership spending time answering rules questions; we want them focusing on producing more content for Organized Play. The repercussions of even simple rules interactions can be vast and time-consuming to discuss, and doesn't result in any revenue. Plus, it backfired from a PR standpoint.

People in the 1E Rules Forum would point to the Campaign Clarifications document as "official", but those answers were for the Pathfinder Society Campaign, which has different goals in mind for their audience. It didn't put a stop to any of the rules arguments, which was the goal, and so the practice was discontinued.

3) Leadership has told us time and time again to ask rules questions here, rather than there.

It's not just us posters flagging threads for removal; it's at the behest of the Campaign Developers themselves. Rules arguments eat up limited game time and can foster a frustrating experience that people wrongly correlate as a Society failing, when Society has nothing to do with Errata or Rules FAQs. Leadership wants to limit that false attribution as much as possible.

How many times have you seen someone in any of the rules forums rolling their eyes and complaining about Society being strictly "RAW"? It's such a pervasive belief,
and yet it's never been true. GMs are specifically empowered to issue a ruling for their table and move on with the adventure.

And lastly, 4) Not every character concept is suitable for Society.

If you believe that a tricky rules interaction works in your favor, and you've centered your entire character around that interaction, that's probably a concept you should leave for a homegame, where one GM can make a ruling that sticks with your character forever.

If you still decide to bring that character anyways, and you don't have a backup role or skillset for when GMs don't rule in your favor, that's not the GM's or Society's failing; some responsibility falls on you to be cognizant of the variable nature of Society and be more flexible. I guarantee it will lessen the level of frustration that can occur otherwise.

[Nefreet]

Ack, darnit, ninja'd by 9 minutes.

[Aw3som3-117]

Btw, jumping off of:

Nefreet wrote:

4) Not every character concept is suitable for Society. If you believe that a tricky rules interaction works in your favor, and you've centered your entire character around that interaction, that's probably a concept you should leave for a homegame, where one GM can make a ruling that sticks with your character forever.

The more I'm playing society games the more I'm realizing that it really doesn't matter all that much if a GM nerfs a character (in the player's mind or in actuality). Not only are there pre-gens that one can use, but also the amount of builds that legitimately need a certain ruling for it to function properly is very low, and as long as the character is somewhat decent the games aren't typically that difficult. That's not to say they're too easy or low stakes, but more that PF2 doesn't have that many fragile / delicate builds that rely on a single interaction. If you build a rogue, for example, even if you were planning on doing something specific that gets nerfed you're still going to be super useful out of combat as a skill junky, and you'll still get decent damage with sneak attack.

The only things that I really care about when it comes to official rulings for PFS are regarding character creation itself, and whether I'm allowed to do something in the first place more-so than how it will play out in a specific game, and those kinds of questions, fortunately, seem to be few and far between.

[The Raven Black]

Recall Knowledge builds have such a wide possible variance, even in PFS, it is not even funny.

[thenobledrake]

The Raven Black wrote:

Recall Knowledge builds have such a wide possible variance, even in PFS, it is not even funny.

Hypothetically, sure... but has that been the case in practice?

I ask not because I don't believe there's any variance going on, or even not too much variance for someone's particular taste, but because I haven't seen any complaints being worded as "this is a thing that actually happened to me" rather than things more along the lines of "the way I read this is that it could vary from GM to GM, and instead of trying to communicate with my various GMs to get some consistency between them or at least know what to expect, I'm electing to skip the mechanic entirely."

Kind of like say, complaining that you can't go to anyone's house at all because you have no idea if they'll want you to take your shoes off inside, provide you some guest slippers to change into when you get there, or insist you keep your own shoes on. The not knowing what to expect part is self-inflicted, not actually caused by the introduction of an idea that people will vary in opinion on.

[Gortle]

The Raven Black wrote:

Recall Knowledge builds have such a wide possible variance, even in PFS, it is not even funny.

True but you are well and truly into the realm of the GM here and they are just different. The rules have guidelines as to what to do, but every game is unique.

I don't see this as a problem we should try to solve.

[breithauptclan]

thenobledrake wrote:

They point people to the forum not to find a designer providing answers, but because we the community can answer many questions for ourselves if we elect to do so.

And if there is a question about rules that are actually ambiguous, you will almost certainly get people debating it from all sides. Once it is done, you will know all of the good and bad points of any particular ruling resolution. You will still have to pick which one to use at your table, but you will know which one you want.

[The Raven Black]

Personal experience that is entirely consistent with the many threads about Recall Knowledge.

A really small example : can you get a reduced DC thanks to Bardic Lore? I have seen No and Yes : - 2 depending on the GM. And I am pretty sure some people will successfully argue for the Yes - 5.

[Aw3som3-117]

The Raven Black wrote:

Personal experience that is entirely consistent with the many threads about Recall Knowledge.

A really small example : can you get a reduced DC thanks to Bardic Lore? I have seen No and Yes : - 2 depending on the GM. And I am pretty sure some people will successfully argue for the Yes - 5.

Reduced from what? Or are you just saying every DC should be lower if you have bardic lore, cause yeah... that sounds like a big 'ol no from me.

[Samir Sardinha]

thenobledrake wrote:

They point people to the forum not to find a designer providing answers, but because we the community can answer many questions for ourselves if we elect to do so.

And no, organized play is not so stifling as to not have the GM at the table serve as a GM is expected to when it comes to smoothing over ambiguous rules.

I know the forums can help many people but this stops at the point 2 possible answers become possible and the guessing starts.

As a venture agent I received enough complains already from players that had problems with GM's enforcing wrong rules that luckily was possible to solve just pointing at the right section of the book and heard many others players that just droped an idea they liked because of the fear of being called out as wrong or cheater.
Social anxiety disorder is a thing and deal with unknow people with the burden of doubt is not easy for those have Social Anxiety.
A little excerpt about what Social Anxiety disorder is:
"It is an intense, persistent fear of being watched and judged by others"

Nefreet wrote:

If past (and quite frankly, recent) conversations are any indication, the regulars here in the Rules Forum often know the rules better than the Designers do =P

Let's hope Paizo pay a dolar a month and give the "regulars" a badge of official clarification to fix the issue then.

Ascalaphus wrote:

This is really exaggerated. PFS aims for a level playing field and consistent experience, not robotic adherence to as-literal-as-possible rules. The Table Variation section of the PFS Guide gives lots of examples where it's totally fine for the GM to just apply common sense to make rulings in corner cases. And there's an appendix with even more guidance.

"No alteration of mechanics of player characters,

Nor banning of legal character options "
This 2 items are enough to make my point, if the mechanics are not clear its impossible to abide to those 2 rules.

Nefreet wrote:

3) Leadership has told us time and time again to ask rules questions here, rather than there.

It's not just us posters flagging threads for removal; it's at the behest of the Campaign Developers themselves. Rules arguments eat up limited game time and can foster a frustrating experience that people wrongly correlate as a Society failing, when Society has nothing to do with Errata or Rules FAQs. Leadership wants to limit that false attribution as much as possible.

How many times have you seen someone in any of the rules forums rolling their eyes and complaining about Society being strictly "RAW"? It's such a pervasive belief,
and yet it's never been true. GMs are specifically empowered to issue a ruling for their table and move on with the adventure.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qqqh?How-are-badly-written-rules-ha ndled-in-society#13

Thanks for the link, that shows the problem happens for many years and never got solved, looks like many just got used to dont have answers whatsoever...

[thenobledrake]

The Raven Black wrote:

Personal experience that is entirely consistent with the many threads about Recall Knowledge.

A really small example : can you get a reduced DC thanks to Bardic Lore? I have seen No and Yes : - 2 depending on the GM. And I am pretty sure some people will successfully argue for the Yes - 5.

That's a decent example, I suppose... but also one that, for me at least, highlights a way in which an "official clarification" can be a negative thing for some people: people don't usually arrive at their own interpretation of a rule and it's something they think is bad for their game (yes, I know there's a few folks here that will insist the rules are exactly what they don't want them to be and also insist they are forced to follow them to exactly that disliked conclusion - but they are a very rare kind of gamer), so if an official ruling gets made that disagrees with the conclusion they already arrived at and are happy with, it goes from "it was ambiguous, but everyone could make it work out fine" to "the rule is clear, and I think it should be changed to do what I read it as being in the first place" for a(n often not insignificant) number of people.

Then there is the case that it really shouldn't be a "deal-breaker" level of issue for a player that is trying to figure out if they want to take Bardic Lore or not, since even the least favorable interpretation (that actually follows the language used in the rules, at least) is still producing a worth-while feature. Almost nothing in the game actually requires the "I was hoping it'd be this" interpretation to be worth taking.

[The Raven Black]

Battle Medicine before it was clarified how many hands you need?

[The Raven Black]

For home games, talk to your GM is perfectly fine. For PFS, it is just not feasible.

My advice for PFS is always if in doubt, go with the worst possible answer. If it makes your build unfun, just play another character.

It is something I've seen many other posters say too and I sincerely believe it comes from past unfun experiences.

[Nefreet]

Samir Sardinha wrote:

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qqqh?How-are-badly-written-rules-ha ndled-in-society#13

Thanks for the link, that shows the problem happens for many years and never got solved

That's not what I take away from that.

[Gortle]

thenobledrake wrote:

Almost nothing in the game actually requires the "I was hoping it'd be this" interpretation to be worth taking.

I can't get behind that at all.

Lots are very significantly different, even unplayable with out a reasonable ruling. If you GM says your snake companion can't grab because he does not have hands, your animal form spell can't escape because that would be an attack then that is a major different. For sure sensible GMs will just fix these problems, but Paizo should do it.

How you read Glyph of Warding can make a major difference in how a caster plays.

There is more than a 50% difference in damage between the most favourable and the least favourable damage calculation for battle form attacks. There are a lot of these. Paizo need to fix it.

[Nefreet]

But as long as those questions are hashed out before game with the GM, you'll know what to expect going into it, and can adjust your tactics.

[Gortle]

In a home campaign sure. But if you go online and post your build and get mocked because you are a cheater or it just doesn't work.

Or if in PFS what if it doesn't work with every second GM you get?

People want to know the official way to play these rules. They want to do it right in a way that is seen as balanced and fair as judged by an offical 3rd party arbiter.

[Samir Sardinha]

Gortle wrote:

In a home campaign sure. But if you go online and post your build and get mocked because you are a cheater or it just doesn't work.

Or if in PFS what if it doesn't work with every second GM you get?

People want to know the official way to play these rules. They want to do it right in a way that is seen as balanced and fair as judged by an offical 3rd party arbiter.

THAT is the reason of my post, it's not enough to just write random rules at the books and forget about those, i'm not asking much here...

[breithauptclan]

I'm not sure that what you are actually asking for is possible, feasible, or even a good idea.

What you state you are asking for is to have someone on these forums giving official answers to any and all rules questions. The underlying request is that the rule set is complete and unambiguous - which is actually impossible.

It would be a thankless job to be on here alienating the majority of the customers for one ruling or another that they didn't personally agree with. I have my own thoughts on how the game rules should work, and I am perfectly happy to voice them because I know that anyone who disagrees is completely justified in ignoring me. If I was instead giving official answers that everyone else would have to change their games to account for - well, I wouldn't be posting on these forums either.

The point of the game is to have fun. And not everyone's fun is the same. Recently we were debating how much use a familiar should have during exploration mode. For some groups it was not fair for one player's character to be twice as powerful as the others. For other groups it is not fun having a character that has to have their familiar unable to do anything. Having the ability to run the game with either ruling increases the amount of people who can have fun with it.

I certainly sympathize with people who have anxiety issues and are constantly running the risk of being told that their build is 'wrong'. But if the people that they are playing with aren't respecting their thoughts, ideas, rules interpretations, and desires but are instead just shutting them down without any consideration - well, no amount of rules text either in the books or on these forums is going to change that.

[thenobledrake]

The Raven Black wrote:

Battle Medicine before it was clarified how many hands you need?

That's another case where I think people were being a bit nonsensical in hoping or assuming that they'd be able to have both hands otherwise occupied and still be able to access tools.

But also, as a GM, I just kind of went with what the players interpreted it as being (rather than forcing the harshest interpretation, which I though was the accurate one given the wording of the rules) because the strict limitation as to how often the feat could be used is enough of a restriction to stop it from being game-breaking to allow even if it wasn't intended.

And "I have to plan out what is or isn't in my hands" shouldn't be a deal-breaker for a player.

The Raven Black wrote:

For home games, talk to your GM is perfectly fine. For PFS, it is just not feasible.

I'll admit I haven't got any experience with Pathfinder Society, but I do have experience with a way older and from what I gather far more GM-stifling organized play leaque by way of Living Greyhawk, and even back then "talk to your GM" was a perfectly fine approach to figuring out how something you weren't sure about was going to play out (especially if it was me that was your GM).

The game is written to be run by GMs. PFS doesn't change that. They do, however, attempt to protect against;

Gortle wrote:

If you GM says your snake companion can't grab because he does not have hands, your animal form spell can't escape because that would be an attack then that is a major different

This kind of shennanigan in which the GM is altering or ignoring printed rules by interpreting them in a hyper-strict manner. Your snake companion can grab because it explicitly has features that require a grab to function, and the section of rules that govern how to handle the "ambiguity" of that situation say, to paraphrase, read things as actually working.

And you can escape while in animal form because obvious oversights are obvious.

If you do however manage to end up at a PFS table with a GM that insists they are supposed to adhere strictly to the letter of the rules, even if spirit, intent, and fun be thrown out as a result, that's when you take a complaint up the league because that GM - not the organized play league - is creating an unfun environment.

Gortle wrote:

How you read Glyph of Warding can make a major difference in how a caster plays.

There is more than a 50% difference in damage between the most favourable and the least favourable damage calculation for battle form attacks. There are a lot of these. Paizo need to fix it.

From my perspective, there are actually very few of these, rather than "a lot" and their impact is not nearly as widely varying nor widely spread as the online subset of the hobby would suggest that they are.

In my experience, for every 1 of us that come online and discuss games like this and notice all these little foibles of the rules and wonder which possible interpretation is the "correct" one, there are hundreds of other players out there that are either not at all uncertain what the rule is (because to them it is what they read it as being, why would it be anything else?) and are never going to pop online and participate in any discussion about it.

So while yes, it would be nice to get some clarification on these points which are unclear (which some details of battle forms are... but glyph or warding isn't, because being able to misread something doesn't actually mean it's not clear enough) it's not actually a necessity because no matter how finely-tuned and clear the writing of the rules ends up being, the game will still be (as it currently is and is intended to be) run by GMs, so there will be some variance from one to the next.

[WatersLethe]

Pathfinder rose in popularity partly because Paizo treats its customers with a great deal of respect and trust. D&D 4e had a very "we know best" design strategy that forced their top-down decisions on the playerbase. I think Paizo was sensitive to that, and developed a strategy of actually trying to find out what players want.

So here they have a forum full of knowledgeable and invested *actual users* who are willing to provide advice, debate rules, and sometimes come to a consensus on RAW, RAI, or how something should be handled.

If Paizo were to constantly step in and take sides (which an official ruling will inevitably do) they would literally be paying staffers to actively alienate parts of the playerbase, contradict others, disrupt ongoing campaigns, and suppress active discussion because everyone will just wait for them to weigh in.

The game is designed with active GM participation. It's a fundamental part of the game. The GM is the lens through which all rules are interpretted. The system is better for it because it's not trying to browbeat the GM and players into doing what it thinks is right.

Spending money to change course and start on a wild goose chase of creating an air-tight ruleset and strict top-down game design, just to satisfy the extreme minority of players who REFUSE to trust any GM ever (a mindset that is extremely likely to cause those players to eventually leave the hobby) is a very foolhardy suggestion.

[pauljathome]

thenobledrake wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Recall Knowledge builds have such a wide possible variance, even in PFS, it is not even funny.

Hypothetically, sure... but has that been the case in practice?

Yes. ESPECIALLY in PFS

I found it so frustrating that I just stopped playing my Knowledge Bard. At some tables I'd get absolutely nothing of any use from a knowledge check. Some GMs would let me at least guide my knowledge towards what I wanted, some wouldn't. At the other end, some GMs freely gave out so much information without a check that the extra knowledge wasn't of much use.

And, of course, many GMs gave out reasonable amounts of information and tried and mostly succeeded at making it worth the character investment and action.

I've found there to be more table variation than there was in PF1. And spending a lot of character resources AND an action to get inadequate results even on a success was just, at least for me, very very frustrating.

Edit: Examples
1) one GM told me that a character had a special attack (some kind of fire based attack). They told me that AFTER we'd seen the monster USE it
2) Another GM told me that the visibly on fire creature (some kind of fire elemental) was immune to fire. Duh.

[pauljathome]

In PFS, I have one character who falls into a rules ambiguity (whether or not a Corgi ridden by a Sprite can use its free action to move. Basically, the familiar Independent rule and the Mounted Combat rule contradict each other).

Its a quite noticeable but moderately minor change in the way the character works.

Its a real ambiguity. I have played with GMs who rule one way and GMs who rule the other way.

Its also not at all a big deal. I sit down at the table and ask the GM what their ruling is. If they're unaware of the problem I briefly outline the reason for the rules ambiguity, trying as hard as I can to do so in a neutral fashion.

I then accept the GMs ruling, change out one of the familiars abilities if they rule that independent doesn't work and play the game.

This is a completely viable approach in PFS.

[The Raven Black]

Sometimes, it means you have to change the PFS character you will play. Which is not always possible if you have only one character in the required level range.

The second edition had a clear goal of shifting power back to the GM. It has been heavily praised by GMs for this. The bigger variance is a direct consequence of this, as, in most cases, the devs expect the GMs to rule adequately.

With great GM power, comes great GM responsibility.

[Squiggit]

pauljathome wrote:

Its a real ambiguity.

No more ambiguous than whether or not ki strike requires you to spend an extra action to make its free attack.

[thenobledrake]

pauljathome wrote:

Yes. ESPECIALLY in PFS

Thanks for sharing your actual experience on the matter.

pauljathome wrote:

This is a completely viable approach in PFS.

And I am glad to see that even though your experience has bumped into what others hypothesized as being an issue, it's not one you find to be a deal-breaker forcing you to not participate in PFS all-together.

I would like to know if you make suggestions to your PFS GMs or not, though. For example, when the knowledge bard just wasn't working out for you because of how the GMs were interpreting the related rules, did you choose to put ideas like "the GM is the final say" and "I don't want to spoil anyone else's fun" ahead of your own enjoyment and remain silent, or did you point out in some way that their ruling was spoiling your fun because the rules make you expect a useful result which they had failed to deliver upon?

I know it's kind of paradoxical, or a catch 22 type situation, but it's been my experience that there is a lot of self-sabotage among gamers in the form of not wanting to point out when, why, and how their own fun is being diminished because of the perceived risk of making someone else upset (don't want to hurt the GM's feelings or 'start a fight') or infringing on someone else's game time.

But the point of the game is for everyone to have fun - not for everyone to have fun or at least stay quiet about not having fun until they just can't stand it at all anymore and leave to find other people to play with.

[Samir Sardinha]

breithauptclan wrote:

I'm not sure that what you are actually asking for is possible, feasible, or even a good idea.

What you state you are asking for is to have someone on these forums giving official answers to any and all rules questions. The underlying request is that the rule set is complete and unambiguous - which is actually impossible.

It would be a thankless job to be on here alienating the majority of the customers for one ruling or another that they didn't personally agree with. I have my own thoughts on how the game rules should work, and I am perfectly happy to voice them because I know that anyone who disagrees is completely justified in ignoring me. If I was instead giving official answers that everyone else would have to change their games to account for - well, I wouldn't be posting on these forums either.

The point of the game is to have fun. And not everyone's fun is the same. Recently we were debating how much use a familiar should have during exploration mode. For some groups it was not fair for one player's character to be twice as powerful as the others. For other groups it is not fun having a character that has to have their familiar unable to do anything. Having the ability to run the game with either ruling increases the amount of people who can have fun with it.

I certainly sympathize with people who have anxiety issues and are constantly running the risk of being told that their build is 'wrong'. But if the people that they are playing with aren't respecting their thoughts, ideas, rules interpretations, and desires but are instead just shutting them down without any consideration - well, no amount of rules text either in the books or on these forums is going to change that.

Many questions here at the forum can be answered just pointing to the right set of rules that interacts with the question.

Example: How much damage a critical hit with a great pick does?

Other questions lacks an input from the design team because the rules are not clear enough yet.
Example: How much damage a critical hit with a great pick does while using grasping reach?

A clarification about the priority of damage increase/decrease would solve the problem in this case and every other similar case in the future too.

Yes, I want the rules as complete and unambiguos as possible. I know that will take time and many things are corner cases that usually only happens at theorycraft should have a low priority, but my main concern is the valid options at PFS be clarified somehow.

It can be simple:
Add an option to "Request clarify" and every member of the forum can upvote the option.
Once every x days, 7 for example, a designer/a team check the most upvoted and give an official feedback releasing erratas/faqs if needed and closing the topic.

[thenobledrake]

Samir Sardinha wrote:

It can be simple:

Add an option to "Request clarify" and every member of the forum can upvote the option.
Once every x days, 7 for example, a designer/a team check the most upvoted and give an official feedback releasing erratas/faqs if needed and closing the topic.

That may be simple, but it is far from good.

What you have designed there is a system by which the community has the opportunity to get even more divisive, and people who are keen to complain about their pet issues more frequently and more loudly get to have all their questions addressed before anyone else's.

And you're forgetting to account for the factor of "but what if the answer given isn't the one the person asking was hoping for?" Because at that juncture you have, at best, people now silently leaving the game behind because they feel like what the design team wants from it is too far from what they want from it to be compatible - but more likely, you'd see folks insisting the answer was "wrong" or "bad" and insisting that another be given or that someone else be the one tasked to give the answers.

A lot of folks asking for "official clarification" are actually not wanting the rule to be clear, they are wanting official support - beyond "make the game your own" of course - for their preferred interpretation and will make a stink unless they get it. It just happens to look a little polite and reasonable for now because it's "Paizo needs to clarify this" rather than "I can't believe Paizo thinks [blank] is good design" or insults directed at the staff.

And to add some thought to the conversation:

Samir Sardinha wrote:

Yes, I want the rules as complete and unambiguos as possible.

What if they already are?

The design team has already put their best effort into the game, and you find it incomplete and/or ambiguous. What's to say that any effort made to complete or clarify beyond this point isn't going to produce similarly ambiguous results?

In fact, even among the FAQ/Errata entries provided thus far people have found the clarifications to be unclear.

[pauljathome]

thenobledrake wrote:

.

I would like to know if you make suggestions to your PFS GMs or not, though.

Occassionally, especially if it is a GM I know. But mostly, no. Just didn't seem worth the table time and potential ill feelings. Especially in the heat of the moment.

Quote:

But the point of the game is for everyone to have fun - not for everyone to have fun or at least stay quiet about not having fun until they just can't stand it at all anymore and leave to find other people to play with.

It wasn't anywhere near that bad, at least for me. I found that one of my stable of characters (I GM so I have lots of chronicles to spread around) wasn't working for me so I just started playing with other characters more until I noticed I hadn't played my bard for over a year :-)

[Gortle]

pauljathome wrote:

In PFS, I have one character who falls into a rules ambiguity (whether or not a Corgi ridden by a Sprite can use its free action to move. Basically, the familiar Independent rule and the Mounted Combat rule contradict each other).

Its a quite noticeable but moderately minor change in the way the character works.

Its a real ambiguity. I have played with GMs who rule one way and GMs who rule the other way.

Its also not at all a big deal. I sit down at the table and ask the GM what their ruling is. If they're unaware of the problem I briefly outline the reason for the rules ambiguity, trying as hard as I can to do so in a neutral fashion.

I then accept the GMs ruling, change out one of the familiars abilities if they rule that independent doesn't work and play the game.

This is a completely viable approach in PFS.

If everyone was like you, we would have world peace and hell even Communism might work. But players and GMs are real people and many of them are not as well adjusted as yourself. They will have incidents over rules issues as simple as this. Then people will be excluded or exclude themselves. Paizo and the community need to do the best we can to support everyone.

That means the more common rules questions that we can't answer here in the forums, should be addressed.

[breithauptclan]

Samir Sardinha wrote:

Yes, I want the rules as complete and unambiguos as possible. I know that will take time and many things are corner cases that usually only happens at theorycraft should have a low priority, but my main concern is the valid options at PFS be clarified somehow.

Pathfinder Society does actually have its own rulings that are used for society play.

Has anyone linked you to this yet? https://paizo.com/pathfindersociety/faq

I don't think that is even the full set of information either. I know that they also have lists of Rare things that are always allowed (like the Atone and Resurrect rituals) as well as a list of items that are forbidden or restricted. I don't actually play society games, so I am not the best source of information for it.

So if you are specifically looking for rulings on games specifically to society games, you might get better results asking there specifically. They have a GM Discussion forum with the summary purpose of 'for GMs and organizers to discuss game play experience and seek clarification on organized play scenarios and adventures.'

[Gortle]

breithauptclan wrote:

Pathfinder Society does actually have its own rulings that are used for society play.

Has anyone linked you to this yet? https://paizo.com/pathfindersociety/faq

There is very little there in terms of rules. It is almost all setting and organisation for the campaign.

[Ssalarn]

breithauptclan wrote:

Samir Sardinha wrote:

Yes, I want the rules as complete and unambiguos as possible. I know that will take time and many things are corner cases that usually only happens at theorycraft should have a low priority, but my main concern is the valid options at PFS be clarified somehow.

Pathfinder Society does actually have its own rulings that are used for society play.

They're even listed by book here under the Rulings and Clarifications for each sanctioned book.

[Gortle]

Ssalarn wrote:

breithauptclan wrote:

Samir Sardinha wrote:

Yes, I want the rules as complete and unambiguos as possible. I know that will take time and many things are corner cases that usually only happens at theorycraft should have a low priority, but my main concern is the valid options at PFS be clarified somehow.

Pathfinder Society does actually have its own rulings that are used for society play.

They're even listed by book here under the Rulings and Clarifications for each sanctioned book.

All these are also listed online in Archives of Nethys, next to each rule element. So yes these do help, and are semi official. Most people can find them. However they have totally avoided all the tricky questions, just like the Paizo errata.

[Squiggit]

thenobledrake wrote:

What if they already are?

The design team has already put their best effort into the game, and you find it incomplete and/or ambiguous. What's to say that any effort made to complete or clarify beyond this point isn't going to produce similarly ambiguous results?

Okay, so I agree with you that the issue is generally overstated and there are ways to work around it and that it's not the end of the world either way.

But to suggest that it's somehow implausible or impossible for Paizo, at some point in the future, to answer some yes or no questions about how certain abilities interact or that them doing so would make those rules more confusing by some strange magic is a stretch to be mild.

[Ssalarn]

Squiggit wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

What if they already are?

The design team has already put their best effort into the game, and you find it incomplete and/or ambiguous. What's to say that any effort made to complete or clarify beyond this point isn't going to produce similarly ambiguous results?

Okay, so I agree with you that the issue is generally overstated and there are ways to work around it and that it's not the end of the world either way.

But to suggest that it's somehow implausible or impossible for Paizo, at some point in the future, to answer some yes or no questions about how certain abilities interact or that them doing so would make those rules more confusing by some strange magic is a stretch to be mild.

Not at all. Organized play VOs have sent screaming messages to the OPM at 3am because a designer gave a casual answer to a question in a forum that wasn't the one they preferred. PF1 suffered for years from people pulling out old Jacobs and Brock off-the-cuff forum rulings that didn't end up being consistent with the rules or later errata. It's also not exactly uncommon for it to turn out that the people who were getting all indignant and offended that their rules questions weren't answered have really been talking about something else that they wanted to extrapolate the ruling to, but didn't want to ask directly because they knew they wouldn't get the answer they wanted there while they might by asking it this other way (I can think of at least 5 occasions just that I've been witness to where I watched exactly this play out across multiple forums as a poster got into an argument on e.g. Discord and then jumped over to ask the question one way on Reddit and a different way on the Paizo boards, fishing for the answer that backed their assertion).

Then on top of that, a lot of the questions that are getting "ignored" really aren't that common as questions, they're just 10 really passionate people arguing back and forth for page after page when there are quick and reasonable rulings that may not be what one side wants but are still pretty straightforward. Dhampir under undeath's blessing? They get bonus healing from harm and are still screwed by heal because a living dhampir still has negative healing and nothing in the spell changes that. Grasping Reach and fatal weapons? There's a clear order of operations here because you can't make a Strike at reach until you've used Grasping Reach, so your greatpick's damage drops to d8s and when fatal triggers they bump up to d12s because nothing in Grasping Reach says it modifies fatal and you already activated it earlier. Battle forms? Is the number you're looking at granted to you by the spell? Then it can only be affected by circumstance bonuses, status bonuses, and penalties. It doesn't matter what the thing you're trying to add is, only that it's not one of those things. Is it a number you got from somewhere else, like your normal AC or attack modifier? Then it can be affected by the things that normally affect those statistics, including item bonuses from handwraps of mighty blows and whatever other effects you have that normally change that number or are called out in the effect that let you take on the form. Half the confusion on this front is specifically because Mark gave an "unofficial" answer outside of the FAQ and errata process that ended up being thrown around to muddy the waters, which is exactly why official answers like that are kept to FAQ and errata releases by policy.

Then there's the other questions that do have answers and people just don't like them. What's the range of leshy seed pods or can half-elves take Ancient Elf? It's noted in the org play clarifications and on AoN, with the rulings specifically saying they were arrived at in consultation with the design team and tagged for errata under the Rulings and Clarifications. These are official answers, not "semi official answers", and logged in multiple locations; the Ancient Elf one is even cited as an unanswered question in this thread despite the fact that it's been answered for over a year and is clarified on both the Rulings and Clarifications page and Archives of Nethys. So that's also kind of an indicator that a forum ruling isn't really going to solve the situation or change the impression that questions aren't getting answered, since they have been and people are still saying they haven't.

[Gaulin]

Just to note on the handwraps part - you're right of course and that's the conclusion a lot of people have come to. I think another big chunk of it though is that not applying property runes to strikes or rage/sneak attack makes form spells fall pretty far behind or just not make sense (why can't I rage if I'm a wolf?). Some are more hoping than anything, I suppose, for the sake of their build working well.

[thenobledrake]

Squiggit wrote:

But to suggest that it's somehow implausible or impossible for Paizo, at some point in the future, to answer some yes or no questions about how certain abilities interact or that them doing so would make those rules more confusing by some strange magic is a stretch to be mild.

Ah, but see, even an answer of "yes" or "no" can be interpreted to mean different things because the question is almost never so simple and straightforward as to literally not have more than one way to interpret it - at least not if it is written in English, because this language is lousy. (example: I've just said the language has lice... but that's probably not what I actually meant.)

And I'm not so much suggesting that it's implausible that Paizo will clarify their rules over time in a general sense as it is that I am encouraging people that want more clarity than they currently have to skip out on the risk and waiting involved in having Paizo give an "official answer" and get straight to the step that would logically come after that; figure out the answer you and your group want it to be, and then that's your answer, no matter whether Paizo agrees it's "correct" or not.

In my experience, people that do so will have a lot less likelihood of potent negative reaction should an official answer ever come along (both in terms of not going the "how dare those idiots make that official" direction, and in not going the "see? I told you all I was right!" direction).

[Squiggit]

Okay, but all of that is an argument for not making off the cuff statements in an official capacity, which is fair and reasonable but also a completely different notion than not giving answers at all.

I don't think 'just use the reasonable answer' is necessarily helpful advice either. Yeah, it's pretty clear that snakes should be able to use their own abilities, but for some of the interactions people argue over, there's a debate specifically because what's reasonable or intuitive to one person isn't for another person looking at that same interaction.

Generally it's not that big of a deal either way and can be hashed out at each table without much issue, but the game wouldn't somehow be worse or harder to understand if the FAQ answered some of those questions, or if the errata document were updated to match the second printing or any of the things along those lines.

thenobledrake wrote:

And I'm not so much suggesting that it's implausible that Paizo will clarify their rules over time in a general sense as it is that I am encouraging people that want more clarity than they currently have to skip out on the risk and waiting involved in having Paizo give an "official answer" and get straight to the step that would logically come after that; figure out the answer you and your group want it to be, and then that's your answer, no matter whether Paizo agrees it's "correct" or not.

Yeah, ultimately I agree this is the best course of action, but I can see why some people would value official input on what the developers were intending, too.

thenobledrake wrote:

In my experience, people that do so will have a lot less likelihood of potent negative reaction should an official answer ever come along (both in terms of not going the "how dare those idiots make that official" direction, and in not going the "see? I told you all I was right!" direction).

That's probably true, but I'd argue that for the most part those reactions are already happening and will continue to happen regardless of what Paizo does. That's just how these discussions go. Still think it's worth trying to clean up issues in the long run, though maybe not with as much urgency as some are suggesting.