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You have got to stop taking this so personally. Xenocrat's explaination is far more likely in that if it's so easily fixable then it's not really high priority. I disagree, if that is Paizo's perspective, but we're talking about slight texual mistakes here, not entire books being printed blank.
None of this is ideal but this isn't being done out of spite or malicous neglect.
Also, I don't think there's as many problems with the PFS-adjusted stuff as you've noted because a lot of these are things like "Runelord players should keep in mind PFS values" or explaining how something works in PFS because it doesn't quite work the same was as a regular campaign.
I'm scrolling through this search you've provided and I have yet to see any "broken stuff" being patched with PFS rulings, so could you be more specific in what you're trying to show here? Most of what I'm seeing seems to exist just to head off as much table variance as possible, or even just making clear changes because PFS play structure is different from a normal campaign, which seems like exactly what an organized play setup would aim for.
While I feel Paizo has no great reason to concern themselves with something that can sometimes be read differently at different tables for home games unless it blatantly falls apart, because no matter what they've written, people still seem to find multiple interpretations. The things that are exceptionally ambiguous would be nice to be clarified, but most of these are not that.
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I mean, the VC did their (unpaid) job, and that isn't on them, it's on your friend. Ragequitting is one way to respond to not getting what you want.
I don't think the head of org play is an unpaid volunteer. This wasn't a local VC, this was PFS itself. But I could be wrong, I don't really know how the internals work (and frankly, I don't care all that much since I find the worst part of PFS is a lot of the VCs, but outside of this forum I basically never interact with any of them so its rarely an issue).
And quitting is an entirely reasonable response to Paizo effectively breaking their own remaster FAQ which said you could keep existing characters by going "well you can keep an existing character but it won't function because half of it is getting forcibly changed to be incompatible with the other half." Games are supposed to be fun, and that created an extremely unfun situation. Why pay for that?
Faced with that, a customer is entirely justified in going "nah, I'm not doing that anymore" and putting their money into another game. This is a business, after all.
There were (now-expired) free Rebuilds, but there are also always-available Rebuilds purchasable for a reasonable amount of AcP. Any experienced player has earned lots of AcP. And new players get 80 AcP just to start. That is not an entirely unreasonable situation with all the tools available.
Anyone who made a character after PC1 came out didn't get the free rebuild, despite classes being drastically altered in PC2. It never made any sense to do it that way when they could have just done the same policy of "if your class was changed by the remaster, you get a rebuild". That costs them literally nothing.
Instead they decided to be sticklers for a date cutoff that made no sense, broke the spirit of their own ruling, and then acted like its the players impacted by it were the problem because its so inconvenient they didn't just deal with a character that literally doesn't function correctly due to the rulings that PFS put out.
Are you referring to Greater Esoteric Spellcasting? It clearly only makes sense if it's a 10th level feat.Yes, and of course that's true. It's also listed in alphabetical order between 2 other 10th level feats. And all archetype feats cap at 10th.
That doesn't change the fact that Demiplane refuses to change the implementation until they get a FAQ or errata from Paizo.
Demiplane is making the right call there. They're a rules reference and if they start changing stuff it'll just become really confusing.
It'd be okay if they put a "Demiplane editor note" on it as a clarification or such since that's clear in where its coming from, but they shouldn't just change it despite it being obviously wrong.
AoN does that with PFS notes, and d20pfsrd did it for PF1 stuff with clarifications that weren't part of the rules text but were relevant in context.
I'm scrolling through this search you've provided and I have yet to see any "broken stuff" being patched with PFS rulings, so could you be more specific in what you're trying to show here? Most of what I'm seeing seems to exist just to head off as much table variance as possible, or even just making clear changes because PFS play structure is different from a normal campaign, which seems like exactly what an organized play setup would aim for.
Since I'm picking on Oracle, PFS were the ones that corrected the first issue with remaster Oracle spells. They had a ruling out on how many spell slots it gets within like a week. It took the rest of Paizo six months. Another example is Manifestation of Spirits which PFS bans due to it being flagrantly overpowered for its level (and the PFS note on AoN even says as much). They also heavily restrict Exemplar Dedication for equally obvious reasons while allowing the class.
But mostly PFS clarifications aren't for game breaking things, they're for stuff that doesn't work in PFS.
I don't know why people are down on PFS clarifications: for the most part PFS does this WAY better than anyone else at Paizo. They're aimed at PFS specifically but most of their rulings are good and it's worth any GM's time to take a look at them, especially with how much faster they can address things.
If Paizo's rules team moved with even a fraction of the agility of the PFS team in terms of dealing with rules issues, things would work far better.
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I'm scrolling through this search you've provided and I have yet to see any "broken stuff" being patched with PFS rulings, so could you be more specific in what you're trying to show here?
I already did provide a link to an AoN search for pages with PFS notes so it's easy enough to repost that.
The PFS notes should not be seen as a *complete* list of "needed errata" or anything like that.
As I skimmed them, it looks like these usually happen in the most blatant cases where the existing text is outright incomplete, and some GM choice as to what to fill it with is required for it to be usable at a table.
PFS doesn't seem incentivized to touch anything where the RaW technically functions, but one RaI word swap would ~fix some neigh-useless option, etc.
These existing PFS fixes really are a bare minimum, "this crap needs an answer" list of problems, as far as it looks to me.
This is approaching asspull territory, but I'd wager that the PFS style "fill the play-stopping hole" patch notes are a minority of a larger bucket of what folk would consider to be needed errata.
I'm scrolling through this search you've provided and I have yet to see any "broken stuff" being patched with PFS rulings, so could you be more specific in what you're trying to show here?I already did provide a link to an AoN search for pages with PFS notes so it's easy enough to repost that.
This is literally the search I am referring to scrolling through, so once again, can you be more specific about what you're trying to show me?
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"I quite Paizo forever" is hardly a proportional response to not wanting to pay 20 AcP ("Evolving Destiny") to rebuild a character due to an effective errata.
But I get that you want to defend your friend's actions.
I am bummed a little too about the errata bump - so many cool concepts waiting behind a clarification or two that make them playable at the table - but I mean, I also understand that Paizo has had a pretty busy year or two. I'm most bummed about one designer in particular moving on, but that's another rant... That said, there are also so many cool concepts that require no such adjustment to fully function "in the wild", and so, I reconcile myself with focusing on those, not only to look on the positive side, but also because they greatly outnumber the ones still in limbo.
=)
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This is literally the search I am referring to scrolling through, so once again, can you be more specific about what you're trying to show me?
The PFS notes themselves?
All the missing durations, traits, DCs, uses per ___, etc?These are the most basic "fix required" type of published error, and could be fixed by Paizo adding a single word or two via errata.
Greater-Paizo failing to do so, even when these problems are being spoken to by PFS-Paizo, is a rather damning condemnation of how Paizo operates. How inadequately Paizo is at the task of supporting their own products.
This neglect does not even save on labor, as those PFS-Paizo folks writing and publishing their fix notes costs just as many man hours as it would require for Paizo-prime to update a "pending errata" webpage with the same text.
Even worse is that PFS notes simply don't exist for folks outside the community echo chamber. I've seen folks who do play with Pathbuilder, but not AoN, etc.
That's why it's rather required for Paizo to clean up their own mess, as it were. Even with PFS picking up some slack, only ?% of the community will be aware of those notes, or choose to follow them.
Only Paizo can address the errors in a way that'll help the whole playerbase.
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I appreciated the PFS Blister Bomb explanation that used supposed aesthetic concerns to be kinder than the real “what fool thought this was in any way balanced.”
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This is literally the search I am referring to scrolling through, so once again, can you be more specific about what you're trying to show me?The PFS notes themselves?
All the missing durations, traits, DCs, uses per ___, etc?
These are the most basic "fix required" type of published error, and could be fixed by Paizo adding a single word or two via errata.
Yes, and as Karys and myself noted you're overrating how many of those are there for balance concerns or because something has a mistake in it. Eyeballing it, it looks like it's roughly a 60/40 split between PFS adaptions and legitmate corrections, and some of these "mistakes" are so minor I'm not suprised they've been left as is. Not to mention there's only 151 examples, which includes corrections to the same item at every level it exists at.
That's why Karys is asking for more speficic examples because most of these are completely normal.
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I appreciated the PFS Blister Bomb explanation that used supposed aesthetic concerns to be kinder than the real “what fool thought this was in any way balanced.”
Just saw this for the first time.
My only reaction is
"What fool thought this was in any way balanced?" :-) :-)
Sickened 2 on a success??????? Wow.
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I appreciated the PFS Blister Bomb explanation that used supposed aesthetic concerns to be kinder than the real “what fool thought this was in any way balanced.”Just saw this for the first time.
My only reaction is
"What fool thought this was in any way balanced?" :-) :-)Sickened 2 on a success??????? Wow.
If it’s good enough for a mythic rank 7 spell summoning a demon lord’s corpse, it’s good enough for every fifth level caster.
Community & Social Media Specialist
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I just got back from my winter break, and I just wanted to say a few things!
First and foremost, thank you all for sharing your feedback here as I'll be sending it to the team!
Secondly, I wanted to commend you all for having an in depth discussion and not fighting! I was gone for 5 days and couldn't moderate the forums, and despite conflicting opinions here, there's not a single message flagged or worth flagging. That is awesome /gen.
Thank you all for having civil discussions! Again, I'm taking this to the team!
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"I quite Paizo forever" is hardly a proportional response to not wanting to pay 20 AcP ("Evolving Destiny") to rebuild a character due to an effective errata.
But I get that you want to defend your friend's actions.
I am bummed a little too about the errata bump - so many cool concepts waiting behind a clarification or two that make them playable at the table - but I mean, I also understand that Paizo has had a pretty busy year or two. I'm most bummed about one designer in particular moving on, but that's another rant... That said, there are also so many cool concepts that require no such adjustment to fully function "in the wild", and so, I reconcile myself with focusing on those, not only to look on the positive side, but also because they greatly outnumber the ones still in limbo.
=)
You are losing sight of what Tridus is actually saying. The errata is one thing, it changes a class but this is supposed to be okay because legacy characters were promised to always be viable. If the player wanted to be a remaster Oracle, they could have, but they didn't want to and we were told that was going to be okay. Then we find out PFS-Paizo is breaking its promise. Legacy Oracle is not playable, then the official response from the representative from the company was frankly insulting. I didn't leave the game, but I am a lot less excited about everything remaster now and I haven't bought a rulebook since PC2. Am I alone in this? Maybe, but it only being a small problem doesn't make it okay to dismiss.
I don't think PFS gets much say over how errata is going to be handled, nor do the system developers get to decide how PFS will respond to their Errata when it comes out. That could have been a right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing, but it seems pretty weird to blame the rules folks a PFS decision.
Personally, I kind of get it with the PFS decisions on the Oracle. Like the difference between the remastered and original are such that the two are incredibly incompatible. Its not a couple of feats or spells or whatever, it would pretty much be having a whole extra class. I doubt the PFS folks were aware of how much was going to change in the Oracle when they were making their initial decisions about what pre-remastered content was going to be allowed to cary over.
I think a lot of the bad blood stems from the fact that a lot of the old oracle players just don't like the new class, and didn't want to remake their characters over into remastered versions of the class. Could there have been more leniency and patience with the PC2 release into PFS? I don't know. I wasn't there for those decisions and how much vitrol the decision makers were facing from numerous places, including GMs trying to deal with potentially having to access pre-remastered rules in significant ways to understand how an old school oracle worked and all their old abilities.
It is totally fine to feel feelings and voice them on message boards. I think the oracle situation was probably a lot more complicated than one or even two people just deciding to be mean to players of pre-remastered oracles.
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I do think it was as easy as having two classes, because the two oracles share names and themes but are very distinct. Legacy Oracle which can only take Oracle feats from APG, and Remaster which can only take Oracle feats in PC2. It was a choice to reuse names which counts as an overriding errata onto the class. The mysteries and curses could have had different names to preserve the uniqueness of Legacy content. Or they could have more simply not say anything we rename is changed forever.
And you're right, Unicore, this broken promise probably wouldn't sting if Oracle got Alchemist treatment. Alch cannot go back to Legacy either, which might suck except every post I've seen and ever Alch player I have talked to thinks Remaster Alch is a 100% improvement. You are right that the difference is that there are some of us who despise remaster Oracle, and we don't think the change forced in PFS was reasonable after we got a promise. Call me old fashioned, but if you can't stand by your words, don't say them. It is easier to be silent.
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I don't think PFS gets much say over how errata is going to be handled, nor do the system developers get to decide how PFS will respond to their Errata when it comes out. That could have been a right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing, but it seems pretty weird to blame the rules folks a PFS decision.
"The mysteries aren't part of the class chassis and thus must be updated in PFS play" is not a rules folks decision. It was entirely a PFS decision. PFS decides what is and isn't legal in PFS play, and the whole thing about being able to keep your current character if you didn't want to use the remaster version was itself a PFS decision in the first place (since in a home game people can do whatever they want).
The rules folks aren't involved in this. PFS said people could keep their characters if they didn't want to use the remaster version. PFS broke that with Oracle by saying that the new mysteries/curses had to be used even on existing characters that took the PFS provided option to not go to the remaster class chassis. That results in an unplayable character unless you fully convert to remaster Oracle, and that's a problem if your build relies on one of the mystery/curse powers that no longer exists.
Literally all they had to do was say "if you're keeping your existing character and not going to the remaster class, that includes the subclass." Done. And that's the obvious thing to do in the first place, because how do you keep the original version of a character if you can't keep its original subclass?
This was 100% on the PFS side for saying people could do something, then saying something else that resulted in the first thing they said being unusable. It just happens to come up with Oracle primarily because remaster Oracle changed so drastically that a bunch of character concepts from premaster Oracle either don't exist anymore or don't work the same way (or at all). And when people wanted to take the option to keep the character they already had, they found out that they couldn't because of another PFS decision.
Then instead of taking the trivially easy fix, the PFS person who responded to it was actively disdainful of the concerns people had about it instead.
Even then it wasn't every Oracle. If you were focused on just casting spells, the transition was pretty easy. It was really a problem for ones that leaned on mystery benefits (that don't exist) or specific curse functions (that don't work at all the same way). Like, it doesn't even matter if you like remaster Oracle or not: if someone is told they can keep their existing character and the new version of the class makes their build not work, they should be allowed to do what they were already told they could do.
Personally, I kind of get it with the PFS decisions on the Oracle. Like the difference between the remastered and original are such that the two are incredibly incompatible. Its not a couple of feats or spells or whatever, it would pretty much be having a whole extra class. I doubt the PFS folks were aware of how much was going to change in the Oracle when they were making their initial decisions about what pre-remastered content was going to be allowed to cary over.
I doubt they were aware either, but so what? When they were made aware, they shouldn't have gone back on it. It's not like its some huge burden for players that were already playing a character to continue playing it.
They could have literally done nothing here and it would have been less hassle than what they did.
I think a lot of the bad blood stems from the fact that a lot of the old oracle players just don't like the new class, and didn't want to remake their characters over into remastered versions of the class.
Well yeah, because a bunch of characters you could play in the old version don't work properly in the new version. If you've played 5 levels of a character working a certain way, being told to rebuild the whole thing to no longer do what it did before is going to be annoying. It's not like they didn't know that: the original remaster FAQ for PFS saying you could use your existing character was precisely because they knew some people wouldn't want to change their character.
Could there have been more leniency and patience with the PC2 release into PFS? I don't know. I wasn't there for those decisions and how much vitrol the decision makers were facing from numerous places, including GMs trying to deal with potentially having to access pre-remastered rules in significant ways to understand how an old school oracle worked and all their old abilities.
There wasn't any vitriol on this until after they went back and forced people to update (which caused a bunch of characters to get retired). That was entirely self-inflicted, and their attitude on it made it a lot worse.
As I said: they could have simply done nothing with this and it would have been easier for everyone.
And I really don't buy the idea they were worried about people not understanding how the class works. Those were existing players.
And hell: the remaster iconic Oracle has multiple errors on it with how the class works now (including doing something premaster Oracle did that the remaster one no longer does). It's been that way for over a year. If they were really concerned about people not understanding how the class works, you'd think they would fix the iconic to actually work the way the class works.
It is totally fine to feel feelings and voice them on message boards. I think the oracle situation was probably a lot more complicated than one or even two people just deciding to be mean to players of pre-remastered oracles.
It didn't have to be. They had already told people they could keep their existing characters. All they had to do was that (aka: nothing). Instead they decided to be obstinate about "well it has the same name so it's errata so you have to do it despite us saying you didn't have to do it" and being disdainful of the people who raised the problems that ruling caused.
Like, any ruling that results in an unplayable character if you follow it is probably wrong, right? That's pretty standard for any GM when dealing with edge cases. Yet that's exactly what they did and their response was to shoot the messenger.
I don’t think it is that simple. Having two identically named classes with many identically named options that don’t do the same thing is a lot of stress and pressure on GMs to just know what the differences are, not to mention on all the potential mix ups for reporting and bookkeeping. It’s not just about the player with the option, it’s everyone else at the table keeping it straight, including the GM.
This was not a situation that PFS could have predicted when they said old options that didn’t get remastered with the same name would still be allowed. And from both of your descriptions it still seems like the biggest issue folks really had was not liking the remastered oracle, which the PFS folks really had no control over. This seems to have lead to a muddling of frustrations over aspects of both the remaster and errata process with PFS structure making it pretty difficult for either side of the equation to fix the issue for folks who are upset.
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Having two identically named classes with many identically named options that don’t do the same thing is a lot of stress and pressure on GMs to just know what the differences are, not to mention on all the potential mix ups for reporting and bookkeeping.
I don't see how that's an argument in favor of what they did. Surely if running the legacy oracle as written along side the new version is too difficult and complicated, than their decision to require players to mix and match rules that were never designed to be cross compatible, causing even more confusion and broken features was vastly worse, right?
And from both of your descriptions it still seems like the biggest issue folks really had was not liking the remastered oracle
That was definitely an issue for some people, but even for people who were okay with the changes, PFS's decision to make players run a convoluted and barely functional hybrid character or pay resources for the privilege of being able to simply continue using their character was entirely within their control and entirely an unforced error.
Honestly it doesn't really matter what their motives were here, they landed on basically the worst possible solution to the problem regardless of whatever intention they had. If running both versions of the Oracle truly was too problematic, then they could have simply retired the legacy oracle outright (they de facto did anyways) and provided free rebuilds for existing characters. Not only would that have been less harmful to their players, but also far simpler to implement too.
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I don’t think it is that simple. Having two identically named classes with many identically named options that don’t do the same thing is a lot of stress and pressure on GMs to just know what the differences are, not to mention on all the potential mix ups for reporting and bookkeeping. It’s not just about the player with the option, it’s everyone else at the table keeping it straight, including the GM.
Except you're wrong, because their ruling resulted in characters that literally didn't function being legal instead. That forces a GM to figure out what's supposed to happen when that character shows up, instead of just going "use the rules in APG that we've already been using for years."
You're claiming they did this to try and make it simpler, but that doesn't fly because the result was a nonsensical hybrid character being PFS legal. How is that easier than "play what you were playing before, nothing changed"?
If PFS was actually concerned about "two identical classes with two named options that don't do the same thing", why did they allow existing characters to use their existing class at all? If this is actually the concern, there's no reason to allow this option in the first place.
You're trying to justify it after the fact by coming up with an excuse that was not a concern at the time.
(And again: if they were actually concerned about it being hard at the table, why haven't they fixed the multiple errors with Korakai? It's WAY harder to run the pregen remaster Oracle because you need someone that actually understands the class to explain why the pregen doesn't work the way it says it does.)
This was not a situation that PFS could have predicted when they said old options that didn’t get remastered with the same name would still be allowed. And from both of your descriptions it still seems like the biggest issue folks really had was not liking the remastered oracle, which the PFS folks really had no control over. This seems to have lead to a muddling of frustrations over aspects of both the remaster and errata process with PFS structure making it pretty difficult for either side of the equation to fix the issue for folks who are upset.
Again, you're trying to come up with a justification after the fact. You can actually go look at the thread, it's still on the forums. It came up, Paizo said "oh no the mysteries/curses are errata and you have to use them", people pointed out that it would result in unplayable characters to do that, and Paizo said (to paraphrase) "too bad". They never said "it might be confusing for GMs if an existing character and a new character don't work the same way so we're going back on what we previously said."
They just had to say "we said you can use your existing characters and you can still do that", and none of that happens. It's very, very easy.
But yes, people didn't like "my Battle Oracle no longer has armor or weapon proficiency" because that's kind of a serious problem to suddenly have several levels in. This problem didn't come up with Swashbuckler because how many Swashbucklers were effectively broken by the remaster? While I assume the number isn't zero, it was a very small number. The overwhelming majority of Swashbucklers want to use the remaster version because its better.
It was WAY bigger with Oracle because the class got the most drastic changes and a bunch of characters were built around using features that straight up didn't exist anymore.
But that doesn't really matter for this discussion, because what actually matters is that Paizo said people could do something, then Paizo made a ruling to make that not functional, and Paizo responded to that with casual disdain. That is what resulted in people getting upset about it.
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I think the fundamental problem with that particular bit of the PFS ruling is that it specifically affected players who had a premaster Oracle: I don't think it can really be said that those players disliked the premaster Oracle, because they were playing one in Society play. Allowing the remaster Oracle in Society certainly benefited players who disliked the class's previous version, but proscribing the premaster Oracle exclusively affected those who liked the class beforehand and the characters they could make out of it. While I can understand the general merits of wanting to keep a single source of truth, I think the more pragmatic solution in the case of a divergence this extreme would have been to let players keep their builds, rather than brick them entirely and cause the backlash we've seen. Even if PFS wanted to avoid players creating premaster Oracles after the remaster launched, grandfathering in existing premaster characters would have similarly been less disruptive than the decision we got.
And to tie this back to the main topic, I think the treatment of the Oracle in both the remaster and subsequent Society play has created a perception that the class, and by extension its associated community, have been neglected. For a company that relies heavily on customer goodwill, I'd argue this is a concern that is worth addressing sooner rather than later, such as by prioritizing errata around the Oracle even if there are more egregious mistakes out there. Addressing the discrepancy around their spell repertoire would have been an easy win, just as leaving it unaddressed worsens the perception of neglect, regardless of what valid reasons there may be for prioritizing other work. The fact that Maya had to personally go and investigate what was going on with errata out of xyr own initiative also suggests there's a degree of siloing around the process that could be improved upon in the future, particularly as there's an active community of people effectively doing the work of identifying typos and rules discrepancies for free.
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Even if PFS wanted to avoid players creating premaster Oracles after the remaster launched, grandfathering in existing premaster characters would have similarly been less disruptive than the decision we got.
Just to clarify that this was the case for all remaster classes: after the remaster book was officially launched, you weren't allowed to create a new character using the original version. All new characters had to be remaster. This was also stated upfront at the same time as "you can keep using your existing characters."
So this whole thing was exclusively about existing characters. Nobody really had a problem with "new characters must use the new class". Having your current character bricked after years of play is a VERY different thing, especially when you'd been told previously that wouldn't be the case.
Totally agree with the rest of what you said. We're at a year and a half and counting on the repertoire size and it would be a very easy win to get that sorted.
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Speaking as someone that was in the middle of that fiasco, Tridus is absolutely correct about everything regarding the incident.
Then instead of taking the trivially easy fix, the PFS person who responded to it was actively disdainful of the concerns people had about it instead.
It was easily one of the most jarring moves I've ever seen from anyone at Paizo.
I haven't been able to get my friends back to the table since.
It doesn't matter how good your game is if you have representatives in your company that treat your customer base like excrement.
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Yeah, the communication on that was awful. I think it was necessary to have some additional rulings since the legacy classes wouldn't interact with updated feats and spells with the same name, but they handled it in the most frustrating way possible.
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Clearly the people are upset about the PFS ruling. I basically just chose to retire my pre-remaster oracle because it felt like too much of a head ache. I still think there is overlap bad blood being passed back and forth by some folks between PFS and the developers where neither one of those two were particularly in a position to fix the issue that was causing the frustration.
I personally do not see the Oracle issues as something that is an emergency though. For better or worse, PFS will make what rulings it needs to, and most new players that pick up PC2 and look at the oracle will just do what it says in that chapter under Spell Repertoire.
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Clearly the people are upset about the PFS ruling. I basically just chose to retire my pre-remaster oracle because it felt like too much of a head ache. I still think there is overlap bad blood being passed back and forth by some folks between PFS and the developers where neither one of those two were particularly in a position to fix the issue that was causing the frustration.
Well, if that's what you believe. But people upset about the class and people upset about how PFS completely botched the whole thing are two distinct issues.
I personally do not see the Oracle issues as something that is an emergency though.
I think the idea that it has to be an emergency to get fixed now is misleading. It's been 17 months since Player Core 2's street date, and going on 13 months since the first round of errata made this problem apparent.
This is not an "emergency fix" timeline. This is a pretty basic level of support that isn't being met. I'd expect an emergency fix to be immediate, like how PFS had a ruling for the spell slots out within a few days. That is an emergency timeline. We're not even close to that anymore, and there's no excuse why it should take a year and a half to fix this.
For better or worse, PFS will make what rulings it needs to, and most new players that pick up PC2 and look at the oracle will just do what it says in that chapter under Spell Repertoire.
... honest question, but do you know what the issue is? Because the whole problem is that the spell repertoire text contradicts itself and says to do two different things:
- It says you get two spells and then a third spell, so a repertoire size of 3.- It also says you get a new spell in your repertoire every time you gain a spell slot, so a repertoire size of 4 (after the first errata updated the spell slot text to match the table).
Literally, the problem is that players are doing what it says and getting different outcomes. Even Pathbuilder's author was confused by this and changed the default a year after the fact because of the ongoing confusion.
(And the PFS Pregen Oracle Korakai does neither of those and has a third interpretation of repertoire size, just for extra confusion.)
I understand why some folks are confused. I have never read “each time you gain a spell slot” to mean that you should have the same number of spells in your repertoire as you have number of spell slots. Gaining 2 rank 2 spell slots (or 3) is one instance of gaining a spell slot. So, I see no contradiction in the text. As a player I just used the number explicitly laid out in the rest of the paragraph.
It is not the cleanest language and could be written better, but it is not contradictory to me. As far as the iconic, the links for the character sheet have been broken since the website relaunch. I don’t know what the most up to date version looks like.
As far as why no specific language has been put in to clean this up or clarify it, it is just as speculative to assume it’s an easy fix as it is to assume there might be internal discussion slowing it down. It’s entirely possible the spring Errata meeting just never actually took place, so whatever reason it didn’t get addressed before is still the same reason it isn’t addressed now. It is also possible that this is something that might change in the language of every spontaneous casting class, and that requires a little more time then a fix in just one class. Again, the Errata process is not one person sitting down and just making permanent rulings every time they hear about a problem. There is no one person with such a perfect encyclopedic understanding of the game and all future material that is being worked on currently to be able to make that call without talking to the other developers first.
And you're right, Unicore, this broken promise probably wouldn't sting if Oracle got Alchemist treatment. Alch cannot go back to Legacy either, which might suck except every post I've seen and ever Alch player I have talked to thinks Remaster Alch is a 100% improvement.
Can drop to 99%. The alchemist change is largely a power increase, but it eliminated the ability to play certain characters. Example: a range focused alchemist who poisoned dozens of pieces of ammunition at the end of the day.
I certainty enjoyed the original alchemist design even though it had its challenges.
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I understand why some folks are confused. I have never read “each time you gain a spell slot” to mean that you should have the same number of spells in your repertoire as you have number of spell slots. Gaining 2 rank 2 spell slots (or 3) is one instance of gaining a spell slot. So, I see no contradiction in the text. As a player I just used the number explicitly laid out in the rest of the paragraph.
It's literally standard English. "Each time you gain X" doesn't mean "each time you gain a batch of X." It literally means "every time you get X." If you get X twice, you do Y twice. That's what that sentence means. That's also how it works for every other spontaneous caster in the game which uses the same language. It's not reasonable to say that Oracle uses the same text but works differently than everywhere else that text is used.
It made perfect sense when it was a 3 slot caster because those things happened at the same time. Then they made it a 4 slot caster without changing the text. Then they changed half the the text, but not the other half. And that's how we got to where we are.
It is not the cleanest language and could be written better, but it is not contradictory to me. As far as the iconic, the links for the character sheet have been broken since the website relaunch. I don’t know what the most up to date version looks like.
The most recent version I have from a couple months ago has Korakai with 4 spells known at rank 1, 4 at rank 2, and 3 at rank 3. So a repertoire of 4/4/3 which backs the table being correct and the text numbers being wrong... except one of those rank 1 spells is granted by the Mystery and nothing in the rules says that should count against the limit. So we have a 3/4/3 repertoire on a level 5 character and there's no RAW basis at all for coming up with that in Oracle. Sorcerer works that way and the text explicitly explains that, where Bard does not work that way and the Muse spell is just a bonus.
(Korakai's focus spells also have the Cursebound trait, which is a thing that was explicitly removed in Remaster Oracle. The irony of Paizo apparently not knowing how Remaster Oracle works is not lost on me.)
As far as why no specific language has been put in to clean this up or clarify it, it is just as speculative to assume it’s an easy fix as it is to assume there might be internal discussion slowing it down. It’s entirely possible the spring Errata meeting just never actually took place, so whatever reason it didn’t get addressed before is still the same reason it isn’t addressed now. It is also possible that this is something that might change in the language of every spontaneous casting class, and that requires a little more time then a fix in just one class. Again, the Errata process is not one person sitting down and just making permanent rulings every time they hear about a problem. There is no one person with such a perfect encyclopedic understanding of the game and all future material that is being worked on currently to be able to make that call without talking to the other developers first.
There is no internal discussion that should take 13 months on this. It's a straightforward question. If they really have been stuck trying to figure it out for this long, something internally is fundamentally broken. It's also not a problem with any other spontaneous caster, because they're all clear in how they work. Remaster Oracle is literally the only one where this isn't crystal clear, and that's only due to it suddenly becoming a 4 slot caster without the text being updated, and then the first errata only updating half the text.
The far more likely explanation is that no one has bothered. Although that's a bad situation, its at least a plausible one.
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I know that a lot of the recent time crunch, combined with some staff moving on aren't something the current team can control, but it's tough to see the lack of polish and care in recent releases. The lack of errata and their seeming desire to ignore anything that won't immediately result in sales, combined with a lack of communication from anyone by Maya, only makes things feel worse.
I know that Paizo isn't a tech company or a social media company, but the modern consumer expects access to lead developers, frequent fixes to rules/printing issues, and a general level of polish that Paizo hasn't delivered for a few years now.
I hope things improve because the hobby is better when everything is running smoothly.
Alch cannot go back to Legacy either, which might suck except every post I've seen and ever Alch player I have talked to thinks Remaster Alch is a 100% improvement.
I'll also drop that to 98%
You need to discharge and recharge your VVials like 3x or something within a single day to get close to the old item count. That usually does not happen.
Plus, there are a surprising number of outright nerfs scattered all over.
Only one Additive per turn. Additives limited to Quick Alch only. Permanent items no longer eligible for daily prep, consumables only.
Old Perpetual items were level-lagging infinite items, and you got 2 just as part of the chassis, no feats needed. Way better than the QVial joke of a cantrip, and this "downgrade" is true for literally every Alch Field.
Even Bombers never wanted to trade +1d6 dmg gained by the QVial to loose the bomb debuffs. Seriously.
Perpetual Skunk bombs doing -1d6, but still having their same debuff, are so much better that it's not even close.
The real location of the remaster buffs is not around the VVials, imo. Prep items didn't used to get the DC scaling, now they do. And the formula heightening! Not really a power buff, but it's a crazy gold save.
Aside from those buffs... yeah... it's not great.
Remaster made it easier for a noobie player to pilot an Alchemist thanks to recharging VVials, but everyone who was savvy enough to play old Alch got nerfed rather significantly.
Even item edits, like Alch Goggles loosing the to-hit bonus for bombs, genuinely hurts Alchemist.
It used to be normal to carry -1R bombs that were bought or hard-crafted. You'd be behind 1 weapon die, but again, 3.5 dmg is fair trade.
The goggles were a key tool to make sure your accuracy didn't also fall behind.
We have a lot of things planned, including a playtest straight off!! So, we hope you all have a good year with us too ^_^Thanks for the update, Maya. :)
I get it. This has been a crazy year for Paizo, and this errata wasn't the highest priority. Hopefully things will be a bit calmer for all of you next year.
Sorry for the slight necro/threadjack:
Now that the crazy time of year has (mostly) passed, and I can properly hopefully get excited*, please have this ready for Monday. That feels appropriately “straight off”. Your kind attention to ensuring this happens is appreciated by future me!
[*Given I haven’t enjoyed Animist, Exemplar, Necromancer, Runesmith or Commander, and felt that some of Commander should have been in Guardian and possibly vice versa….excitement is tempered somewhat…*)
Hopefully, and yes temper expectations, we get an announcement today during paizo live. But if a play test were to start this month, that seems like the best way to get the ball rolling.
Hopefully, and yes temper expectations, we get an announcement today during paizo live. But if a play test were to start this month, that seems like the best way to get the ball rolling.
Bad news: Paizo Live just concluded, and no mention of the playtest. So hopefully we'll get a blog announcing it soon.
The next Paizo Live will be on February 13th, due to 1) it being Friday the 13th and making it extra spooky, and 2) because February 4th is Rue Dickey's birthday and they wanna celebrate it. :V
That's too bad. But announcement of impossible magic is exciting at least!
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Remaster Alchemist did have a bunch of dectractors, so its definitely not 99%. It's mostly people who could get the most out of the giant pool of ingredients at the start of the day and/or enjoyed the complex resource management. Plus the ability to do multiple additives and such.
The new version is significantly easier to play because you don't have to figure out how to divide a huge pool of stuff, aren't playing additive tetris, and you can't run out at low level. Like, my son loves remaster Alchemist and would not be able to play legacy Alchemist, so in that sense the goal of the remaster Alchemist was met because its significantly more accessible.
But that didn't cover everyone by any stretch. It wasn't Oracle divisive, but it wasn't Swashbuckler "universal praise" either. (Or Rogue "why in the name of Asmoedeus did they buff this?")
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So ... what should be the answer for oracle spell repertoires?
Option 1. I see Pathbuilder seems to have decided 'never more than 5 cantrips or 4 spells per rank' in an attempt to match their presumed RAI. But in doing so, this leads to some mysteries only adding 2 spells to their repertoire at level 3 and/or 5 because they don't get granted spells of rank 2 or 3. This option relies on ignoring a bunch of text in the oracle spellcasting rules, especially the part about adding to your repertoire however many slots you gain (otherwise surely all mysteries would get 3 spells of 2nd rank added to their repertoire at 3rd level). If Pathbuilder is right, some mysteries have an odd case of having more slots than known spells at multiple spell ranks. This wouldn't have been a problem if every mystery gave a granted spell at every rank, but they don't, so here we are [side note: perhaps that's the easiest house rule fix?].
Pathbuilder has now done 3 different interpretations of Remaster Oracle's repertoire, but this patch note is downright strange:
Fixed remastered Oracle spells. They now gain repertoire slots to match their spells per day on spell ranks where they do not gain revelation spells.
Revelation spells are focus spells so those have nothing to do with it at all. I assume they meant Mystery spells, but I have no idea what the rules basis is for that interpretation because the text says nothing of the sort. And looking at my existing Oracle in there, it doesn't seem to be doing the right thing every level (I have only have 3 spells at rank 3 despite Cosmos not having a mystery spell that level, but at rank 4 I have 4 spells).
I have no idea what is going on with that, but the fact that it's the third different version of this in Pathbuilder does a great job of illustrating the problems that not fixing this is causing.
Option 2. The other route is that mystery granted spells are on top of the baseline, so at any levels for which you get granted spells from your mystery (inlcuding cantrips and 1st rank for all mysteries) you will have a larger repertoire than you have slots, which if I'm not mistaken would be unique among spontaneous casters - not necessarily a problem, but a reason to pause before locking in that answer as RAI. If going down this route, we have to deal with the question of how many spells should be in the repertoire at level 1, since the table says 3 but the text says 2 - arguably the one time where the text is probably correct even though it appears to contradict the post-errata clarification that table>text.
It wouldn't be unique: Bard's Muse spells are granted on top of the usual spells known, so at rank 1 they will have more spells known than slots.
It's also worth noting that Sorcerer's bloodline granted spells have text explicitly make them count. The repertoire itself says you get 3+bloodline. Oracle lacks all of that text and more closely mirrors Bard.
Option 3. You always end up with the standard 4/4/3 model, but mystery granted spells become a required choice, ie. you're actually more free if you don't get a granted spell, although of course some granted spells aren't on the divine list.
(Pathbuilder side note: the patch notes for v103 in Dec 2025 actually suggest they have implemented option 3, but my v103 web version is right now showing me only 2 spells for a tempest oracle at level 3...)
Yes, this seems to be what Pathbuilder is trying to do, but it's doing it incorrectly at rank 3 for my Oracle as well. As I mentioned earlier: I have no idea what rules text they're using for this.
I tried searching these forums and reddit, but I can't see an emerging consensus about RAI or even the best 'house rule' appproach.
There's no true consensus. The majority view from what I've seen (and my own view) is that "match the table and the numbers in the text are wrong". That's based on the numbers originally matching before the first errata changed half the numbers in the text, which is what actually caused this problem in the first place. When it was a 3 slot caster those numbers lined up with each other, after all. That also matches how other spontaneous casters work, as "you have more slots than repertoire spells" would be the odd one out.
The second most common view is "the text is right and it's a repertoire of 3 with 4 slots, with the mystery ones added onto it." "It's 4 but the mystery spells count against that" would be third, mostly because of the total absence of text to support that.
(I'm deliberarely ignoring Korakai because that sheet is a mess and the level 3 and 5 versions don't even agree with each other. Although my sense is that the level 3 version is fine (if going with option 2 above) and it's only the level 5 version that is whack, at least in their foundry implementations.)
Korakai also has Cursebound Revelation spells which are specifically not a thing in Remaster Oracle (that was literally one of the big class changes!). It's a total mess. I sigh every time I see it and the last time someone played it I had to explain to both the player and the GM that the class doesn't work that way anymore and the sheet is wrong.
It's kind of funny that Paizo doesn't know how Remaster Oracle works, but not the good laughing funny way. More of the resigned way.
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There's no true consensus. The majority view from what I've seen (and my own view) is that "match the table and the numbers in the text are wrong". That's based on the numbers originally matching before the first errata changed half the numbers in the text, which is what actually caused this problem in the first place. When it was a 3 slot caster those numbers lined up with each other, after all. That also matches how other spontaneous casters work, as "you have more slots than repertoire spells" would be the odd one out.Thanks for your reply, but I'm afraid I don't understand your answer. Is it the same as one of my 3 options, or a 4th?
The two most common interpretations are both option 2, where the repertoire size is how many the player gets to pick. Any additional ones from mystery/divine access/mysterious repertoire are added on top.
The point of differentiation is in the size of the repertoire that the player gets to pick:
2a is 4, matching the table and the "each time you gain a slot, gain a repertoire spell" part of the text.
2b is 3, matching the numbers in the text.
The text supports both of those at the same time, and that contradiction created by the first errata is the heart of the problem.
There just isn't support in the text for any other option, including what Pathbuilder is doing now. If that's what Paizo intended, they left out the text to make it happen entirely and have left it that way for 17 months. Arguments I've seen for these tend to lean on RAI or assuming that it should work like Sorcerer does instead of working like Bard does, but Sorcerer has text to make that happen which Oracle lacks.
It's a hot mess, however you look at it, and it's frankly ridiculous that it's been allowed to go on this long.
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I feel compelled to point out that 99! is a very big number.LOL the two of you don't make 2% :D
It stays at 99!
Obscure math jokes are tight!
broken quote on my phone
I don't disagree. Demiplane is on contract. I'm just hoping it gets FAQ'd or something since it's such a simple error. Pathbuilder has it that way, too, fwiw.
Workarounds aren't hard, either, so it's not deal-breaking.
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Thanks Tridus, I really apppreciate you walking me through this, and your even-handed explanation of different views.
So let's see if I have this right:
2a, which I gather is your view, leads to a max repertoire of 4+mystery granted spells per rank, ie. either 4 or 5 depending on mystery and spell rank.
Correct.
2b, which appears to be what pathbuilder is doing despite their own changelog text, is 3+mystery, ie. either 3 or 4 spells per rank.
I just created a new level 20 Tempest Oracle in Pathbuilder to test it because my existing one is wonky, and I have no idea what Pathbuilder is doing. It knows 3+mystery spells at ranks 1-3 and then has 4+mystery spells after that. It also only has 4 cantrips plus Electric Arc, but the text very clearly says "5 cantrips of your choice".
So that's just a hot mess.
(Pathbuilder actually originally did 2a, then changed to 2b, and now has changed to the current implementation.)
Leaving aside questions about RAW or RAI, the power difference here is minor but real. Given where oracles sit in that regard, does 'balance' lend itself to one ruling over another, do you think? I take it remastered oracles are considered at the higher end of caster power now, regardless of 'flavour' debates. (Perhaps if a player asks me about an ancestors oracle I could give them the generous option, lol)
I haven't deep dived every class, but my understanding is that under 2a, Oracle has the largest repertoire in the game. That's more true at level 11 when Divine Access grants you 3 more spells. As an 8 HP, light armor class with effectively a second set of focus abilities... yeah that's pretty powerful!
Under 2b, it would be smaller than Sorcerer but larger than Bard.
I can only guess at what the intention was. If you asked me honestly? It does seem questionable to me for Oracle to have a larger repertoire than Sorcerer with the other stuff it also has going on. Of course, remaster Oracle has a bunch of strange decisions in its design so its not like that rules anything out, and the bigger number is consistent with how repertoires work for other classes except Sorcerer (which has that special language and doesn't have empty levels for bloodline spells the way Oracle does for mystery spells).
So it's kind of a question of "is it wrong that it has more levels than Sorcerer" vs "should it work consistently with how other spellcasting repertoires work". I tend to value consistency in rules because that makes the game easier to run, so when one ruling is consistent and the other creates an exception, I tend to lean towards the side of consistency.
Of course, Remaster Oracle power depends somewhat on your curse, as some of them are a lot worse than others. Ancestors is an awful curse and someone with that will need to think far more carefully about using Cursebound abilities than Cosmos does, who can just spam them because the curse is irrelevant.
TBH - If someone told me they wanted to play an Ancestors Oracle, I'd confirm that they understand how Clumsy increases their chances of being crit because new players often don't grasp that detail and just how dangerous it really is. If a "boss" type encounter closes on an Ancestors Oracle and the curse is up, they have a decent chance of being crit twice in a row and dropped, and that goes up quickly for every level of Cursebound.
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We have a lot of things planned, including a playtest straight off!! So, we hope you all have a good year with us too ^_^Thanks for the update, Maya. :)
I get it. This has been a crazy year for Paizo, and this errata wasn't the highest priority. Hopefully things will be a bit calmer for all of you next year.
Seeing as we're now into the last week of January, is there any updates on when this playtest is supposed to happen? 'Cause I'm curious, given we were supposed to get this playtest "straight off" this year.
If plans changed, that's perfectly fine. It'd just be nice to know, so we're not waiting on something that's not coming soon anymore.