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I've shared this sentiment in a few threads, and I figure the discussion might be worthy of one unto itself, so:
Rarity as it currently stands in PF2 is both a measure of lore commonality (usually with the general Inner Sea as a base - Dwarves are easier to come by than Androids) and of compliance to baseline mechanical expectations (things like flight or teleportation, which can trivialize some storylines, or Rare Backgrounds, which "break the rules" of baseline Background benefit assumptions), and I think those two definitions are at war with one another.
Several years into the edition, the misconception that higher Rarity equates to greater power persists, in no small part because the label is pulling double duty in this way. There's also a degree of arbitrariness - should we really believe Inventors are harder to find on Golarion than Psychics? - that's never quite fit right in my head.
The Remaster is probably too small of a shakeup for this to be caught, but in this time of changes and re-examining, I figure it's a topic worth tackling.
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I don't know if teleportation is rare because of "it's ability to break plots" (which, admittedly, is an issue) so much as "a world in which teleportation was commonly available does not resemble the sort of baseline expectations for the sort of fantasy world we want." You could have a very high magic setting where teleportation is a standard means of travel for everybody who can afford 6th level arcane spells, but that world doesn't resemble Golarion very much. Much like "a world where Androids and Poppets and Skeletons are a common sight in city markets" also doesn't resemble Golarion very much.
It's much like how Airships aren't rare because "flying over stuff is game breaking" they're rare because Golarion does not have very many airships.
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I feel like the Inventor and Psychic thing comes from classes having uncommon tags not being a popular idea, since the play-test psychic had it.
That being said, I think for the most part rarity works but having two different terms wouldn't be a bad idea.
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I don't think rarity is doing too much, mainly because everything it does is all stuff I want it to do. It filters out niche setting stuff for me, it means guns and tech need to be run by the GM, it limits APs from accidentally introducing something too busted without it needing to be run by the GM, it keeps stuff that messes with the campaign/setting from doing so if the GM isn't prepared, and it explains why the setting isn't riddle with Dominate countermeasures and teleportation replacements for aspects of commerce. It's all basically doing the same thing, though: providing a convenient baseline.
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I feel like the Inventor and Psychic thing comes from classes having uncommon tags not being a popular idea, since the play-test psychic had it.
That being said, I think for the most part rarity works but having two different terms wouldn't be a bad idea.
Eh... You can fit a psychic in anywhere without too much trouble, but gunslinger was one of the most-banned PF1 classes from my experience. It's a big flavor departure for a lot of games to include one, and inventor falls into a very similar category.
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I don't know if teleportation is rare because of "it's ability to break plots" (which, admittedly, is an issue) so much as "a world in which teleportation was commonly available does not resemble the sort of baseline expectations for the sort of fantasy world we want."
YMMV but while "A world with easy teleportation looks different" is a valid aspect to it, I feel like the much stronger motivation for limiting teleportation magic with a rarity tag is the former. This could just be my experience with discussions around Jade Regent talking where, if you choose, you can pick up a teleport spell in the middle of your epic journey across the world and skip large swaths of it by ditching your caravan.
I think the OP has a good point: Rarity is trying to cover multiple factors which don't always align. What seems less clear to me is exactly how big a problem this is, or how easily it could be fixed.
I suppose it would be easy enough for the designers to flag items which violate common rules assumptions, but less easy to come up with a satisfying in-world explanation for why those things are uncommon. I wonder if that wouldn't rub some people the wrong way.
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I feel like these things are connected. Like the reason that "who is telling the truth" or "objectively determine what actually happened" sorts of magic are rare is less "these spells would prevent a GM from running a mystery story, because magic can tell you whodunnit" and more because "everything in the world predates the PCs being in it, so if 'who did the crime' was an easily accessible spell, the system of law and justice on Golarion would have evolved to be extremely different from that which is recognizable to the players."
Since the basic struggle with a fantasy game is to create a shared understanding of what a fictional setting is like. So a lot of what we're trying to do is to make this easy. Like the reason Elves and Dwarves are common is basically "everybody is aware of Lord of the Rings." Worldbuilding is just easier when you can say things like "oh, there absolutely are lizard people, they're just not common around here" or "while it's possible to teleport long distances with magic, it's not easy, inexpensive, or generally available so people still transport goods with ships and through caravans primarily."
It is a common complaint.
I see what you did there.
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I agree with keftiu, rarity is doing multiple things that would make more sense as a couple separate traits, or even not need a trait at all (focus spells).
* Uncommon because regional/factional: katanas from Tian Xia, skill feats for Knights of Lastwall, AP backmatter stuff
* Uncommon because it might mess with the GM's plot: divination and teleportation
* Uncommon/Rare because... special aspirational item? Ring of Wizardry, Staff of the Magi
* Rare because just plain rare: old and unusual magic items, a few spells
* Uncommon because... powerful? Power Words
* Uncommon because only accessed in a specific way: focus spells. There is no way to just pick up an arbitrary focus spell so the tag doesn't actually do anything here.
* Uncommon monsters because they're even less common than other monsters of the same (very high, not often encountered) level.
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I think the OP has a good point: Rarity is trying to cover multiple factors which don't always align. What seems less clear to me is exactly how big a problem this is, or how easily it could be fixed.
My thinking is to split what is currently Rarity into two things: Rarity (a measure of regional commonality within the setting) and a better name for what I'm currently calling Eccentricity (how much it bends the core rules assumptions). Having one foot in the lore and another in the mechanics is doing it no favors.
Androids are Rare, but they basically work like your bog-standard Ancestry, and so would have a low Eccentricity, while something like a Sprite would bump the Eccentricity up.
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Rarity is good because it is a very simple and useful tool for the GM to use and tweak. And it does the job of allowing the GM to say Yes far more often than No.
The criteria / formula for determining what a given thing's Rarity should be are a hot mess as described above.
I have been beating this latter drum ever since the PF2 playtest, to no avail.
Now, since IME "simple to use" is the greatest argument, I fear Rarity as a single indicator will not change.
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IMO I agree with the complains. The ideia of rarity is very cool specially when we came from other games that have nothing like this. But currently is so comprehensive that needs some extra explanation or split into other tags.
This is specially useful if you start adventures from other unorthodox places of Golarion and specially for games that the GM want to run in other fantasy set then Golarion.
The other problem with rarity tags are to lazy GMs that may some times set a house rule of "no rare/uncommon" without want to think too much instead of avail each uncommon/rare case individually.
I would love if remaster address this in some way also because isn't a new complain.
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I guess I just don't see much benefit in dividing up the rarity reasons. Sure, it'd be nice to have everything tagged with "why", but that's more than double the work for Paizo, there are multiple reasons for a lot of things, it's more for GMs to sort out, and it'd mean a lot more arguments.
Original post didn't get that many favorites from everyone feeling there's no issue, though, so I'm not going to pretend like saying "it's not a problem for me" is the answer.
I guess for me, rarity solves a lot of PF1 issues. Players showing up with broken items or spells from APs that didn't get reviewed as much or had overly cheap prices, players showing up with AP traits or that same Wayang trait, numerous GMs having to list gunslinger as banned, the whole divination/counter-divination arms race, and having a bunch of incredibly niche regional feats to sift through. I'm fine with that all falling under a "check with the GM" tag.
It kind of feels like weapons are the main place it gets messy in PF2, though. It's the one place where there are a bunch of common feats for uncommon access.
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Put me in an aswell as someone who believes rarity is doing too much. But I will also add that it is not doing its main job specially well, but its doing a great job at noting what options are stronger.
The issue I see is that rarity is trying to determine what is common in whar region, while basing everything on a single default region. This creates an issue specially as more books are added where something that should be common to multiple regions but not the default breaks down.
Meanwhile, with out fail, everything tagged as rare or unique is built to be stronger or have a bigger impact than the base spectations. Uncommon has more sway because of just how bad some focus spells items are (ex: All the wizard focus spells).
I do not feel that, for example, Rare ancestries (such as Gorhan or Conrasu) are built to be stronger or have a bigger impact though.
So, it's not that clear cut.
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I agree that I also have a general feeling that things marked as rare are often slightly more powerful than equivalent things of the same tier. Something that in my opinion is not right for the very definition of rarity tags.
Also the game fixes this problem by putting RK penalties against things with high rarities. What mechanically affects a lot due to rarity, whether getting information about a monster using characteristics and feats that depend on RK.
Anyway, there is a lot of confusion related to rarity tags that deserved to be revised.
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To me, everything that fall under the rarity system actually does make sense. In that the system is a way that GMs can easily manage the default assumptions of a game, especially new GMs. It allows a GM for a variety of reasons to be able to easily say "no" to something.
A GM can set ancestries to be only common or only common/uncommon, and not have to worry about a party of complete oddballs that don't fit their story or theme.
A GM can limit rare/uncommon spells, so he has less to worry about with spells that might significantly derail his plans.
Both are all about empowering a GM to make decisions and to limit options for players.
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{Wyvaran demand again}
This thread is talking about rarity as it current exists and is implemented. Let's please try to keep to that topic rather than derailing it by bringing up (again) an off-topic ask about a non-existant ancestry that you already have several other threads made to specifically discuss.
Now: the rarity system. I also think its trying to do a few too many things all together, but aren't sure of a better way to better split it at this point. One real pro is that it is way easier for a GM to 'allow' a normally restricted option than to 'ban' one.
My main two frustrations are:
* Rarity tag on Focus spells and other abilites that you only get as a result of taking a prior pre-req. If the only way to get something is through another thing (such as the spell reinforce eidolon by taking the 'Reinforce Eidolon' feat) doubling up the rarity tags is a bit confusing, especially for new players.
* All the AP material tending to default to 'Uncommon+'. In some cases this makes sense under the 'campaign/local-specific' logic, particularly many items. But when another stated reason by the Devs is that those options get less development time and so they use higher rarity as a safety valve in case something's OP, it undercuts the stated Core argument that rarity isn't supposed to line up with power level.
The thing is, I feel like "eccentricity" in the sense that this is something that would bend the assumptions of the setting if it were common, and "rarity" in the sense of "the actual distribution of the thing" are actually the same thing. We're simply determining the distributions of things based on the aesthetic preferences of the authors of the setting.
It's just that "androids are rare outside of Numeria" is a first order aesthetic preference, in that you just don't see them very often in Magnimar or Nisroch. Whereas "teleportation isn't really used to transport goods/people, and truth-determining magic isn't used to solve crimes" are a second order aesthetic preference, in that while you wouldn't necessarily notice the direct effects, you would notice the secondary effects (like there's no river pirates anymore since nobody with money transports things via the river.)
It's all just "keeping a handle on worldbuilding." Could someone come up with a specific example of "something that is rare and should not be?" I'm not worried about uncommon, since anything that's uncommon should be eventually accessible by a player unless the GM has a very good reason to say no.
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I think the Rarity mechanic exists, fundamentally, to mark something that could be disruptive--whether it's disruptive to the gameplay (teleport), to the game's tone (dominate), to the lore of the canon setting (the katana, when set in Garund or Avistan), or to the party's aesthetic (a poppet, an android, a soulforger). I really like it.
I feel like this conversation isn't so much distinguishing between these, but the way I see it, there are four uses for Rarity. A poppet PC isn't necessarily violating the setting lore, but it might make the party feel more goofy or kitchen sinky than some GMs like to have a walking doll join the crew. A katana or Magic Warrior aren't particularly disruptive to tone or aesthetic, but placing a katana in the Mwangi Expanse, or a Magic Warrior in Tian Xia, would normally require some explanation. Dominate and antipaladins fit fine in the setting, but many people are flat-out not comfortable with the good guys using mind control, and a partymember dedicated to boring, mustache-twirling evil is going to kind of twist the vibes for most APs.
I would kind of like PF2 to have more of a distinction for setting-specific content. I haven't read the archetype, but I assume there's no reason the Magic Warrior would need to be Uncommon in a non-Golarion game. (If I'm wrong, you can substitute "Magic Warrior" for whatever other example suits you.) I think it's a little confusing, and makes PF2 feel a little too much about Paizo's Golarion, instead of the GM's Golarion/setting-of-choice.
All that being said, I dunno if I really have anything major to add to this discussion. I don't have a strong opinion, I guess. Rarity is meant to be a blanket "ask your GM" mechanic. Splitting it into two "ask your GM" mechanics feels messy, but I get that these miscommunications must be frustrating.
Another thing is "this item/spell/etc. is more powerful than comparable ones" is a correct use of rarity. In a diagetic sense, at some point the gunworks in Alkenstar are going to come up with a gun that is much better than the guns that they currently make. The only thing that will keep that gun from making obsolete previous guns is "they don't let many of them out of the armory".
Certainly eventually "experimental prototype rifle MK-VII" will eventually replace the Arquebus and Flintlock Muskets all over the world, it's just important to be able to set games before guns are the be all and end all (which is again, an aesthetic preference.)
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I'm honestly not sure there should be a lot of "this thing is flat-out unbalanced" uses of Rarity, simply because I don't think Paizo should set out to introduce unbalanced mechanics. Teleport and fly are probably pretty balanced for they're level. They're disruptive, they're narrative-bending, but they aren't OP. I'd ideally like to see a phasing-out of that use of the trait, but I guess that may be wishful thinking. Accidents happen.
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This discussion has made me realize that I too would like to know whether the Paizo designers think the Rare trait is indicative of a mechanical issue or of an in-world demographic issue.
I've been using PFS constraints to decide whether to allow PCs to have particular items/backgrounds/ancestries, but that's simply offloading the evaluation to someone else.
I'd appreciate a better way to differentiate.
Not a Paizo deisgner obviously, but for fun let's look at all the RARE spells in 2e. Per Nethys, there are 33 of them printed so far. Trying to break down why they were likely evaluated as RARE:
Gameplay 'Disruption' reasons
Antimagic Field - an iconicly very powerful spell. I suspect rare in large part due to the fact that turning off all magic item's magicness suddenly requires a significant amount of math recalculation from every characters and enemy affected, and as the tight math of the game really assumes PCs are using runes and other magic item bonuses to keep pace this could radically throw off encounter math.
Catch Your Name and Compel Your Name - deal with True Names, an optional mechanic not part of the rule baselines
Dinosaur Fort - makes an enormous day-long fortress with predators thrown in.
Divinity Leech - real *%&* you to divine casters specifically
Prismatic Shield - Likely Rare due to AP-material caution, but it may also provide a bit too much defense for a single-action spell [ooc]compare to Indestructibility, which is a 10th level spell and is two-actions
Forgotten Lines - Very powerful 'mystery' solver spell that is also incredibly niche and means GMs would need to likely backtrack on what documents would have said.
Undertaker? - Because it can turn the enemy into a wild undead if it kills them? Probably just due to AP-caution, but that's the only other thing I can see
Lore reasons
All is One, One is All and Halcyon Infusion - They are called out as being personal spells of Old Man Jatembe
Aromatic Lure and Rebounding Barrier - Ancient lost spells whose knowledge is held by the Runelords. They're noted to teach them as occasional rewards or lessons, but not often.
Detect Creator - rare magic known to certain Knights of Lastwall though they can cast it for others or teach it, usually with a quest involved
Hypnopompic Terrors and Lure Dream - Magic associated with one specific unique creature a continent away from the main setting locations.
Internal Insurrection - Magic associated with a specific haunting force (I think).
Return to Essence - A spell developed by
Summon Kaiju, Summon Ancient Fleshforged, and Summon Irrii - magics related to and attuned to very sparse and in-world super rare creatures.
'We'rebeing cautious about this AP option that hasn't gone through the same level of balance playtesting' reasons
Temporal Ward -
Worm's Repast - here's one that number's wise probably is right on the line of being a bit too powerful. Which still shouldn't be a good reason to 'print but just make Rare' but its a good example of how that precaution can be helpful.
Every Rare spell from Kingmaker - My guess. The few I looked through didn't seem that out there but there are so many...
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I just hope Wyvaran aren’t made rare
I feel there are lots of things that are uncommon or rare and shouldn’t be
Automatons and skeletons? Yeah that makes sense, they should be rare
Lizardfolk and kobolds? They are common in the world, they just aren’t common in Absalom. Make them common
Wyvaran? If they return, I hope they realize people have been wanting a medium sized draconic race that isn’t kobolds and update the lore to where they are common like kobolds probably will be in new core books
Maybe they were considered rare in 1e, but maybe something happened to cause them to spread out and thus become common.
My dude, just settle down. Wyvaran are not common on Golarion. IF (and it's a big if) they are introduced they will be rare. Wyvaren are in FIVE books from first edtion. Out of HUNDREDS. They are in Bestiary 4, Legacy of Dragons (player companion), Advanced Race Guide, Heroes of Golarion (player companion), and Inner Sea Races (campaign setting). This does not make a common ancestry.
I'm just saying that in a plausible world-building sense, it's more irksome to say "these are the best weapons and items and spells that can be invented" rather than "nobody's come up with the better one yet". If we allow for better things to be possible when someone figures out how to do them (and Pathfinder's past has things like flying cities and sentient automata), then the natural way to talk about their place in the world is with Rarity.
Like someone's smuggling technology from Earth into Irrisen. They can presumably get the very good guns, there just aren't many of them. It's not a problem if there are like 3 M1918 BARs and 8 Tommy Guns in Golarion somewhere.
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For me, I would still prefer disruptive options be marked as such in addition to being marked rare. Rare/Uncommon/Common is supposed to shift around from location to location, while a disruptive option is going to be disruptive no matter where it is.
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I'm just saying that in a plausible world-building sense, it's more irksome to say "these are the best weapons and items and spells that can be invented" rather than "nobody's come up with the better one yet". If we allow for better things to be possible when someone figures out how to do them (and Pathfinder's past has things like flying cities and sentient automata), then the natural way to talk about their place in the world is with Rarity.
Like someone's smuggling technology from Earth into Irrisen. They can presumably get the very good guns, there just aren't many of them. It's not a problem if there are like 3 M1918 BARs and 8 Tommy Guns in Golarion somewhere.
In-canon it's somewhat happened.
The bigger impact of that population is all the other things that they brought with -- guns are actually a small portion of the knowledge base they have with them.
I agree with the concept of rarity, but much like Temperans I think it's being asked to do way too much for one word.
Call it a 'Feat' or a 'Level' as one of the things that needs a rework and redefinition/breakdown into '(Potentially) Disruptive' or 'Regional' as subcategories, maybe?
They should break the setting loose of the Absalom-centric Center of the World focus so the game can become truly setting-agnostic for folks who are starting with Core.
The Magaambya is but one example of how the setting has branched out, but rarities there should not and cannot be the same as something from Absalom, Goka, Magnimaar, Kaer Maga, or Segada.
Reconciling regional exceptionalism and separating it from game mechanics should be a goal of Core, imo.
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A bit of a side track, but related. There is no reason why Focus Spells should have a separate entry from the feat. All that does is waste space by writing the same thing twice. Its nice for putting all the focus spells in one area, but every double entry in another feat that doesn't get made.
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Back to the actual topic. If the goal is to provide GMs a tool for telling players no, well they don't have to actually tag anything. If they are going to tell you what is common in every campaign, then again they don't have to actually tag anything.
Then the fact that uncommon/rare is campaign dependent means that you only need to tag the campaign stuff that way. So again don't need to tag everything.
Rarity is a great idea, but not really well implemented in a TTRPG where everything is simultaneously common and rare based on the table.
Actually, the goal of Rarity is to enable GMs to say Yes far more often than having to say No. It actually makes a big difference.
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I just hope Wyvaran…
You keep saying you aren’t a troll and yet you keep bringing your personal agendas into topics and missing the overall point just to spout the same arguments you are making in multiple other places. Stop doing this. Flagging this for baiting because until it can be proven otherwise, I’m just assuming that’s what this is.
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Rarity exists as a warning flag for players to check in with their GMs about something. I'd say it's definitely more to make it easier for GMs to say "no", as well as a way for players to identify which options they may want to be careful about.
I disagree, this is the correct use for levels of items, not rarity.Another thing is "this item/spell/etc. is more powerful than comparable ones" is a correct use of rarity.
The thing is, item level doesn't really tell you anything except "how hard it would be to make this item". It's possible that there are items you could get that no one on the entire planet of Golarion is capable of constructing (i.e. they were made elsewhere and brought here), so how does item level help the GM figure out out how to manage plasma cannons and laser swords?
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Rarity exists as a warning flag for players to check in with their GMs about something. I'd say it's definitely more to make it easier for GMs to say "no", as well as a way for players to identify which options they may want to be careful about.I agree wholeheartedly. The rarity flag is a reminder to the player that they should check with the GM. It also serves as a flag for the GM to say, you might want to review this option before allowing it.
This isn't about blocking players, its about encouraging upfront communication.
Unfortunately, this is not the way that the Pathfinder Society program uses it, and home GMs may take the wrong cues from said program.
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The thing is, item level doesn't really tell you anything except "how hard it would be to make this item". It's possible that there are items you could get that no one on the entire planet of Golarion is capable of constructing (i.e. they were made elsewhere and brought here), so how does item level help the GM figure out out how to manage plasma cannons and laser swords?I disagree, this is the correct use for levels of items, not rarity.Another thing is "this item/spell/etc. is more powerful than comparable ones" is a correct use of rarity.
Level is pretty firmly a measure of "where does this item/feat/ability/monster fit into the game's math?" I'm not sure if you're saying it's something else, but it absolutely isn't just about the difficulty of creation.
The thing is that item level doesn't actually tell me how to handle wholly mundane items that are well outside of Pathfinder's game math.
Like it's not impossible for a Colt M1911 to end up on Golarion somehow. That would be a Simple 1H firearm with a range increment of 80, d8 damage, fatal d10, magazine size of 7, with concussive. It would be the best firearm in the game by a long shot. They can't make these on Golarion yet, but a Golarion based gunslinger would be able to maintain one. The only way I could have this weapon in my game and make it work is the same way I would keep plasma cannons under wraps- by limiting access to ammunition.
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It does two things, and does them well... not sure how that is too much.
Why would that weapon not be accounted for by level, PossibleCabbage? We already have weapons that are higher than Level 0. The Exquisite Sword Cane, for example.