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Here's the thing with that though: They already made every GM an official rules arbiter, ...
this is a gross misrepresentation of what is going on
- official: please- at your table: you need only your own (no one else’s) permission for that
so no, the quoted statement is simply off base
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One thing I would like to see is any actual FAQ in the FAQ/errata page for Pathfinder.
Right now, we just have the two-part errata for the CRB and the errata for Bestiary 2. But as far as commonly asked questions, none of the most frequently asked questions have been answered.
On the flip side, the Starfinder FAQ/errata page is quite a bit more active. Even extending to Near Space, a book that is around a year old now. And it has both FAQ and errata entries for each of the books. I just wish there was more FAQ on the PF2E side of things.
Obviously, circumstances most likely exist to prevent Paizo from just doing it, otherwise they would have done it by now. But I do hope it's something Paizo will look into addressing this year.
Especially for the Lost Omens books. *cough cough*
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I don't see this going anywhere because the request here is just too extreme. That Paizo go to the ends of the earth and fix every possible ambiguity and settle every small doubt. It would be extremely expensive, would result in a massively bloated large rules base, lead to people fatigued by the constant churn of errata (what version are we on? 2.3.7a? Or was that last month? What changed since I last updated my third character?).
Some of the questions here verge on the tinfoil hat. Does Paizo intentionally make things ambiguous? Of course not. When they really want to leave a decision to the GM they just write that "at the GM's discretion..." or "the GM might allow you to...". But PF2 does work a bit more from a big principles standpoint than PF1. It doesn't aim to cover every corner case because there are always more corner cases and trying to patch one often just generates a new one. Rather, it aims to give the GM guiding principles with which to solve them.
That doesn't mean I don't want some FAQs and errata. But I think we need priorities. Just like the support desk of any IT department also prioritizes incoming issues.
How many people are affected by an issue?
More characters have Battle Medicine than Leshy's Grasping Reach. Especially with how Paizo keeps putting new Battle Medicine related options into books - it's a theme they want to work with, what with atheist healers and all.
How severely are they affected?
If your leshy with a great pick deals d10s on a crit instead of d12s, that's not going to invalidate your build. Sure, you'll do less damage, but the character is still mostly functional. For Battle Medicine it's a pretty big deal how many hands you need free; if you need both hands free, then for a lot of builds it's not going to work. If you don't need any hands free, then sword & board battle medicine is on the table.
How hard would this be to resolve?
Battle Medicine was rather hard to resolve. The original CRB basically didn't support the current rule at all, the whole wearing tools thing is new in the new printinig. The whole discussion was about 0 or 2 hands, although the rules forum converged on the idea that while 1 hand wasn't supported by the rules, it was a compromise that was both balanced and not immersion-breaking. The decision to change it was also related to a revision of bulk rules to simplify the use of containers and provide a stealth boost to carrying capacity. And other kinds of tools also got a bit of a boost from this. So altogether, it was a complex change.
Fixing leshy grasping reach looks simpler but there are some hidden side effects. Another open question is how Deadly Simplicity works with Two-Hand weapons like staves. Does a cleric of Nethys do 1d10 with a quarterstaff held in two hands? You would want the answer to these questions to make sense together.
Can the change fit into the book?
If you change a rule you need to incorporate that into the next printing. But what if a (substantial) change or clarification causes a paragraph to move to the next page, and text on that page moves to another, and so on? All the page number references in that book, but also in other books, would be broken. That's not something Paizo wants, so the amount of room for working in a rule change is often very limited.
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So that's something to keep in mind when asking yourself, how badly do we need this issue clarified vs how hard is it to actually do that?
It's unreasonable to say every issue should be fixed with the same priority. Some of them maybe aren't worth the cost to fix - fixing it is too hard for a very small benefit. Others, definitely worth fixing. Battle Medicine is an example of a difficult fix that was worth doing.
It might be interesting to have some kind of poll where the community could actually vote on which issues they'd like to see clarified the most. Because some of the most heated discussions are also just a few very committed people, while everyone else thinks that particular issue isn't that important.
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I don't see this going anywhere because the request here is just too extreme. That Paizo go to the ends of the earth and fix every possible ambiguity and settle every small doubt. It would be extremely expensive, would result in a massively bloated large rules base, lead to people fatigued by the constant churn of errata (what version are we on? 2.3.7a? Or was that last month? What changed since I last updated my third character?).
Some of the questions here verge on the tinfoil hat. Does Paizo intentionally make things ambiguous? Of course not. When they really want to leave a decision to the GM they just write that "at the GM's discretion..." or "the GM might allow you to...". But PF2 does work a bit more from a big principles standpoint than PF1. It doesn't aim to cover every corner case because there are always more corner cases and trying to patch one often just generates a new one. Rather, it aims to give the GM guiding principles with which to solve them.
That doesn't mean I don't want some FAQs and errata. But I think we need priorities. Just like the support desk of any IT department also prioritizes incoming issues.
How many people are affected by an issue?
.
.
.
How severely are they affected?
.
.
.
How hard would this be to resolve?
.
.
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Can the change fit into the book?
.
.
.
I agree with your general sentiment, though, I think the example provided isn't necessarily the best. It certainly fits the first two categories, but I think something that I would very much like for cases like that (if Paizo happens to see them. I'm not assuming they look through every thread in detail) would be a brief addition to an ongoing FAQ. No change to the book, because it doesn't even need updating, as the wording already allows for the correct interpretation (whatever that is... I think I know what it is, but lets not rehash that) with the real question being about the order of operations. Putting a sidebar or a couple sentences about something like that in the main text would just make it more bloated. Instead, on the "FAQ and Errata" page they could open up an actual FAQ next to the errata. I'm assuming the devs had an idea of the order of operations in mind, so it really should only take a matter of minutes to confer and put a quick FAQ talking about grasping reach and the deadly trait's relative order of operations. If people still want to ignore the ruling, fine, but we'd have a way of resolving it for people who want to run it RAI.
I'm not saying this is easy and the forums should be scoured for everything that can be fixed in this way, but it would be nice to see a thing or two pop up in a FAQ here and there instead of having to wait for another printing of the relevant book to get any insight on little things like that... if they happen to notice the discussion going on. I know they're busy.
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Maybe a different approach than the old FAQ system. What about a "one person, one vote per week" thing where we have to pick which issues are really burning questions that affect a lot of people, and which ones are all in all not as high impact as others, or don't affect that many people.
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So my question is, why we don't have answers?
I think this is a reasonable question/request.
Without getting into the weeds (like happened before in this thread++), I would hope we see more frequent information provided as to what was their intent when the designers themselves wrote some of the rules for which there have been multiple threads.I, as other have commented, believe every rule in the books was written with a specific idea in mind and I’d like more of those thoughts shared.
Please note: I am not asking how to handle a rule I find unclear or am uncertain about. I’m asking what was the author’s specific intent for that rule. Saying there is a rule that, in essence, says ‘do what is best for your bunch’ is repeating what is well known and a tangent to “when you [the designers] wrote this rule, how did you envision it being implemented?”
and yes, I understand the number of people who can directly answer, as opposed to providing supposition and opinion, is very few
++ there are many views and opinions as to how it should / should not be, how this should be handled by any individual or table, how ... and, in essence, opinions vary widely and there is no consensus
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Very well said. I couldn't agree more that this would be nice in whatever form is feasible for the team. I'm sure those kinds of insights will never be as frequent as the community would like given how busy staff no doubt is right now, but the more frequently those designer intent insights come the better imo.
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They could stand to be clearer about intent at times...as long as it doesn't cause them to hit their heads on strict page limits. And with many people working on this game, sometimes with conflicting ideas of how things work or what's balanced, "intent" isn't always safe to try to get across unofficially.
I think Ssalarn's posts near the end of the first page are pretty important, and fit why I don't find this as much of an issue as others do.
Designer
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I think this is a reasonable question/request.
Without getting into the weeds (like happened before in this thread++), I would hope we see more frequent information provided as to what was their intent when the designers themselves wrote some of the rules for which there have been multiple threads.
I, as other have commented, believe every rule in the books was written with a specific idea in mind and I’d like more of those thoughts shared.Please note: I am not asking how to handle a rule I find unclear or am uncertain about. I’m asking what was the author’s specific intent for that rule.
The issue with this is that it often doesn't matter what the author's intent was.
For example, the APG has three credited authors, but then you look at the "additional writing" line- that's 32 more writers who wrote archetypes, items, feats, etc. and then turned in their assignments. While they likely all had good ideas, some of them had problematic executions or wanted to do a thing the game doesn't want happening. So a designer likely reworked that thing to make it a better fit for the game, maybe doing what the author wanted to do, maybe doing a new thing that is similar but more appropriate for the balance of the game. Then another designer does their pass and might find a different issue because their area of expertise is different than the first designer's and they recognized a potential issue or opportunity that the feat needed to capitalize on, so they made those changes as well. Then the product either goes through two more design passes (if it's part of a class) or goes on to edit, where the editors might note that a particular phrasing is difficult to parse for an average reader, or look at whether a trait is appropriate or missing, or even catch a rules issue that the designers missed (since Paizo has several editors who are very knowledgeable in the game mechanics and they touch every single product line and sometimes even every product within a line, which is nearly impossible for anyone else to do given the amount of content being produced).
By the end of the development process, there might not be anything left of the original turnover but the name, and the original writer's intent might have been actively, intentionally, and purposefully scrubbed for the game's well-being. There is no one at, or associated with, the company who is the sole proprietor of the thing they wrote for Paizo and solely responsible for its final form.
And for sure, the design team wants to get errata out and FAQs up very, very, badly, but the last year and a half hasn't exactly been conducive to that. I don't know that there's a single person in this company whose job hasn't been directly affected in an extremely detrimental way by COVID. Adventure authors drop out halfway through an adventure because their mother is on a respirator. A freelancer drops out two weeks before their turnover is due because they work at a hospital and they went from 40 hour weeks when they accepted the assignment to 80 hour weeks a week after they signed the contract. A reliable and completely trustworthy author who took on a big assignment has to pull out because his roommate just died and not only did he lose his best friend, but he lives in a conservative area with no rent protections and now he might be homeless next month. Teams that used to work closely together in an office environment where they could freely and easily bounce ideas and thoughts off each other haven't seen each other in person for over a year.
Every single one of those things (with some slight fudging of specific relationships to preserve people's privacy) and more have actually happened in the last 15 months. And that means the person who was going to work on errata instead has to write an extra 40 pages of content so products make their print dates. It means the tech who was going to set up an FAQ page instead had to arrange or attend a funeral. It means that a designer might have had to choose between doing a full pass on an AP or just asking the developer to send them anything they had questions about so that the designer could make sure a critical book like Secrets of Magic was ready for print on time.
There is no one person who is the sole proprietor of any rule, and that means no one person can make an independent ruling on anything. We all have to talk and collaborate and that has been very, very difficult to do while also keeping the lights on. Without PF2 there might not be a Paizo right now thanks to how badly COVID (and other events) messed up FLGSs and distribution networks. We very much want to give more answers and clarifications. But there's a list of priorities and the situation in the world has meant that the ones that aren't #1 are lucky if they get addressed at all.
Hopefully, as more people get vaccinated and we find a new normal, things will continue to stabilize and responses to questions can become more frequent. In the meantime, encourage people who are holding out to get vaccinated, build good relationships with your GMs, and please understand that for 15 months nothing has been remotely close to normal and everyone has had to work harder than ever under more adverse conditions than the company has ever experienced.