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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.
I am not going to get into the weeds of this argument but this is a very, very clear illustration of part of the problem.
The rules ARE ambiguous. It doesn't matter how many people (as long as it is not a very clear consensus) say its clear (especially when different people often say its clear in different ways) nor does it matter how strongly they state it THE RULES ARE AMBIGUOUS. Reasonable people can AND DO come to different conclusions.
But people convince themselves that THEIR answer is CLEARLY correct and just deny that the rules are ambiguous. They almost certainly genuinely believe that the rules are clear cut. And then they get upset when they get a "wrong" ruling. But they're just flat out wrong, the rules ARE ambiguous.
English is an inherently ambiguous language, especially if you write in human readable prose and avoid lawyer speak. But even legal documents are inherently ambiguous as is shown by the thousands of legal cases every year
Part of being a good player is to accept the fact that there are inevitably going to be ambiguous rules in any game . Accept that there IS ambiguity and be prepared for a "wrong" ruling, accept the ruling and just play the game.
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.
You're looking at the wrong rule. Rather than looking at negative healing, you should be looking at the dhampir heritage.
Dhampir heritage excerpt:
The intent is clearly that you be treated as undead. If an effect says to treat you as a living being instead, then negative healing doesn't apply because it only exists to treat you as undead in a limited form.
Though you are technically correct, anyone who really believes that was the intended interpretation is likely arguing in bad faith.
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.
Could you clarify this statement? I'm not certain I get your meaning, or what outcome you're indicating. Perhaps you could provide an example use case?
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For the record, and I'm sure this isn't what a lot of people want to hear, but: no matter how clear the rules are there will always, and I mean ALWAYS be GMs who not just run it differently (which is totally fine), but also are insistent that they're reading a rule correctly while very obviously getting something wrong. Just as there will always be players who will argue for clearly incorrect interpretations of rules and complain about a GM that's ruling it correctly. Honestly, from what I've seen, about half of the hotly debated questions fit into this category (I won't say which ones so as to not bring more talks about them out of the wood-works, like the previous innocuous post with a few opinions seemed to do... sigh). Not to mention the questions that fall purely into the GM discretion category, which doesn't come up as often, but is noteworthy, and depending on the situation could be a perfectly valid answer.
Now, that's not to say that there aren't things that should be clarified. There definitely are, and more frequent errata would be nice, even if it just had a couple items in it every few months. But the existence of these forums and many questions that certain people see as ambiguous isn't proof of that.
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The rules ARE ambiguous.
Where the rules are unintentionally so, the powers that be should clarify them.
If any of the ambiguity is intentional ... well, where I come from:Intentional Obfuscation is to be eschewed, not advocated nor condoned, not even passively.
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Good to see more people that agree we need more clarifications and erratas in a timely manner!
I would love to hear the opinion from someone in the design team if they do make ambiguous rules on purpose...
Just to be clear, I don't want that a designer give a public answer in the forums about a rulling, just check the most asked question check with the team and make an errata/clarification in the correct place.
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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.
Very good to know. Thank you.
I thought otherwise because I did not have this concept of clear order of operations for this.
Which is likely why many answers seem obvious to devs but not at all obvious, or even obviously the actually wrong way, to posters who do not have the insider game understanding that a dev has.
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They did clarify the number of hands for Battle Medicine :-)
Not only that, but a complete errata at the tools system that solved the problem to quick repair, quick unlock, climb, alchemist tools, etc...
Those are the best kind of errata because solve many problems and future proof many others.
Well, GMs wanted more power and more freedom from rules that players would bash them with. PF2 gave them their wish.
I’d argue the venn diagram of all GMs and all GMs that want this is a circle inside of which is a relatively smaller circle (<20%, likely even single digits)
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some might argue that’s a GM who understands, as it is currently written, how useful Recall Knowledge was intended to be
If the GM doesn't want the skill to be useful they should at least be up front about it.
I know some GMs really do hate knowledge checks, but it's nice to inform players of that ahead of time.
some might argue that’s a GM who understands, as it is currently written, how useful Recall Knowledge was intended to beIf the GM doesn't want the skill to be useful they should at least be up front about it.
I know some GMs really do hate knowledge checks, but it's nice to inform players of that ahead of time.
It can be less hating it and more having to be put on the spot to make something up on the fly without any guidance at all: this is doubly so when you have to come up with failures too... [fire elementals not hot?...] There is a big difference between not being good with that kind of situation and hating it.
If the GM doesn't want the skill to be useful they should at least be up front about it.
not my point
the GM has a full plate, fuller (by far) than anyone else at the tablesome don’t mind being GM and saying “load me up laddies! I have a non-finite capacity for making stuff up with no notice!”
others (I’d argue, not just the majority but the actual vast majority) prefer more direction in a subsystem than this one has detailed
and other game systems have provided more than the “next to nothing” version here (including this company doing it better previously; with better defined in this instance as “significantly more detail for how to use this subsystem”)
so when a subsystem has little more than “make it up!” no one should be surprised by the occasional “uh, er, it’s hot” result (or even more than occasional if the players are all pinging on the various and widely numerous ‘so vague, you will have to make it up’ rules within this addition so as to be repeatedly overburdening their GM)
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It can be less hating it and more having to be put on the spot to make something up on the fly without any guidance at all
I mean, you're not making something up on the fly if someone is doing monster ID. You're pulling information off a stat block that you're already referencing. Choosing to give the players largely meaningless information for a successful check is an active decision on the GM's part.
To then turn around and say "oh well Paizo made me do it" is a little bit silly.
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some might argue that’s a GM who understands, as it is currently written, how useful Recall Knowledge was intended to beIf the GM doesn't want the skill to be useful they should at least be up front about it.
I know some GMs really do hate knowledge checks, but it's nice to inform players of that ahead of time.
In my particular case (I was the one that unwittingly started this particular subthread) my character was for PFS so that didn't help.
And, to be clear, MOST GMs gave me out a "reasonable" amount of information (where "reasonable" means that very wide range where I felt that I at least had not wasted my action"). And quite a few (probably around 50+% or so) gave me a "Good" amount of information (where "good" means that I thought my build choices validated).
And at least some of the time there just was no interesting information to give (I only played the character to about level 4 IIRC) which is totally NOT the fault of the GM
But I found the cases where either my build was underperforming or (worse) I was just wasting actions in combat to be very frustrating
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I am not going to get into the weeds of this argument but this is a very, very clear illustration of part of the problem.The rules ARE ambiguous. It doesn't matter how many people (as long as it is not a very clear consensus) say its clear (especially when different people often say its clear in different ways) nor does it matter how strongly they state it THE RULES ARE AMBIGUOUS. Reasonable people can AND DO come to different conclusions.
But people convince themselves that THEIR answer is CLEARLY correct and just deny that the rules are ambiguous. They almost certainly genuinely believe that the rules are clear cut. And then they get upset when they get a "wrong" ruling. But they're just flat out wrong, the rules ARE ambiguous.
English is an inherently ambiguous language, especially if you write in human readable prose and avoid lawyer speak. But even legal documents are inherently ambiguous as is shown by the thousands of legal cases every year
Part of being a good player is to accept the fact that there are inevitably going to be ambiguous rules in any game . Accept that there IS ambiguity and be prepared for a "wrong" ruling, accept the ruling and just play the game.
Yes I agree but it is a simplification
The major types of rules issues in roughly decreasing order of occurance are:
1) The gamer can't find the rule because the book is large.
2) The gamer misses a relevant rule because the rules are spread across multiple sections.
3) The general rule is overwritten by a specific rule elsewhere
4) The gamer has an idea in their head about how the rule should work, but the designer did something else.
5) There is no rule because there is only so much space in the book, or it is clearly GM territory to decide such a thing
6) The rule is missing - it is clear it should be there - like for example the range of the Leshy Seedpod (PFS fixed), or a proper definition of Additional Damage.
7) The rule is ambiguous at least in the mind of some people. This can be due to the use of natural English, tricky punctuation, inappropriate flavour text, absence of a keyword, or multiple designers going in different directions.
8) The rule is clear but people agreee it is just flat out stupid and refuse to do it. Example: the wildshaped druid can't 'Escape' because that would be an 'Attack'.
This Paizo forum can clearly sort out 1-5 and that is the vast bulk of it all
We can also identify 6-8. We can suggest possible options. But there will often be multiple answers. After a healthy discussion most adult participants do agree there are multiple interpretations. But sadly that is not everyone. We just have to live with the fact that people do have preconceived notions, differently starting points and aren't entirely rational. Its going to take some people more time to come around than others.
However there is often lots of value in the debate.
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Yes I agree but it is a simplification...
However there is often lots of value in the debate.
I VIOLENTLY agree with the above :-). The debates on these forums are in general a very good thing. They sometimes lead to something very close to consensus and when they don't they very, very often provide a very good summary of the issues and the reasons that can let a GM make an informed decision.
I'm pretty certain that it was you who was primarily responsible for the excellent job summarizing the wild shape issues. That summary is a very good example of how the forums can sometimes be very, very useful
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Yes I agree but it is a simplification...
However there is often lots of value in the debate.
I VIOLENTLY agree with the above :-). The debates on these forums are in general a very good thing. They sometimes lead to something very close to consensus and when they don't they very, very often provide a very good summary of the issues and the reasons that can let a GM make an informed decision.
I'm pretty certain that it was you who was primarily responsible for the excellent job summarizing the wild shape issues. That summary is a very good example of how the forums can sometimes be very, very useful
People discussing rules is wonderful. It has helped me figure out what feels like the best way to run my own tables for sure. I think there is also value for developers in seeing how a lot of these discussions shape up before making decisions about them. It is far better for Errata to do what it needs to do than not get to the full heart of the issue.
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Yes I agree but it is a simplificationThe major types of rules issues in roughly decreasing order of occurance are:
1) The gamer can't find the rule because the book is large.
2) The gamer misses a relevant rule because the rules are spread across multiple sections.
3) The general rule is overwritten by a specific rule elsewhere
4) The gamer has an idea in their head about how the rule should work, but the designer did something else.
5) There is no rule because there is only so much space in the book, or it is clearly GM territory to decide such a thing
6) The rule is missing - it is clear it should be there - like for example the range of the Leshy Seedpod (PFS fixed), or a proper definition of Additional Damage.
7) The rule is ambiguous at least in the mind of some people. This can be due to the use of natural English, tricky punctuation, inappropriate flavour text, absence of a keyword, or multiple designers going in different directions.
8) The rule is clear but people agreee it is just flat out stupid and refuse to do it. Example: the wildshaped druid can't 'Escape' because that would be an 'Attack'.This Paizo forum can clearly sort out 1-5 and that is the vast bulk of it all
We can also identify 6-8. We can suggest possible options. But there will often be multiple answers. After a healthy discussion most adult participants do agree there are multiple interpretations. But sadly that is not everyone. We just have to live with the fact that people do have preconceived notions, differently starting points and aren't entirely rational. Its going to take some people more time to come around than others.
However there is often lots of value in the debate.
After we sort out the first 5, can we agree that a errata/FAQ on the others will help everyone?
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Yes I agree but it is a simplification
The major types of rules issues in roughly decreasing order of occurance are:
1) The gamer can't find the rule because the book is large.
2) The gamer misses a relevant rule because the rules are spread across multiple sections.
3) The general rule is overwritten by a specific rule elsewhere
4) The gamer has an idea in their head about how the rule should work, but the designer did something else.
5) There is no rule because there is only so much space in the book, or it is clearly GM territory to decide such a thing
6) The rule is missing - it is clear it should be there - like for example the range of the Leshy Seedpod (PFS fixed), or a proper definition of Additional Damage.
7) The rule is ambiguous at least in the mind of some people. This can be due to the use of natural English, tricky punctuation, inappropriate flavour text, absence of a keyword, or multiple designers going in different directions.
8) The rule is clear but people agreee it is just flat out stupid and refuse to do it. Example: the wildshaped druid can't 'Escape' because that would be an 'Attack'.This Paizo forum can clearly sort out 1-5 and that is the vast bulk of it all
We can also identify 6-8. We can suggest possible options. But there will often be multiple answers. After a healthy discussion most adult participants do agree there are multiple interpretations. But sadly that is not everyone. We just have to live with the fact that people do have preconceived notions, differently starting points and aren't entirely rational. Its going to take some people more time to come around than others.
However there is often lots of value in the debate.
Ideally, yes, but let's not forget that often times what falls into 7 (especially since you left it open to "at least in the mind of some people") should be somewhere in the 3-5 range.
That being said, the goal isn't to convince everyone anyway. Not only is that not the point of a forum, but it's also impossible no matter how clear the rule is. In those cases the best that can be done is to, during the conversation, lay out the reasons why one believes certain interpretations make sense and others don't and hope that good arguments end up being more convincing than bad ones. This may sound like the same thing as 6-8, but from Paizo's perspective it could very well be its own category of "Just let them argue. There's no way we can satisfy everyone anyway. Any change in the wording would be a lateral move at best."