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Aware but unable to act is paralyzed not stunned. Stunned is being unable to act and not being able to make sense of whats coming in, that's the senseless part.You can act while paralyzed though only trough purely mental actions, Stunned is can't act, full stop.
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A senseless creature can act so being senseless on its own cannot mean you cannot act. It means its own thing.Except Senseless is not a synonym to having your senses impaired but rather a synonym for unconcious or unresponsive, Which is the issue. Even if you were correct in its meaning it would still need to define what "senseless" means in game terms. Just like Blinded says a whole lot more than "You cannot see". It also says
You can't detect anything using vision.
You automatically critically fail Perception checks that require you to be able to see.
if vision is your only precise sense, you take a –4 status penalty to Perception checks.
You are immune to visual effects.It's not repeating itself just for the fun of it, This is also why conditions exists to codify and define common effects to effectively infer the same meaning elsewhere with a single word.
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In fact here you cannot act is not saying the exact words you cannot use actions yet it still means it. You are senseless means the in context most obvious meaning too.Unlike "Senseless" we do have "You can't act" as a game term defined both in the rules regarding turns and The same thing is repeated in Gaining and Losing actions. We do not need Blindness to tell us everything that the Blinded condition contains for the same reason.
Some effects might prevent you from acting. If you can't act, you can't use any actions, including reactions and free actions....
Ok so back to this.
Um that first point. about paralyze allowing mental actions, you could be generous enough to assume we both know that. And really it again works against your point. A paralyzed creature has their faculties but cant flail about which is to be fair again the context I was arguing with right?
A stunned character doesn't have their faculties and cant even take mental actions. More to my point than yours, since a paralyzed creature keeps their ability to perceive and use purely mental actions.
Thing is if your writing these rules for people who are not trying to be overly technical and just reading them to know what they do, they wouldn't simply ignore the first line of text assuming it cant be part of the rules especially if that first line is saying something consequential.
You've become senseless and You can't act are both consequential statements.
They are categorical ones.
They are not ambiguous.
For me reading those two statements is clear about what they mean. And if we were not trying to find some in game mechanical key terms and just taking them at face value we all would know the creature cannot sense anything and cannot take actions while this condition is up.
If a stunned creature wants to try any action it can't, if it wants to see hear or smell it cant, a senseless creature cannot do those things., and thats true of either definition of senseless you want to use. You don't have to define a categorical statement any further and doing so will be a long list.
If the writers were putting text together that was meaningless at conveying what the thing does then it should not be included, they could save on word count. If they want to use descriptions that are not meant to say what the thing does but as flavor I would be in favor of just not having it there. The content should always be consistent. Like in food preparation its taboo to put inedible things on the plate.
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...Aware but unable to act is paralyzed not stunned. Stunned is being unable to act and not being able to make sense of whats coming in, that's the senseless part.You can act while paralyzed though only trough purely mental actions, Stunned is can't act, full stop.
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A senseless creature can act so being senseless on its own cannot mean you cannot act. It means its own thing.Except Senseless is not a synonym to having your senses impaired but rather a synonym for unconcious or unresponsive, Which is the issue. Even if you were correct in its meaning it would still need to define what "senseless" means in game terms. Just like Blinded says a whole lot more than "You cannot see". It also says
You can't detect anything using vision.
You automatically critically fail Perception checks that require you to be able to see.
if vision is your only precise sense, you take a –4 status penalty to Perception checks.
You are immune to visual effects.It's not repeating itself just for the fun of it, This is also why conditions exists to codify and define common effects to effectively infer the same meaning elsewhere with a single word.
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In fact here you cannot act is not saying the exact words you cannot use actions yet it still means it. You are senseless means the in context most obvious meaning too.Unlike "Senseless" we do have "You can't act" as a game term defined both in the rules regarding turns and The same thing is repeated in Gaining and Losing actions. We do not need Blindness to tell us everything that the Blinded condition contains for the same reason.
Some effects might prevent you from acting. If you can't act, you can't use any actions, including reactions and free actions....
By your logic, a senseless act of violence must literally mean that the person committing violence is either doing it unconsciously or while unable to perceive their surroundings. Natural language simply doesn't work for a game's rules text.
Design spells and abilities to work as unsubjectively as an MtG card and then add a sidebar on flavour text and expanding spells beyond their strict rules framework as an optional, not PFS legal, set of variant rules.
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It is one thing that 4e always did well with-- separating flavor text and mechanical text to make it easier to track.See, I would count this among the worst things about 4e (an edition I liked a lot, actually)- my eyes would glaze over reading 4e spells and I'd have basically no clue about what happens when you cast the spell other than the mechanics. Like "1W + StrMod damage, Target is Pushed 1 square" is clear, but what actually happens?
the 4e spell has the flavor text in italics, so you do know what actually happens.
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...Aware but unable to act is paralyzed not stunned. Stunned is being unable to act and not being able to make sense of whats coming in, that's the senseless part.You can act while paralyzed though only trough purely mental actions, Stunned is can't act, full stop.
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A senseless creature can act so being senseless on its own cannot mean you cannot act. It means its own thing.Except Senseless is not a synonym to having your senses impaired but rather a synonym for unconcious or unresponsive, Which is the issue. Even if you were correct in its meaning it would still need to define what "senseless" means in game terms. Just like Blinded says a whole lot more than "You cannot see". It also says
You can't detect anything using vision.
You automatically critically fail Perception checks that require you to be able to see.
if vision is your only precise sense, you take a –4 status penalty to Perception checks.
You are immune to visual effects.It's not repeating itself just for the fun of it, This is also why conditions exists to codify and define common effects to effectively infer the same meaning elsewhere with a single word.
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In fact here you cannot act is not saying the exact words you cannot use actions yet it still means it. You are senseless means the in context most obvious meaning too.Unlike "Senseless" we do have "You can't act" as a game term defined both in the rules regarding turns and The same thing is repeated in Gaining and Losing actions. We do not need Blindness to tell us everything that the Blinded condition contains for the same reason.
Some effects might prevent you from acting. If you can't act, you can't use any actions, including
Its a word used in context of being stunned meaning as not having all your faculties but i'll give you that meaning as you put it wouldn't work to mean without senses in the physical sense (albeit it wouldn't make much sense to think that was the meaning they were going for)
Taking the meaning it has to be in context and the natural language does work in this case.
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Its a word used in context of being stunned meaning as not having all your faculties but i'll give you that meaning as you put it wouldn't work to mean without senses in the physical sense (albeit it wouldn't make much sense to think that was the meaning they were going for)
Taking the meaning it has to be in context and the natural language does work in this case.
Even in that context, it isn't clear what effect "senseless" should have on a creature. Can an Ooze be knocked senseless? A skeletal Undead? Neither type of monster has the CNS needed to experience shock or the brain to have a concussion. Can a senseless creature take simple instinctive actions, like continuing to punch a foe or maintain a guard, as we see happen fairly commonly in the UFC?
You see how if we follow this rabbit hole, it just leads to a mess? If senseless were a keyword with a known rules meaning we wouldn't be having this discussion about a single status effect.
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Its a word used in context of being stunned meaning as not having all your faculties but i'll give you that meaning as you put it wouldn't work to mean without senses in the physical sense (albeit it wouldn't make much sense to think that was the meaning they were going for)
Taking the meaning it has to be in context and the natural language does work in this case.
Even in that context, it isn't clear what effect "senseless" should have on a creature. Can an Ooze be knocked senseless? A skeletal Undead? Neither type of monster has the CNS needed to experience shock or the brain to have a concussion. Can a senseless creature take simple instinctive actions, like continuing to punch a foe or maintain a guard, as we see happen fairly commonly in the UFC?
You see how if we follow this rabbit hole, it just leads to a mess? If senseless were a keyword with a known rules meaning we wouldn't be having this discussion about a single status effect.
Oozes are a whole nother bag of worms. Like how does one even trip them? Why does it matter to the ooze what part of its...ooze is on the floor, its all ooze. Yet you can by the mechanics of the game trip one.
Not everything makes sense when you you don't apply any reason at all to and run exact mechanics.| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Its a word used in context of being stunned meaning as not having all your faculties but i'll give you that meaning as you put it wouldn't work to mean without senses in the physical sense (albeit it wouldn't make much sense to think that was the meaning they were going for)
Taking the meaning it has to be in context and the natural language does work in this case.
Even in that context, it isn't clear what effect "senseless" should have on a creature. Can an Ooze be knocked senseless? A skeletal Undead? Neither type of monster has the CNS needed to experience shock or the brain to have a concussion. Can a senseless creature take simple instinctive actions, like continuing to punch a foe or maintain a guard, as we see happen fairly commonly in the UFC?
You see how if we follow this rabbit hole, it just leads to a mess? If senseless were a keyword with a known rules meaning we wouldn't be having this discussion about a single status effect.
Oozes are a whole nother bag of worms. Like how does one even trip them? Why does it matter to the ooze what part of its...ooze is on the floor, its all ooze. Yet you can by the mechanics of the game trip one.
Not everything makes sense when you you don't apply any reason at all to and run exact mechanics.
Unless you make the mechanics specific and detailed in their resolution, which is what people are asking for.
I can tell you what any given card in MtG will do at every single table it can be played at and in any given situation. There is zero ambiguity, and the limit to resolving the card interaction successfully is my knowledge of the rules and ability to look things up. That holds for all permutations of the ~27,000 magic cards that exist.
I cannot say this for the ~700 total spells in Pathfinder 2e Remastered. Just write spells for TTRPGs like a TCG card* and then add a piece of art or two per page and some descriptive text. MtG prints between 1,500 and 2,100 new cards per year, but culling that back to just unique instants, sorceries, and enchantments that work in a way relevant to a TTRPG, they print maybe 150 - 200 new cards per year. So it should be beyond Paizo to do the same for spells, especially considering they'd be able to use top-down design and crib off of extant TCGs to accomplish this task.
Good technical writing isn't that hard, and it drastically helps with gameplay.
*YGO is excluded because it also insists on using natural language and has ambiguity that other TCGs do not.
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I mean you’re right about MTG, a computer can run a game of MTG and resolve everything that comes up.
I would hate for Pathfinder to get so restricted in its writing and the outcomes it can provide that it becomes like a card game and it no longer needs people to GM it.
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I mean you’re right about MTG, a computer can run a game of MTG and resolve everything that comes up.
I would hate for Pathfinder to get so restricted in its writing and the outcomes it can provide that it becomes like a card game and it no longer needs people to GM it.
MtG is Turing complete and thus can be used to run code like a computer.
As for the game being boring because the rules are well-defined, I don't see it. The GM is still creating the story, players are still deciding how to interact with the world, the dice still create a sense of uncertainty, and creative plays are still possible. MtG is an outlet for both skill and creativity, and with so many cards, if you play the oddballs, there is always a chance you've just played out an interaction that nobody has ever seen before.
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You've become senseless and You can't act are both consequential statements.
They are categorical ones.
They are not ambiguous.
For me reading those two statements is clear about what they mean. And if we were not trying to find some in game mechanical key terms and just taking them at face value we all would know the creature cannot sense anything and cannot take actions while this condition is up.
If a stunned creature wants to try any action it can't, if it wants to see hear or smell it cant, a senseless creature cannot do those things., and thats true of either definition of senseless you want to use. You don't have to define a categorical statement any further and doing so will be a long list.If the writers were putting text together that was meaningless at conveying what the thing does then it should not be included, they could save on word count. If they want to use descriptions that are not meant to say what the thing does but as flavor I would be in favor of just not having it there. The content should always be consistent. Like in food preparation its taboo to put inedible things on the plate.
Its a word used in context of being stunned meaning as not having all your faculties but i'll give you that meaning as you put it wouldn't work to mean without senses in the physical sense (albeit it wouldn't make much sense to think that was the meaning they were going for)
Taking the meaning it has to be in context and the natural language does work in this case.
While consequential they are not unrelated in neither meaning or mechanics. The first line is being explained by the second.
Unresponsive happens to be both a synonym for Senseless and the word used in the original text. It was changed from "your body is unresponsive" to "You've been rendered senseless" due to paralyzed vs stunned confusion really early on. "It's only my body that's unresponsive so I can still recall knowledge"
An unresponsive creature can still take...
If the GM screen omitted the language and that is the meaning they wanted then I withdraw my assertion that the creature is actually senseless when stunned.
I find the condition definition section a poor place to use words they dont mean.I have never understood senseless to mean physically unresponsive though. It would have served better to start with you can’t act and leave the first sentence out if that was thier meaning.
Thejeff I was saying because the creature is senseless another creature could use sneak and become undetected.
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FWIW, I absolutely run "Stunned" as "you can sneak to become undetected if someone has the condition outside of their turn." It just makes sense to me that if somebody is seeing the metaphorical stars and birdies, they're not going to be tracking where the Rogue is at very well. The actions you pay into stunned are the number of actions it takes for you to get your bearings, but while you don't have your bearings it's easier to fool you. I think this is how Stunned is supposed to work.
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There is, in fairness, a huge gap between 'can be run entirely by computer' and 'one of the most common condition in the game has zero agreement on the mechanical impact of its first two sentences'I mean you’re right about MTG, a computer can run a game of MTG and resolve everything that comes up.
I would hate for Pathfinder to get so restricted in its writing and the outcomes it can provide that it becomes like a card game and it no longer needs people to GM it.
I'm also pushing my stance to an extreme to show that even at the far end of what anybody would do for a TTRPG, it isn't an unreasonable burden to place on the writing team.
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I mean you’re right about MTG, a computer can run a game of MTG and resolve everything that comes up.
I would hate for Pathfinder to get so restricted in its writing and the outcomes it can provide that it becomes like a card game and it no longer needs people to GM it.
Pathfinder having MTG like rules would be a boon, not a bane. You can have all the flavor text you want and have clear mechanical rules. 1st edition Dark Heresy did it (really, all the FFG 40,000 games), 4th edition D&D did it, LANCER did it, etc.
Having a situation like Stunned, or boomerangs, or what an "instance of damage" is, as well as many others, doesn't add anything to Pathfinder besides needless ambiguity that detracts from the game.
Clearly separating how the game wishes the effect to be perceived (flavor text) from what the effect actually does (mechanics text) is better for everyone. You can still run into problems with them having conflicts, but it is much easier to adjudicate, and it also makes it much easier to ignore one side or the other if you don't find it fits with your game mileu.
And it will in no way lead to GMs no longer being required, anymore than clear rules have led to MTG now only being played by computers, against computers.
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I mean you’re right about MTG, a computer can run a game of MTG and resolve everything that comes up.
I would hate for Pathfinder to get so restricted in its writing and the outcomes it can provide that it becomes like a card game and it no longer needs people to GM it.
Pathfinder having MTG like rules would be a boon, not a bane. You can have all the flavor text you want and have clear mechanical rules. 1st edition Dark Heresy did it (really, all the FFG 40,000 games), 4th edition D&D did it, LANCER did it, etc.
Having a situation like Stunned, or boomerangs, or what an "instance of damage" is, as well as many others, doesn't add anything to Pathfinder besides needless ambiguity that detracts from the game.
Clearly separating how the game wishes the effect to be perceived (flavor text) from what the effect actually does (mechanics text) is better for everyone. You can still run into problems with them having conflicts, but it is much easier to adjudicate, and it also makes it much easier to ignore one side or the other if you don't find it fits with your game mileu.
And it will in no way lead to GMs no longer being required, anymore than clear rules have led to MTG now only being played by computers, against computers.
Wasn’t one of the stated goals of the remaster project to move away from flavor text in rule books?
My claim for stunned at least was that the first sentence is not flavor text.It seems it wasn’t considered important to describe the condition by those who decided what would go on the GM screen. So maybe it wasn’t consequential and should be cut out as well is what I came after the conversation. But this wouldn’t be the only time the GM screen differed from the final remastered rules.
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I mean you’re right about MTG, a computer can run a game of MTG and resolve everything that comes up.
I would hate for Pathfinder to get so restricted in its writing and the outcomes it can provide that it becomes like a card game and it no longer needs people to GM it.
Pathfinder having MTG like rules would be a boon, not a bane. You can have all the flavor text you want and have clear mechanical rules. 1st edition Dark Heresy did it (really, all the FFG 40,000 games), 4th edition D&D did it, LANCER did it, etc.
Having a situation like Stunned, or boomerangs, or what an "instance of damage" is, as well as many others, doesn't add anything to Pathfinder besides needless ambiguity that detracts from the game.
Clearly separating how the game wishes the effect to be perceived (flavor text) from what the effect actually does (mechanics text) is better for everyone. You can still run into problems with them having conflicts, but it is much easier to adjudicate, and it also makes it much easier to ignore one side or the other if you don't find it fits with your game mileu.
And it will in no way lead to GMs no longer being required, anymore than clear rules have led to MTG now only being played by computers, against computers.
Wasn’t one of the stated goals of the remaster project to move away from flavor text in rule books?
My claim for stunned at least was that the first sentence is not flavor text.
It seems it wasn’t considered important to describe the condition by those who decided what would go on the GM screen. So maybe it wasn’t consequential and should be cut out as well is what I came after the conversation. But this wouldn’t be the only time the GM screen differed from the final remastered rules.
All due respect, are you sure you're responding to the right post? You've pivoted into completely unrelated territory here and it's incredibly jarring.
As for whether having less flavor text was a design goal for the remaster, I don't know and I don't care. Paizo can have as much or as little of it as they desire, I just want it clearly separated instead of intermingled with actual mechanical rules.
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Having a situation like Stunned, or boomerangs, or what an "instance of damage" is, as well as many others, doesn't add anything to Pathfinder besides needless ambiguity that detracts from the game.
Clearly separating how the game wishes the effect to be perceived (flavor text) from what the effect actually does (mechanics text) is better for everyone. You can still run into problems with them having conflicts, but it is much easier to adjudicate, and it also makes it much easier to ignore one side or the other if you don't find it fits with your game mileu.
And it will in no way lead to GMs no longer being required, anymore than clear rules have led to MTG now only being played by computers, against computers.
Yeah one could have it like that, with a separator between the description and effect.
I won't deny that theres issues with certain weapons, Boomerangs is not one of them imo but the issue lies in that it strays to close to the mechanical language, its still part of the whole text describing what a boomerang is and not its effects. Theres nothing to really separate in the first place. If anything I wish they would stop putting rules in the weapons outside of Special entries within the text. Longbows unable to be used while mounted, while other two handed bows can? Just one of the most forgotten rules out there.
Same with instance of damage, The term appears what.. 2 times in the book and even the foundry team has said they havent gotten a straight answer as to what it means, So they are guessing... or basing it of Mark's old posts.
But for stunned? That really isn't an issue outside of knowing what a word is and "can't act" not being codified proper while still touched upon by a somewhat direct reference.
"You've become senseless. You can't act."
is the same excersice in language as
"You are incapable of movement. You can't use any actions that have the move trait." Just with a word that has a notorious disconnect in that it doesn't follow what...
Clear technical writing isn't that hard. D&D 4e did it very well; the main failing was that they did a poor job connecting gameplay to flavour. If they just went with a more classic fantasy styling for the layouts, I think that alone would have changed opinions about that edition.
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I mean you’re right about MTG, a computer can run a game of MTG and resolve everything that comes up.
I would hate for Pathfinder to get so restricted in its writing and the outcomes it can provide that it becomes like a card game and it no longer needs people to GM it.
Pathfinder having MTG like rules would be a boon, not a bane. You can have all the flavor text you want and have clear mechanical rules. 1st edition Dark Heresy did it (really, all the FFG 40,000 games), 4th edition D&D did it, LANCER did it, etc.
Having a situation like Stunned, or boomerangs, or what an "instance of damage" is, as well as many others, doesn't add anything to Pathfinder besides needless ambiguity that detracts from the game.
Clearly separating how the game wishes the effect to be perceived (flavor text) from what the effect actually does (mechanics text) is better for everyone. You can still run into problems with them having conflicts, but it is much easier to adjudicate, and it also makes it much easier to ignore one side or the other if you don't find it fits with your game mileu.
And it will in no way lead to GMs no longer being required, anymore than clear rules have led to MTG now only being played by computers, against computers.
Wasn’t one of the stated goals of the remaster project to move away from flavor text in rule books?
My claim for stunned at least was that the first sentence is not flavor text.
It seems it wasn’t considered important to describe the condition by those who decided what would go on the GM screen. So maybe it wasn’t consequential and should be cut out as well is what I came after the conversation. But this wouldn’t be the only time the GM screen differed from the final remastered rules.All due respect, are you sure you're responding to the right post? You've pivoted into completely unrelated territory here and it's incredibly jarring.
As for whether having less flavor...
I appologize.
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Clear technical writing isn't that hard.
I used to write the documentation for the software that my team developed. Technical writing is hard. We mathematicians are good at making sure the documentation is complete, but perfect clarity is often beyond our scope. For example, some words have multiple meanings.
For example, we have the recent argument about the word "senseless." Words like "senseless" and "ruthless" often are not direct negations of their root words. Sense can mean a method of perception, but it can also mean thinking as in the phrase "common sense." Ruth means compassion or remorse, but we forgot that meaning so ruthless stands alone to mean without mercy. Wireless covers electronic communications that never used wires for communications, and a wireless communication device might be wired to a power source. Aimless means without purpose rather than not aiming. I happen to agree with NorrKnekten that the meaning of "senseless" is the same meaning as in the idiom "knocked senseless" which is unconscious or just short of unconscious but not blinded or deafened. But my main point is that the word is too ambiguous.
Senseless has a third meaning of lacking meaning, such as "a senseless rant." Fortunately, no-one has tried to apply that meaning to the introductory sentence of the Stunned condition.
Technical writing has to avoid such ambiguities. Which means looking at the text from a fresh viewpoint to catch alternative meanings rather than judging it from its intended meaning. That is difficult.
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Clear technical writing isn't that hard.I used to write the documentation for the software that my team developed. Technical writing is hard. We mathematicians are good at making sure the documentation is complete, but perfect clarity is often beyond our scope. For example, some words have multiple meanings.
For example, we have the recent argument about the word "senseless." Words like "senseless" and "ruthless" often are not direct negations of their root words. Sense can mean a method of perception, but it can also mean thinking as in the phrase "common sense." Ruth means compassion or remorse, but we forgot that meaning so ruthless stands alone to mean without mercy. Wireless covers electronic communications that never used wires for communications, and a wireless communication device might be wired to a power source. Aimless means without purpose rather than not aiming. I happen to agree with NorrKnekten that the meaning of "senseless" is the same meaning as in the idiom "knocked senseless" which is unconscious or just short of unconscious but not blinded or deafened. But my main point is that the word is too ambiguous.
Senseless has a third meaning of lacking meaning, such as "a senseless rant." Fortunately, no-one has tried to apply that meaning to the introductory sentence of the Stunned condition.
Technical writing has to avoid such ambiguities. Which means looking at the text from a fresh viewpoint to catch alternative meanings rather than judging it from its intended meaning. That is difficult.
Which is why you keyword any terms with specific meanings.
If you define what senseless means for your game, then senseless, every time it appears, will have one and only one meaning in terms of how it interacts with the game's rules.
A good example is Menace as an MtG keyword. I common parlance it's so broad as to be effectively meaningless as a game term. In MtG it means, "Can only be blocked by two or more creatures." Lifelink, it's not even a real word and could mean a few things. In game terms, it means, "When this creature deals damage you gain that much life."
If you start by thinking of the components of your game and what needs to be defined and fill things out from there, and then treat all abilities, feats, and spells as items that must either use existing keywords, use specific language to define a bespoke ability that interacts with your rules frame work, or which breaks a rule in a very specific and clearly defined terms.
TCGs do specific technical writing well and deal with far more game pieces than a TTRPG does. D&D 4e also did it well; they missed a few infinite loops, but the rules were always clear and easy to understand. Lancer also makes its rules very clear and specific.
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Which is why you keyword any terms with specific meanings.
If you define what senseless means for your game, then senseless, every time it appears, will have one and only one meaning in terms of how it interacts with the game's rules.
Senseless was used in the definition of the keyword Stunned. That sounds like an infinite recursion in which the rules have to define keywords in order to define keywords.
A good example is Menace as an MtG keyword. I common parlance it's so broad as to be effectively meaningless as a game term. In MtG it means, "Can only be blocked by two or more creatures." Lifelink, it's not even a real word and could mean a few things. In game terms, it means, "When this creature deals damage you gain that much life."
I played Magic: The Gathering so long ago that I remember when Menace was not a keyword. Instead, the ability was written out. For example, the M12 version of Stormblood Berserker said, "Stormblood Berserker can't be blocked except by two or more creatures."
Furthermore, the original Magic: The Gathering rules were sloppy at defining their keywords. I remember banding, such as on Benalish Infantry. The keyword meant that the card could band with another attacking or blocking creature so that they dealt damage and received damage together. But eventually Wizards of the Coast had to formally define banding and then they dropped it because the well-defined ability was too lengthy to explain: Banding (Any creatures with banding, and up to one without, can attack in a band. Bands are blocked as a group. If any creatures with banding you control are blocking or being blocked by a creature, you divide that creature's combat damage, not its controller, among any of the creatures it's being blocked by or is blocking.)
I'm also going to be absolutely honest... and say that I absolutely despise the MTG rules. The comprehensive rules document is close to 300 pages. Most of which is just saying what triggered abilities does and cornercases it might create. Most of it feeling like its weird undefined interactions that has popped up in MTG tournaments and then been added to the document as a separate ruling.
Thats alot of work on a single document, but it also feels like they have to due to the competitive nature.
Originally, the Magic: The Gathering rules came in a tiny booklet small enough to be included in a box of cards and written in 6-point font. I tried to save those booklets as keepsakes, but they were so small I lost them. This is why the early keywords were sparsely defined: the booklets did not have the text space to define them precisely. Written in 10-point font on letter-sized paper, the rules would have been about three pages.
Magic: The Gathering needs short and precise keywords because each card's ability has to fit onto the card. Roleplaying games have much more space to define abilities. Instead, the importance of keywords in Pathfinder is that they serve as precise elements that can have well-defined outcomes in complicated battles.
However, keywords come at the cost of replacing narrative with mechanics. Instead of thinking, "Bruce the Brave swings his enchanted sword at the goblin snarling before him," the player might fall into thinking, "Bruce the Brave makes a +1 longsword Strike targeting the adjacent goblin." Pathfinder viewed this way is a boardgame like chess rather than a storytelling adventure.
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FWIW, the Comprehensive Rules document for Magic: the Gathering is now a 299 page PDF which does not include niceties like "art" or "anything that allows you to actually play the game." I do not think this is a model for "legibility of rules."
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To a certain point Paizo does keyword terms with specific meaning, We do have the capitalisation of game elements and traits in place of keywords.
I've seen the phrase "abilities do what they say they do" tossed around in these forums for several years and most people seem to take it as "if it's not written to adress a game element then that part doesn't interact with it either"
I'm also going to be absolutely honest... and say that I absolutely despise the MTG rules. The comprehensive rules document is close to 300 pages. Most of which is just saying what triggered abilities does and cornercases it might create. Most of it feeling like its weird undefined interactions that has popped up in MTG tournaments and then been added to the document as a separate ruling.
Thats alot of work on a single document, but it also feels like they have to due to the competitive nature.
You never need to read that entire document; it's mostly there to resolve exactly how two niche spells interact. The idea is that you take the basic design of MtG and its black and white, zero ambiguity rules, cut back the stuff you don't need for your game (Creatures, Artifacts, Vehicles, Sagas, Battles, Rooms, Planeswalkers, etc.) and use what's left as the basis for designing TTRPG spells and abilities.
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Senseless was used in the definition of the keyword Stunned. That sounds like an infinite recursion in which the rules have to define keywords in order to define keywords.
MtG does this with modern design. Certain terms include "enters the battlefield" in the reminder text for that keyword, enters the battlefield, now shortened to enters in modern formating, is a key phrase used to define a part of another keyword.
Stunned is an effect which might trigger additional keyworded statuses.
I played Magic: The Gathering so long ago that I remember when Menace was not a keyword. Instead, the ability was written out. For example, the M12 version of Stormblood Berserker said, "Stormblood Berserker can't be blocked except by two or more creatures."
Furthermore, the original Magic: The Gathering rules were sloppy at defining their keywords. I remember banding, such as on Benalish Infantry. The keyword meant that the card could band with another attacking or blocking creature so that they dealt damage and received damage together. But eventually Wizards of the Coast had to formally define banding and then they dropped it because the well-defined ability was too lengthy to explain: Banding (Any creatures with banding, and up to one without, can attack in a band. Bands are blocked as a group. If any creatures with banding you control are blocking or being blocked by a creature, you divide that creature's combat damage, not its controller, among any of the creatures it's being blocked by or is blocking.)
I started playing in 2001, took some time off to come back around 2007, dropped off until 2016 or so and have played and followed since. I've seen the design team improve their technical writing and knowledge of what makes a readable, unambiguous card. I'm saying other games should borrow from these lessons.
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FWIW, the Comprehensive Rules document for Magic: the Gathering is now a 299 page PDF which does not include niceties like "art" or "anything that allows you to actually play the game." I do not think this is a model for "legibility of rules."
You really don't need all of that for average play, and a lot of those rules cover corner cases specific to a TCG that wouldn't be required in a simpler TTRPG. You have turns instead of phases, people only have a single reaction so you likely don't need the specifics of the stack, many rules layers can be removed, etc.
The core of the idea is to have a thoughtful technical design with as little ambiguity as possible.
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FWIW, the Comprehensive Rules document for Magic: the Gathering is now a 299 page PDF which does not include niceties like "art" or "anything that allows you to actually play the game." I do not think this is a model for "legibility of rules."You are correct, you absolutely don't 'need it' outside of a competitive setting. But it does include rulings on a whole lot of ambiguity between card interactions. Like, In what order does things get put onto the stack if an action would place multiple things onto the stack at the same time, Stating that copies do not continiously update to match the original. If you play a card which causes a roll, and by some action or play that roll is to be ignored. Did the roll happen? What about state-based actions. It even has rule entries for single, unique cards.
It's smack full of tiny details that exists purely to resolve what the basic cards and rules have not.
I believe the closest we have to a similarity in pathfinder terms, is that this document is a mix between table etiquette written similar to that of a sports event, and a list of how to resolve scenarios like shield block alongside immunities/weakness/resistances because the base rules don't cover it.
Much of that wouldn't be needed in Pathfinder as abilities could be self-contained; there is no hand, library, graveyard, exile, or sideboard to worry about. No lands, no mana sources, no morph creatures, no Panglacial Worms, etc. You could cut those rules down greatly by avoiding those TCG-specific designs.
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Also, as I've stated clearly already:
"I'm also pushing my stance to an extreme to show that even at the far end of what anybody would do for a TTRPG, it isn't an unreasonable burden to place on the writing team."
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I saw mention of how 4e splits descriptive text and mechanics, and it made me realize I've never looked at 4e in my life, so I went and looked at a few examples. All I'm going to say, is that I want literally anything other than that for Pathfinder, it took me a few seconds to even realize the descriptive text was there in the first place.
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I saw mention of how 4e splits descriptive text and mechanics, and it made me realize I've never looked at 4e in my life, so I went and looked at a few examples. All I'm going to say, is that I want literally anything other than that for Pathfinder, it took me a few seconds to even realize the descriptive text was there in the first place.
Same. I love spells and spellcasters. When 4e's magic book came out I fell asleep reading it out of boredom.
That's when I gave up on 4e.
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Ambiguity that is easily resolved by a human referee is, or me, always preferable to having to look something up in a document. Even if two different human referees would disagree about how to resolve said ambiguity.
"Being able to play the game fast, largely from memory, so you can focus on things like storytelling, acting, and improvisation" is entirely worth table variation.
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Ambiguity that is easily resolved by a human referee is, or me, always preferable to having to look something up in a document. Even if two different human referees would disagree about how to resolve said ambiguity.
"Being able to play the game fast, largely from memory, so you can focus on things like storytelling, acting, and improvisation" is entirely worth table variation.
Do you think that Magic players play with the rule book beside them? Magic is a tough game to pick up, but most tables won't have a rules dispute in weeks or even months of play. The way cards are written and the cards that are commonly played simply don't lead to actual ambiguity.
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I saw mention of how 4e splits descriptive text and mechanics, and it made me realize I've never looked at 4e in my life, so I went and looked at a few examples. All I'm going to say, is that I want literally anything other than that for Pathfinder, it took me a few seconds to even realize the descriptive text was there in the first place.
This is how the old 3.x Monster Manual did things. Stats, flavour text, descriptions of abilities. 4e just made a slightly different template.
As published, it used this format:
Righteous Brand - Cleric Attack 1
You smite your foe with your weapon and brand it with a
ghostly, glowing symbol of your deity’s anger. By naming one of
your allies when the symbol appears, you add divine power to
that ally’s attacks against the branded foe.At-Will ✦ Divine, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. ACHit: 1[W] + Strength modifier damage, and one ally within
5 squares of you gains a power bonus to melee attack rolls
against the target equal to your Strength modifier until the
end of your next turn.Increase damage to 2[W] + Strength modifier at 21st level.
My proposed change would be to change it to:
Righteous Brand - Cleric Attack 1
At-Will ✦ Divine, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. ACYou smite your foe with your weapon and brand it with a
ghostly, glowing symbol of your deity’s anger. By naming one of
your allies when the symbol appears, you add divine power to
that ally’s attacks against the branded foe.Hit: 1[W] + Strength Modifier Damage, and one Ally within
5 squares of you gains a Power Bonus to Melee Attack rolls
against the Target equal to your Strength Modifier until the
end of your next Turn.Increase Damage to 2[W] + Strength Modifier at 21st Level.
You move the flavour text closer to the rules text to enable the connection between the two and template it more like a current PF2 ability.
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Mtg is a bad comparison to a cooperative RPG. The purpose of MtG is not to collaboratively tell a story with your friends, but compete against them until one person is victorious over everyone else. The rules of MtG serve a completely different function than they do for a TTRPG.
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Mtg is a bad comparison to a cooperative RPG. The purpose of MtG is not to collaboratively tell a story with your friends, but compete against them until one person is victorious over everyone else. The rules of MtG serve a completely different function than they do for a TTRPG.
There's also Gloomhaven, which is getting a TTRPG treatment, and which also has keywords, compartmentalised abilities, and zero ambiguity. There's also D&D 4e. There's also Lancer.
Also, please don't miss that I have now said this twice and will say it a third time:
"I'm also pushing my stance to an extreme to show that even at the far end of what anybody would do for a TTRPG, it isn't an unreasonable burden to place on the writing team."
MtG is the far end of what you could do. I'd like it, but I understand that others wouldn't. I think, with the benefit of hindsight, 4e had the right idea, and PF2 could benefit from being more like it.
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It feels like removing ambiguity from a TTRPG is a fool's errand due to the preeminence of Rule Zero in TTRPGs (a thing that does not exist in board or card games). Like even if rules are absolutely clear to the point where everybody on earth would agree on how they're supposed to work, any rules interaction in a game like Pathfinder is subject to change based on "the people in a specific game agree that they should work differently."
So I think trying to remove all ambiguity from a TTRPG is a waste of time and effort that would be better off spent on anything else, like new ancestry feats or a cool monster.
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MTG is a game I'd say I have a good deal of familiarity with. Ive played it since revised. The key wording and technical language of it is not without its own ambiguity. Rules questions do come up all the time, and as the person who taught most people I have played with over the years I still get rules questions today. And those have changed overtime like damage no longer going on the stack or the way blockers are assigned. That game has its owns issues too but technical language suits its needs well. Using natural language isn't a weakness of Pathfinder that would be shored up with more technical language. Its a tact that was chosen intentionally for the brand, for its audience.
Here is what I can see as a major difference in this type of game vs MTG. MTG needs to be exactly the same in terms of outcomes every time especially for tournament play or you are indeed cheating. Pathfinder just needs to be right for the group playing allowing them to play the game their own way. Natural language can as we have seen create more table variation but table variation is not a weakness of the game. it is only a problem for people arguing about it here. Natural language makes the game accessible to a larger audience that doesn't need to learn even more technical language to play it. MTG has new technical language to learn every set as its gimmick but you only need to learn a few per set to play that set.
With the stunned example I can go with my interpretation and as long as my table is having a good time and we are consistent then it works.
NorrKnekten can stick with their interpretation and that's also good.
PFS situations has their interpretation for society play and decide it GMs have any leeway or not and thats good.
I just like to argue here. Probably do it too much. For those whose I have bothered with it, I do apologize.
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It feels like removing ambiguity from a TTRPG is a fool's errand due to the preeminence of Rule Zero in TTRPGs (a thing that does not exist in board or card games). Like even if rules are absolutely clear to the point where everybody on earth would agree on how they're supposed to work, any rules interaction in a game like Pathfinder is subject to change based on "the people in a specific game agree that they should work differently."
So I think trying to remove all ambiguity from a TTRPG is a waste of time and effort that would be better off spent on anything else, like new ancestry feats or a cool monster.
I’m not sure that anyone here is advocating for Paizo to pour every effort into removing any iota of ambiguity to the detriment of the production of new resources. And to try to argue that as a reason to not, where possible, remove ambiguity at all seems a little off.
I can’t see why folks are against have absolutely clear delineations between what is *clearly* “flavor text intended to illustrate the theme of the ability” and “mechanical rule interactions to provide meaningful effects in game terms”; or why people like myself might wish for Paizo to completely dispense with aforementioned “flavor text” because a) it sometimes *does not* illustrate the theme effectively or b) narratively countermands the mechanical rule interaction/creates ambiguity and c) is entirely unnecessary, and would, ironically, leave more room for…content. Probably not that much, but still…it would be leaner. Perhaps less….flavorful, but then again, that is what the GM and Player are for. I get that for PF2/R Golarion and the campaign autoassumptions are baked narratively into the rules. But you don’t have to use Golarion to play PF2/R.
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With how many interactions there are in a game this big, ambiguity and edge cases are going to happen. As has been shown, even M:tG has it and has to have rulings in the giant PDF for those cases, despite the effort they put in to avoid it and how the game is more limited in scope of what interactions are actually allowed (there is no exploration mode in it, for example).
While tighter writing and being clear by formatting which parts of the text are actually mechanical and which parts aren't would help, there is also a pretty simple mechanism to address this:
An FAQ. Or a rulings page. Or hell, even the old days of a comment on a thread where someone says "yep, that's how it works."
I know someone probably can't spend all day every day patrolling the forum looking for questions to answer, but some of this stuff has been ambiguous for a long time and for anyone in Paizo that actually knows how its supposed to work, it'd take relatively little to clear up.
"Instance of damage" would probably take longer since it needs some more complex examples, but still.
We have a mechanism to resolve this already that doesn't require reformating books or telling the book authors they need to be technical writers: Paizo just adamantly refuses to use it.
And that's pretty sad since it was pretty clear Maya tried to address that, but it doesn't seem like xe got buy-in from the rules folks.