At the very least we should have separate rarity systems for system power (i.e. "this option is more powerful than other options" or "this option may be potentially disruptive for your campaign") and actual rarity (i.e. "members of this group of people have access to this option" and "only a few of this option were ever made").
Can't be that difficult, for a future edition of the game, to just add another tag on top.
I'm not sure that "power" tags are doable, given that it's a fact of game design that very few game designers know, before release, which options are going to be especially powerful. You might have an idea, but assuredly there are lots of things that you thought would be powerful that land with a thud and someone figures out how to do something you didn't anticipate so something else is really powerful.
I think the better way to view rarity (and probably the way it's viewed by the developers) is to look at things that have the potential to be disruptive. Magic that lets you teleport, or speak to the dead, or detect lies is not particularly powerful but it has the potential to short circuit plots in a way a GM doesn't. But another way that something can be disruptive is if it undermines the assumptions of the setting. If teleport magic were cheap, easy, and accessible to all then society would naturally adjust to accommodate stuff like "I don't need a horse, I can just teleport where I need to go" and you pile enough stuff on that and you get something that just doesn't look like a "traditional fantasy" setting.
Come to think of it is there anything that's uncommon because it's especially strong? I think that something like the Amnesiac background (where you trade your trained skill, lore, and skill feat for a third attribute increase) is potentially very strong, but that's rare and more of a case for "well, amnesiac hero is a trope, so what can we give this background that isn't a clue for their past?"
Come to think of it is there anything that's uncommon because it's especially strong? I think that something like the Amnesiac background (where you trade your trained skill, lore, and skill feat for a third attribute increase) is potentially very strong, but that's rare and more of a case for "well, amnesiac hero is a trope, so what can we give this background that isn't a clue for their past?"
Since the DM places the 3rd stat, it's as strong or weak as the DM wants: Raising an 8 to a 10 isn't going to set the world on fire.
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I can only tell you that those tables exist and that the rarity system was made for them to be able to discuss things with official backing, because 'anything goes even if it makes others upset' is far more of a group killer than 'please don't play a samurai unless the whole group agrees what it means to have a samurai in Andoran'.
And no, it's not about inclusivity. You really, really aren't being oppressed by being told that Kholos and firearms are not suited for all campaigns that any given GM may want to tell so ask before showing up with your Kholo Gunslinger. Yes, that is more likely to be an issue than showing up with a leshy ranger. This is something that has happened enough times Paizo knows it. Your table is an anecdote.
Buddy, you are the one talking in anecdotes: "tables exist", "it has happened"... vagueposting much? And nobody is claiming to be oppressed (wtf?)
You are the one arguing that the rarity system exist to "discuss things with official backing" and yet the official society rules has gotten rid of most of it. You can literally rock up a PFS table anywhere in the world, playing any scenario published, with your strawman of a Katana-and-Pistol dual-wielding Kholo Exemplar right now, and nobody would bat an eye and everyone will have a good time. But somehow this is anecdotal? And your alleged snowflake tables getting triggered by a Samurai-coded Paladin aren't? What are we even talking about?
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One of my issues with the Rarity system is I build a character and then fill in the background to fit it. So when I meet a DM I'll ask what's allowed and some ask for the justification for it when I haven't come up with that as I haven't made the character yet. Asking why I should have a katana is putting the cart before the horse in my case: I haven't gotten to the step yet as I'm feeling out the DM's BAN/houserule list to see what options are available. For me 'pitch me an idea and I might allow uncommon or rare' is just frustrating as that's making the character backwards IMO.
Can you expand on this because as a GM, this is my preference on how to handle it and I'm not sure why that's frustrating?
Now, I do typically start off by saying "Hey, in this campaign you guys are going to start off as residents of Sandpoint Varisia and the campaign is going to be about traveling from there to Tian Xia, though you character has no reason to know about that". This would be my 5 second pitch for Jade Regent AP. Is it because the theoretical GM doesn't give you that kind of information to center/ground your character?
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Not trying to throw shade at anyone...
But there is a part of me that wonders if some of the people pushing back against the Rarity system in Pathfinder...if it just boils down to a GM telling that person they couldn't have something flatly because it wasn't common and they're upset because of that interaction. They were denied something they saw and thought was cool and now they hate the system.
BotBrain in comment #1 started the thread because using Uncommon as a foreign-region tag was getting obsolete due to more adventures happening in those exotic foreign regions or more PCs being travelers from those foreign regions.
Kyle_TheBuilder added in comment #4 that some GMs were blanket banning uncommon and rare items. The current system does not distinguish between rarity because of lore and rarity because of disruptiveness. Kyle_TheBuilder much later added that going to the GM for permission due to Uncommon-because-of-lore was quite annoying.
I myself in comment #78 had decided to write about how rarity played into my own campaigns. But in writing down the experiences of my players and me, I discovered that Uncommon had many uses that were not in the rules. NielsenE in comment #77 had called these "character building hacks."
These are signs that Pathfinder has outgrown the original design of the rarity system. This is not a criticism of marking rarity itself. I like having the information available. But sometimes the rarity traits might mean something different than my interpretation, and I don't like that.
I see BotBrain's statements as a reason to enhance the Rarity system and tags (regional tags seem reasonable).
Tagging because of disruptiveness could be possible, though it will invite discussion about what is disruptive and why. Again possible, but I'd expect people to fight a lot about it.
If your statements are to make me think that the rarity system could use enhancement, then I absolutely agree.
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Nobody is asking you to read all Uncommon or Rare options ahead of time, the same way nobody is asking you to read all Common options ahead of time. You are only supposed to read the options your players bring to you, at which point - we argue - there should be no difference in treatment between a Common or Uncommon option. If you deem a feat/spell unsuited to the game you are running, you have the right to discard it, but this choice should not be related to its rarity, and players should not feel under increased scrutiny, or somehow like pushing it, for bringing Uncommon options to your attention.
But having to read every common option my players choose is a lot more work than is necessary for me to do as a GM. I can just choose not to do that and trust the rarity system and it works to filter out a lot of stuff that doesn’t really take that much thought.
The cleric of phrasma example for the blood lords campaign is not an argument against rarity, because AP writers can reshape any common option into uncommon, rare or even “let your players play this way at their own risk and with a lot of advising it is a bad idea.”
The fact that GMs and Adventure writers can change the rarity tags as they wish is a strength of the system, not a weakness, and having a frame work for saying “consider Elves rare in this campaign” helps those GMs that want to play with base expectations by making a shared language and set of game terms to use.
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I feel it's quite contradictory for people on this thread that defend the rarity system to also vouch for session 0 when the latter entirely removes the need for the former. For example, if I want to play "elf drifter gunslinger raised by bushido masters in the mountains" concept but the GM thinks that's a bit too convoluted for the campaign, then the fact that the gunslinger was an uncommon class wasn't a factor at any moment during the player's and GM's discussion, thus there's really no reason for people at Paizo to arbritarily put tags on content when at the end of the day its the GM the one that's makes the final call. And this is even assuming rarity traits worked, which as I and multiple said already, isn't the case at all.
I'm not against rarity trait because I was wronged by a GM or whatever. I play TTRPGs with my friends and we aren't scared of a PC being slightly overpowered. We played D&D 3.5 for years after all. I'm against it because I fundamentally disagree with the idea of banning character options unless you are playing a very specific type of campaign. I also think of the people that likely were screwed by rarity and it honestly makes me angry because those players had their character concepts taken away by a GM that didn't want them to have fun. It's a matter of empathy with those that had to go with a less fun plan B because the GM just felt like it.
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My fundamental issue with the rarity system can be summarized as follows:
If a GM was already going to have an issue with something, Rarity was not the issue.
Like, Exemplar. 99% of the time, I see Gms just go "yeah sure whatever" and they just narratively don't address the whole "god-touched" aspect. Same with Inventors, the few times I've seen a GM address it they just go "well sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic... so any random civilian is just going to assume your crazy gizmos are magic."
The tags that are meant to restrict something due to narrative weight don't seem to actually mean much unless a GM was already going to disallow it, at which point the rarity system really doesn't help.
Though typing all this out, I suppose at the end of the day the rarity tags can act less as a barrier to entry and more of a "hey, GM, this might not jive with your story" warning. But as others have noted, there are class features that are common that give access to uncommon things... thus circumventing the benefit of the warning tag in the first place. Looking at you, Teleport.
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The fact that GMs and Adventure writers can change the rarity tags as they wish is a strength of the system, not a weakness, and having a frame work for saying “consider Elves rare in this campaign” helps those GMs that want to play with base expectations by making a shared language and set of game terms to use.
The people that write adventures for Paizo correctly understand that there's an impulse in players to sometimes "do the opposite" of what the adventure intends (e.g. play a Hobgoblin in Ironfang Invasion, or play a Paladin in Blood Lords, etc.) and sometimes this can be great fun. But it also is something that invokes a bunch of extra work for the GM, so for this to be productive it has to be something that not only the GM signs off on but also works with the player to craft a story that resonates with the reason the player has decided to swim upstream.
Just in terms of avoiding resentment at the table, there's a lot less when a player has been told "please play something else- that's a great idea for a different campaign" than if the GM has to do a lot of extra work because of some unusual choices a player has made. After all, some of the times a player chooses to go against the grain it can be because that player wants more of the spotlight.
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I feel it's quite contradictory for people on this thread that defend the rarity system to also vouch for session 0 when the latter entirely removes the need for the former. For example, if I want to play "elf drifter gunslinger raised by bushido masters in the mountains" concept but the GM thinks that's a bit too convoluted for the campaign, then the fact that the gunslinger was an uncommon class wasn't a factor at any moment during the player's and GM's discussion, thus there's really no reason for people at Paizo to arbritarily put tags on content when at the end of the day its the GM the one that's makes the final call. And this is even assuming rarity traits worked, which as I and multiple said already, isn't the case at all.
I'm not against rarity trait because I was wronged by a GM or whatever. I play TTRPGs with my friends and we aren't scared of a PC being slightly overpowered. We played D&D 3.5 for years after all. I'm against it because I fundamentally disagree with the idea of banning character options unless you are playing a very specific type of campaign. I also think of the people that likely were screwed by rarity and it honestly makes me angry because those players had their character concepts taken away by a GM that didn't want them to have fun. It's a matter of empathy with those that had to go with a less fun plan B because the GM just felt like it.
Rarity isn’t only about session 0. Players can gain access to a lot of different options over the course of the campaign. It is exhausting to have to know every feat, spell and item my players may want to choose over the course of a 20 level campaign. But if they don’t have to worry about showing me 99.9% of common options, they can give me a heads up about the 2 or 3 uncommon ones they want to use and it is really easy for me to work that into the campaign at points where it will improve the story for them to fit. Without a rarity system, I rather just allow everything and hope none of it could potentially lead to narrative or mechanical conflicts, or I have to be hyper vigilant about everything. No thank you.
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One of my issues with the Rarity system is I build a character and then fill in the background to fit it. So when I meet a DM I'll ask what's allowed and some ask for the justification for it when I haven't come up with that as I haven't made the character yet. Asking why I should have a katana is putting the cart before the horse in my case: I haven't gotten to the step yet as I'm feeling out the DM's BAN/houserule list to see what options are available. For me 'pitch me an idea and I might allow uncommon or rare' is just frustrating as that's making the character backwards IMO.Can you expand on this because as a GM, this is my preference on how to handle it and I'm not sure why that's frustrating?
Now, I do typically start off by saying "Hey, in this campaign you guys are going to start off as residents of Sandpoint Varisia and the campaign is going to be about traveling from there to Tian Xia, though you character has no reason to know about that". This would be my 5 second pitch for Jade Regent AP. Is it because the theoretical GM doesn't give you that kind of information to center/ground your character?
I build my characters much the same way. For my part, that adventure pitch doesn't accomplish anything as far as character building goes. With no knowledge of what the rest of the party looks like, I wouldn't commit to any character in the first place. With that in mind, I wouldn't have anything to even request aside from a giant laundry list of the obviously high quality uncommon options to know if I could use them in any builds or use any builds that might require them.
Past that we have other questions. Resident of Sandpoint. Well, if they were originally from alkenstar that fulfills the access conditions for firearms and gunslinger. Since access explicitly states that I can treat these as common, do I still need permission?
A character who meets the access requirements can freely choose that option just like they would a common option, even though it’s uncommon.
What about uncommon spells granted by common options? If human fighter picks unconventional weaponry, which uncommon cultural options are more uncommon than others and banned by you?
It's just a mess, so the easiest answer, and my default, is to just go full common and skip the BS whenever possible.
The fact that GMs and Adventure writers can change the rarity tags as they wish is a strength of the system, not a weakness, and having a frame work for saying “consider Elves rare in this campaign” helps those GMs that want to play with base expectations by making a shared language and set of game terms to use.The people that write adventures for Paizo correctly understand that there's an impulse in players to sometimes "do the opposite" of what the adventure intends (e.g. play a Hobgoblin in Ironfang Invasion, or play a Paladin in Blood Lords, etc.) and sometimes this can be great fun. But it also is something that invokes a bunch of extra work for the GM, so for this to be productive it has to be something that not only the GM signs off on but also works with the player to craft a story that resonates with the reason the player has decided to swim upstream.
Just in terms of avoiding resentment at the table, there's a lot less when a player has been told "please play something else- that's a great idea for a different campaign" than if the GM has to do a lot of extra work because of some unusual choices a player has made. After all, some of the times a player chooses to go against the grain it can be because that player wants more of the spotlight.
Ok? I mean blood lords does this. It doesn’t just say “don’t take vitality healing.” The rarity system doesn’t prevent more in-depth discussions, but it still provides a framework, “ok, that option is going to be extremely rare in this setting, if I chose it anyway, that means the story is going to bend and weave around this choice. Both I and the GM should be aware of this.”
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Rarity isn’t only about session 0. Players can gain access to a lot of different options over the course of the campaign. It is exhausting to have to know every feat, spell and item my players may want to choose over the course of a 20 level campaign. But if they don’t have to worry about showing me 99.9% of common options, they can give me a heads up about the 2 or 3 uncommon ones they want to use and it is really easy for me to work that into the campaign at points where it will improve the story for them to fit. Without a rarity system, I rather just allow everything and hope none of it could potentially...I feel it's quite contradictory for people on this thread that defend the rarity system to also vouch for session 0 when the latter entirely removes the need for the former. For example, if I want to play "elf drifter gunslinger raised by bushido masters in the mountains" concept but the GM thinks that's a bit too convoluted for the campaign, then the fact that the gunslinger was an uncommon class wasn't a factor at any moment during the player's and GM's discussion, thus there's really no reason for people at Paizo to arbritarily put tags on content when at the end of the day its the GM the one that's makes the final call. And this is even assuming rarity traits worked, which as I and multiple said already, isn't the case at all.
I'm not against rarity trait because I was wronged by a GM or whatever. I play TTRPGs with my friends and we aren't scared of a PC being slightly overpowered. We played D&D 3.5 for years after all. I'm against it because I fundamentally disagree with the idea of banning character options unless you are playing a very specific type of campaign. I also think of the people that likely were screwed by rarity and it honestly makes me angry because those players had their character concepts taken away by a GM that didn't want them to have fun. It's a matter of empathy with those that had to go with a less fun plan B because the GM just felt like it.
The same principle stil applies.
If a player takes an option you don't think fits the campaign, tell them about it. If the player arrived at the session with an option that you wouldn't have allowed, either tell them to replace it or allow it for that time session alone and ask the player to change it for next session.
This is a social game so I feel it isn't outrageous to expect the people at the table to speak to each other. Rarity traits, on top of all their problems, encourage a "default" assumption about what's supposed to be played that doesn't really translate 1:1 into any table.
I think there might be a disconnect here between people who play a lot of PFS, where it's possible that everybody who shows up is playing a Yaksha Kineticist and you just deal with that, versus home games where the players know each other pretty well and talk about ideas for characters that aren't even relevant to the campaign that is ongoing and are actively invested in teamwork to the point of talking out both chargen and level-ups with the group.
Part of me misses the fact that PF2 is unlike PF1 in that you cannot, productively, plan your entire character from level 1-20 before a die is rolled since that sort of "build theorycraft" was a fun game to play when there's no game scheduled. But it really shouldn't come at the expense of the actual play experience, which is what PF2 realizes. So insofar as you should be willing to talk with the other players to make sure that somebody knows how to heal, somebody can handle traps, someone can handle knowledge checks etc. you should be willing to include your GM in similar sorts of conversations particularly given that the GM serves as an interpreter between "the player's understanding of the setting" and "the character's understanding of the world they live in" since characters would not need to ask questions like "are there any books or papers around" but players do. This is not a fundamentally different question from "are there Jotunborn in Varisia?"
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But having to read every common option my players choose is a lot more work than is necessary for me to do as a GM. I can just choose not to do that and trust the rarity system and it works to filter out a lot of stuff that doesn’t really take that much thought.
Then only read the Uncommon/Rare ones? I don't understand the quandary here. You can still use the rarity system as your personal categorisation system when inspecting player's choices, the same way you can choose to prioritise reading options with starting letter A-M, or all the odd-numbered ones.
All people are saying is that the rarity system should not in itself be ground for exclusion, and especially should not make players feel like they have to justify their choices moreso than other players in the party. Firstly because we have established that rarity is not indicative of anything specific and may relate to setting, power level, or arbitrary whims of the writers, and secondly - I'd add - because it's largely not ground for exclusion in organized games.
AP writers can reshape any common option into uncommon, rare or even “let your players play this way at their own risk and with a lot of advising it is a bad idea.”
You understand that these cases are given the Uncommon/Rare trait because they don't fit the AP, not the other way around. GMs can and will exclude Pharasma as an available deity in the "Death-to-Pharasma" AP even without the Uncommon trait, as we just established from the "I'm lazy" guy. Removing or reducing the rarity system does not prevent the AP writers to make a note of options that should be restricted based on the AP's theme at the beginning of the book. This is just another example of rarity being used for yet another reason that does not compare with other Uncommon/Rare options in the rules.
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My fundamental issue with the rarity system can be summarized as follows:
If a GM was already going to have an issue with something, Rarity was not the issue.
Like, Exemplar. 99% of the time, I see Gms just go "yeah sure whatever" and they just narratively don't address the whole "god-touched" aspect. Same with Inventors, the few times I've seen a GM address it they just go "well sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic... so any random civilian is just going to assume your crazy gizmos are magic."
The tags that are meant to restrict something due to narrative weight don't seem to actually mean much unless a GM was already going to disallow it, at which point the rarity system really doesn't help.
Though typing all this out, I suppose at the end of the day the rarity tags can act less as a barrier to entry and more of a "hey, GM, this might not jive with your story" warning. But as others have noted, there are class features that are common that give access to uncommon things... thus circumventing the benefit of the warning tag in the first place. Looking at you, Teleport.
I disagree, in that as a GM it helps me because Paizo has already identified the things that might be problems lore/narratively speaking.
A problem for a lot of GMs is identifying it.
A second problem for a lot of GMs is (after identifying it) explaining to players (who sometimes feel entitled to options) why you don't think it's appropriate and potentially having an argument about it. Instead the rules give me a nice tool to point to and say "Generally off limits, but ask me about exceptions".
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I think there might be a disconnect here between people who play a lot of PFS, where it's possible that everybody who shows up is playing a Yaksha Kineticist
Yaksha are not available by default but can be unlocked with enough Achievement Points (i.e. you can choose it as a reward if you've played a lot of PFS).
Most of the people I've played with in PFS play a combination of Common Class × Common Ancestry. The main difference with home games is that the society rules are less dependent on GM fiat, and GMs are less likely to act like "my game my rules" - since it's not their game, and neither their rules.
And of course the fact that you can show up as a Yaksha Kineticist, and nobody will be questioning you. All in all, Ws on all fronts.
I think one potential improvement to the Rarity system would be to make it interlock better with the tables in AP Player's Guides that suggest which options are a great choice for the campaign, which ones are fine, and which ones are a poor choice. That's generally a better guide for "can I play [ancestry] [class]?" sorts of questions. Like the Bastion of Blasphemies player's guide imparts on the reader that a Duskwalker or a Changeling is a fine choice but a Skeleton or an Azarketi is not, the same way it tells you that Investigator is a better choice than Druid.
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I think one potential improvement to the Rarity system would be to make it interlock better with the tables in AP Player's Guides that suggest which options are a great choice for the campaign, which ones are fine, and which ones are a poor choice. That's generally a better guide for "can I play [ancestry] [class]?" sorts of questions. Like the Bastion of Blasphemies player's guide imparts on the reader that a Duskwalker or a Changeling is a fine choice but a Skeleton or an Azarketi is not, the same way it tells you that Investigator is a better choice than Druid.
I see this as a "both" thing.
Like the generic rule books can tell you for the generic inner sea setting of Golarion.
APs meanwhile could be set outside the inner sea, but also just generally can spend a page or two on "these options are good fits (including those that might not normally be), these options are bad fits" and that could encompass classes, ancestries, items, magic, and really anything or everything.
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...Rarity isn’t only about session 0. Players can gain access to a lot of different options over the course of the campaign. It is exhausting to have to know every feat, spell and item my players may want to choose over the course of a 20 level campaign. But if they don’t have to worry about showing me 99.9% of common options, they can give me a heads up about the 2 or 3 uncommon ones they want to use and it is really easy for me to work that into the campaign at points where it will improve the story for them to fit. Without a rarity system, I rather just allow everything and hopeI feel it's quite contradictory for people on this thread that defend the rarity system to also vouch for session 0 when the latter entirely removes the need for the former. For example, if I want to play "elf drifter gunslinger raised by bushido masters in the mountains" concept but the GM thinks that's a bit too convoluted for the campaign, then the fact that the gunslinger was an uncommon class wasn't a factor at any moment during the player's and GM's discussion, thus there's really no reason for people at Paizo to arbritarily put tags on content when at the end of the day its the GM the one that's makes the final call. And this is even assuming rarity traits worked, which as I and multiple said already, isn't the case at all.
I'm not against rarity trait because I was wronged by a GM or whatever. I play TTRPGs with my friends and we aren't scared of a PC being slightly overpowered. We played D&D 3.5 for years after all. I'm against it because I fundamentally disagree with the idea of banning character options unless you are playing a very specific type of campaign. I also think of the people that likely were screwed by rarity and it honestly makes me angry because those players had their character concepts taken away by a GM that didn't want them to have fun. It's a matter of empathy with those that had to go with a less fun plan B because the GM just felt like it.
with stuff like items and spells, it can be several sessions before the thing would even come up in play (we play shorter 2 hour sessions). That just creates a lot more room for resentment to have to say, “I really wish you’d have asked me about those, they are not really available here, and wouldn’t be sold in town.”
My players use a ton of consumables and such. I really like not having to know what every single thing they buy is or what it does, but still know that anything disruptive is likely to be uncommon, as is anything from some AP I might not even own or know what the context is around it’s inclusion in the game.
And none of this is to blanket ban things because I can’t be bothered. It is about encouraging players to be proactive in talking me through nonstandard options and letting me plan for how they either will, or won’t fit in my game, as well as how I want access to them to develop in the game.
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I do not like rarity system (and my tables ignored it since day 1) as GM and as player for few reasons:
1. Pretty much no uncommon thing is good enough to justify it not being "common" if we talk balance-wise. Hell, many are mathematically just worse than common ones. My fav example is Sudden Bolt, which is not overtuned as your 2nd rank spell - it's the only burst spell at that level that makes worth using your highest slot (dealing 26 avg dmg). Becasue without Sudden Bolt your best bet is casting Runic Weapon on martial, which in case of lets say Giant Barbarian they are swining multiple times per turn with 2d12+10 (avg 23 dmg), which imo is lame as caster should be able to some big damage for resource cost and not only be buffer sitting there.
Hell, many Rare items/feats/spells are JUST BAD. Straight trash. Tag makes no sense.
2. Many uncommon things are just so cool. That's it. Uncommon archetypes are cool, uncommon weapons are cool, some uncommon /feats/spells are cool (Boneshaker is COOL!) or good (Sudden Bolt), but in noway even remotely too good. Pretty much THE COOLEST ancestries are all uncommon. Who the hell wants to play 3rd decade in row of just humans/elfs/dwarfs again where you have cool stuff like Leshy, Conrasu, Automatons, Kashirisi, Nagaji, Reflection and so on. It's what makes PF2e so cool in first place.
3. It just adds another layer of unnecessary checking beforehand a lot of stuff by players or GMs so they can negotiate if this is allowed, this not, why this and not that. Unnecessary.
4. A little different approach but I will say as both GM and Player - I paid for PF2e as system to play. I pay with money and time for all feats, all spells, all items. I do not like system telling me that something should or should not be available. Everything should be available and I as GM may take it from here and adjust if needed. And too many GMs don't even do proper evaluation/calculation to really check if something is good/bad. They jus see "uncommon" or "rare" and immideitly go...
It was my understanding that the Uncommon/Rare tags do not work like Diablo or World of Warcraft loot indicating power, but rather is an in-universe "RP" descriptor for what you, an average citizen living in the Inner Seas region are likely to experience.
So, vampires, ghouls, Liches, and the like, regardless of player power, would be pretty rare to run into, or even living Skeletons for instance.
Meanwhile where-ever Geb is located, I think, sentient skeletons (the ancestry) would be fairly common, as well as other types of undead ancestries and heritages. Or at least uncommon. Liches might still be rare because I think the aptitude and whatever else to become one isn't just for your every day common wizard.
I could be wrong about my understanding though. I even think the Tian-Xia world guide book calls out that things like Katana and other ancestries get the common tag here and other types of weapons that are common in the Player Core are more uncommon like a longsword or so.
Basically in the same way IRL in Medival Europe or later 1800's Europe a japanese Katana would be a rare or at least uncommon collector item, while an English Broadsword would be rare or at least uncommon in Meiji Japan or whatever.
One of my issues with the Rarity system is I build a character and then fill in the background to fit it. So when I meet a DM I'll ask what's allowed and some ask for the justification for it when I haven't come up with that as I haven't made the character yet. Asking why I should have a katana is putting the cart before the horse in my case: I haven't gotten to the step yet as I'm feeling out the DM's BAN/houserule list to see what options are available. For me 'pitch me an idea and I might allow uncommon or rare' is just frustrating as that's making the character backwards IMO.Can you expand on this because as a GM, this is my preference on how to handle it and I'm not sure why that's frustrating?
Now, I do typically start off by saying "Hey, in this campaign you guys are going to start off as residents of Sandpoint Varisia and the campaign is going to be about traveling from there to Tian Xia, though you character has no reason to know about that". This would be my 5 second pitch for Jade Regent AP. Is it because the theoretical GM doesn't give you that kind of information to center/ground your character?
Well, that pitch doesn't actually inform me about anything useful in creating my character. Like 0%. It doesn't tell me what options I can use to make my character, what things you don't want to see in a character or even a simple house-rule/ban list. I've heard your pitch and I still can't fill out thing 1 on my sheet.
I haven't come to the table with a character, I'm waiting to find out what options I have for a character. It's only after I've heard the options and completing the character that I make a background to fit the mechanics. So I wouldn't even put a Katana on my sheet if I didn't know I could take it and that would happen before I made any background justification for it: so asking for justification first is asking for something that doesn't exist, hence my frustration in doing it that way. So, for instance, I'd pick a Gunslinger before I figure out their parents were pirates that moved from the Shackles [or more likely escaped to] and brought along their love of firearms; if I couldn't tell if gunslinger was available, I wouldn't make up that background.
So a 'pitch me an character idea' from a DM just gets a blank stare as I have 0% to go on since the mechanics drive the backstory for me.
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Well, that pitch doesn't actually inform me about anything useful in creating my character. Like 0%. It doesn't tell me what options I can use to make my character, what things you don't want to see in a character or even a simple house-rule/ban list. I've heard your pitch and I still can't fill out thing 1 on my sheet.
I haven't come to the table with a character, I'm waiting to find out what options I have for a character. It's only after I've heard the options and completing the character that I make a background to fit the mechanics. So I wouldn't even put a Katana on my sheet if I didn't know I could take it and that would happen before I made any background justification for it: so asking for justification first is asking for something that doesn't exist, hence my frustration in doing it that way. So, for instance, I'd pick a Gunslinger...
I'm guess I'm confused by your statement, or perhaps I needed to state the implicit assumption which was "Commonly available stuff is fine, anything else needs approval".
Genuinely, did you not understand that implication on what was allowed?
But I guess more generally, what I was trying to say is, if you are playing a character raised in Sandpoint (which to the best of my recollection has no inherent connection to anything providing firearms) and told me you wanted to play a gunslinger, my default answered would be "No". But if you came to me and said you wanted to play a character whose parent had fled the life of the shackles as soon as they had enough money, but had made it out with a old coat pistol. And that your character had an interest in it since they were child, and worked with the local alchemist to learn how to create black powder and the blacksmith to learn to smelt lead I would consider it.
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Look, rarity tags are by no means perfect, but a system that makes general European fantasy the assumption, while tagging most things outside it as well as tagging things with narrative or balance impact, puts the power firmly in the GMs hands to dictate what is and isn't acceptable in the story being told while also reducing their need to heavily scrutinize every bit of the character sheets. The players have to come to THEM, and that I think is both admirable as a game mechanic and respectful towards the person literally doing all the work to make the whole game night possible in the first place. Paizo empowers the GM with the 2e engine in almost all regards, and I sincerely hope they never stopOne reason we are talking about a Regional trait is that Pathfinder 2nd Edition no longer sticks to a general European fantasy setting. Player Core includes the Oriental-inspired monk class and the weapons bo staff, katar, kama, khakkara, nunchaku, sai, and temple sword with the monk trait. The last 6 of that list are uncommon. The uncommon martial weapons list also includes 3 other uncommon Oriental weapons, the katana, kukri, and wakizashi. Of the 15 uncommon martial weapons in Player Core 8 are Oriental and 6 are racial. The remaining one is the spiked chain, a fantasy weapon with no real world origin.
With the publication of Lost Omens Mwangi Expanse and Lost Omens Tian Xia we have plenty of lore for adventures outside European-based Avistan. Paizo has published adventure paths for those other locales. Imagine a PC in Season of Ghosts, set in Willowshore in Tian Xia, wanting to wield a European-based morningstar or rapier. They are common, but they would look out of place in Tian Xia.
Fair enough, I just wouldn't want to get rid of the whole system bc of its inconsistencies; I like that problematic stuff is gated and the system is actively in my corner in curbing choices from problematic mechanics or players. I don't disagree that it could stand to be refined
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Well, that pitch doesn't actually inform me about anything useful in creating my character. Like 0%. It doesn't tell me what options I can use to make my character, what things you don't want to see in a character or even a simple house-rule/ban list. I've heard your pitch and I still can't fill out thing 1 on my sheet.
I haven't come to the table with a character, I'm waiting to find out what options I have for a character. It's only after I've heard the options and completing the character that I make a background to fit the mechanics. So I wouldn't even put a Katana on my sheet if I didn't know I could take it and that would happen before I made any background justification for it: so asking for justification first is asking for something that doesn't exist, hence my frustration in doing it that way. So, for instance, I'd pick a Gunslinger...
I'm guess I'm confused by your statement, or perhaps I needed to state the implicit assumption which was "Commonly available stuff is fine, anything else needs approval".
Genuinely, did you not understand that implication on what was allowed?
But I guess more generally, what I was trying to say is, if you are playing a character raised in Sandpoint (which to the best of my recollection has no inherent connection to anything providing firearms) and told me you wanted to play a gunslinger, my default answered would be "No". But if you came to me and said you wanted to play a character whose parent had fled the life of the shackles as soon as they had enough money, but had made it out with a old coat pistol. And that your character had an interest in it since they were child, and worked with the local alchemist to learn how to create black powder and the blacksmith to learn to smelt lead I would consider it.
In other words players better at [EXPLETIVE] backstory justifications and succeeding IRL charisma checks get to play using the content they want, and players worse at that don't.
If I wanted to play that aforementioned katana wielding sun god worshiping exemplar because I thought the mechanics were cool or whatever, I could probably come up with some cool backstory and characterization tailored for the campaign (and your personal biases) that gets you all invested and makes you want to allow that content. Not everyone can do that, and frankly even for the people who are skilled at it it's oh so exhausting, and warps characters away from what the player wants them to be absent pandering the DM for the "privilege" of using published content.
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POST EDITED TO REMOVE A ONE WORD EXPLETIVE! THE REST OF THE TEXT WAS KEPT AS THE POINT WAS VALID! - MEC 08/05/2026
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The rarity system doesn’t allow GMs to take options away from players, they already could do that, the rarity system helps distinguish between which options could potentially be things GMs will say no to for most common campaigns and which things they are not likely to say no to.
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Well, that pitch doesn't actually inform me about anything useful in creating my character. Like 0%. It doesn't tell me what options I can use to make my character, what things you don't want to see in a character or even a simple house-rule/ban list. I've heard your pitch and I still can't fill out thing 1 on my sheet.
I haven't come to the table with a character, I'm waiting to find out what options I have for a character. It's only after I've heard the options and completing the character that I make a background to fit the mechanics. So I wouldn't even put a Katana on my sheet if I didn't know I could take it and that would happen before I made any background justification for it: so asking for justification first is asking for something that doesn't exist, hence my frustration in doing it that way. So, for instance, I'd pick a Gunslinger...
I'm guess I'm confused by your statement, or perhaps I needed to state the implicit assumption which was "Commonly available stuff is fine, anything else needs approval".
Genuinely, did you not understand that implication on what was allowed?
But I guess more generally, what I was trying to say is, if you are playing a character raised in Sandpoint (which to the best of my recollection has no inherent connection to anything providing firearms) and told me you wanted to play a gunslinger, my default answered would be "No". But if you came to me and said you wanted to play a character whose parent had fled the life of the shackles as soon as they had enough money, but had made it out with a old coat pistol. And that your character had an interest in it since they were child, and worked with the local alchemist to learn how to create black powder and the blacksmith to learn to smelt lead I would consider it.
Yes, you seem to not understand. You're effectively telling me I can only take uncommon as I don't have a backstory when I make up the character. You're in effect asking for something I do not have. I don't even have gunslinger down because i don't know if it's allowed. You effectively asking to pitch you a background for any piece of my character I might be interested in. Nothing about my character exists before the mechanics. I'll figure out class, ancestry, feats, equipment ect before I put any thought to background as those options inform me of that background.
This means if you go "Commonly available stuff is fine, anything else needs approval", I'm left with making several characters and hoping one meets approval, or ignoring uncommon+ elements; both of which are annoying vs someone having a ban/houserule list where I can see my options and just make a character. It's honestly why I PbP mostly as I get [mostly] clear unambiguous requirements for character construction before i even join. I don't mind a sales pitch, but I have to have something before I do that.
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Yes, you seem to not understand. You're effectively telling me I can only take uncommon as I don't have a backstory when I make up the character. You're in effect asking for something I do not have. I...Well, that pitch doesn't actually inform me about anything useful in creating my character. Like 0%. It doesn't tell me what options I can use to make my character, what things you don't want to see in a character or even a simple house-rule/ban list. I've heard your pitch and I still can't fill out thing 1 on my sheet.
I haven't come to the table with a character, I'm waiting to find out what options I have for a character. It's only after I've heard the options and completing the character that I make a background to fit the mechanics. So I wouldn't even put a Katana on my sheet if I didn't know I could take it and that would happen before I made any background justification for it: so asking for justification first is asking for something that doesn't exist, hence my frustration in doing it that way. So, for instance, I'd pick a Gunslinger...
I'm guess I'm confused by your statement, or perhaps I needed to state the implicit assumption which was "Commonly available stuff is fine, anything else needs approval".
Genuinely, did you not understand that implication on what was allowed?
But I guess more generally, what I was trying to say is, if you are playing a character raised in Sandpoint (which to the best of my recollection has no inherent connection to anything providing firearms) and told me you wanted to play a gunslinger, my default answered would be "No". But if you came to me and said you wanted to play a character whose parent had fled the life of the shackles as soon as they had enough money, but had made it out with a old coat pistol. And that your character had an interest in it since they were child, and worked with the local alchemist to learn how to create black powder and the blacksmith to learn to smelt lead I would consider it.
A ban list is a lot of combing and scrutinizing work, and the person you're asking that work of is already doing all the work for every session after session zero
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I think one disconnect happening here is that some players don’t want to make any choices at all without knowing for certain if that is allowed or not. But the thing is, you just ask your GM if there is an option you are interested in that you are not sure if they will allow or not. They might not know until you ask them if they would allow it or not and that is true with or without a rarity system.
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The rarity system doesn’t allow GMs to take options away from players, they already could do that, the rarity system helps distinguish between which options could potentially be things GMs will say no to for most common campaigns and which things they are not likely to say no to.
Uncommon sits in that 'maybe' zone, as pointed out in the rules. It says "a PC can usually find them eventually with enough effort". So, no, it's not really presented as a 'no' list but a 'maybe sometime later' list or having to get Access to with a feat or "spending substantial downtime tracking them down". As such, it should rarely be a no, full stop, at least in theory.
Rarity and Power mentions "Options of higher rarities aren't necessarily more powerful than common ones, but they might have unusual capabilities with large ramifications for the campaign setting or the types of narrative moments common in a heroic fantasy game." But this isn't a blanket "options could potentially be things GMs will say no to for most common campaigns": seriously, do we see any potential issue with Practice Targets [can work with any projectile weapon]? And less common that Rattan Armor? And no matter where in the world you are, it's common to find a pet monkey? But a Familiar Satchel might have game balance issues?
It's the 'it MIGHT be an issue but it might be the game tossing a dart at the rarity chart.'
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if you are playing a character raised in Sandpoint (which to the best of my recollection has no inherent connection to anything providing firearms) and told me you wanted to play a gunslinger, my default answered would be "No". But if you came to me and said you wanted to play a character whose parent had fled the life of the shackles as soon as they had enough money, but had made it out with a old coat pistol. And that your character had an interest in it since they were child, and worked with the local alchemist to learn how to create black powder and the blacksmith to learn to smelt lead I would consider it.In other words, you have no problem with the end result in terms of setting or mechanics, as long as you are entertained.
How about players (again, people, not characters) who simply want to show up at the game and play a pirate? How about players who can't come up with a story that's compelling enough to tickle your fancy? How about players who feel uncomfortable with these weird power dynamics?
Here's an idea. How about you come up with an in-game reason to justify the player's choice considering that it's your job as the GM to put the world together, instead of forcing the player to go through this song and dance to please your ego for daring to pick an orange-coloured option?
What a disgusting take. Really, you couldn't have pulled it out of me with force had I thought the same. Talk about entitlement. Geez.
I'm not gonna lie. I've only made probably 3 real characters in my life with actual personality traits and fleshed out a "full beings". 99.9% of my characters are a combat gimmick in a trenchcoat held together with glue and duct tape and the reason they exist is because I saw a package of ancestry, class, feats and other things come together and thought "That looks cool." Like my vampire Alaric. What is Alaric? A dhampir Monk that tries to be a vampire. Like, super speed, super strength, has claws and fangs, and does vampire stuff. What's his backstory? IDK whatever a vampire's is. He's a vampire. That's it. That's the whole character.
Edit: I also make a lot of , I think I saw the term here once, expys?
Basically: Hey I bet I could make a Vampire Lord from Warhammer in PF2E using the Necromancer class.
Make a human, give him dhampir, he summons zombie or skeletons like in warhammer fantasy battle, give him spells like a vampire would have and try and copy spells like Gaze of Nagash abilities by extant PF2E spells and basically just copy/paste stuff from Warhammer as best translated into PF2E. Well in Age of Sigmar Vampire Lords are both wizards and duelist heroes, so obviously reaper so he can fight and cast simultaneously, etc.
Then I did a Wight King aka a skeleton ancestry necromancer who is the bone type that summons skeletons because in Age of Sigmar Wight King are like commander type heroes to skeleton soldiers and grave guard. So my thralls are literal warhammer age of sigmar skeleton figures and my hero is a wight king and he commands them just like warhammer.
These aren't really characters, I just have a weird hobby of making things I like that exist in other media into TTRPG characters. I gave the undead wight king guy a cool backstory but it's like 2 sentences. The vampire doesn't even get that lol.
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I think one disconnect happening here is that some players don’t want to make any choices at all without knowing for certain if that is allowed or not. But the thing is, you just ask your GM if there is an option you are interested in that you are not sure if they will allow or not. They might not know until you ask them if they would allow it or not and that is true with or without a rarity system.
Again, I'm playing by post and I might be interested in this race with that class and maybe that equipment with this spell and if any of that falls apart, i drop that character for another concept that allows the full package that works for me. So it can lead to a ridiculous amount of back and forth and it's burning up my good will with the DM because i have to ask so many questions... As I said, annoying for everyone involved and not ideal.
A ban list is a lot of combing and scrutinizing work, and the person you're asking that work of is already doing all the work for every session after session zero
It isn't though? For instance, the DM doesn't have to burn any brain cells to figure out if they like firearms or not in the game: that take care of an uncommon class and weapon type. Again, they'll know if teleport and survival spells will be disruptive so just say that: they don't have to list each one, just ban the group. They already know how they feel about Exemplar dedication most likely. I have no problem with asking about the off item, but generally DM already know what they want and don't, even if it's in broad terms. I'm not asking any DM to go item by item, just cut down the list as much as is feasible so I'm not asking for each and every thing.
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I think one disconnect happening here is that some players don’t want to make any choices at all without knowing for certain if that is allowed or not. But the thing is, you just ask your GM if there is an option you are interested in that you are not sure if they will allow or not. They might not know until you ask them if they would allow it or not and that is true with or without a rarity system.Again, I'm playing by post and I might be interested in this race with that class and maybe that equipment with this spell and if any of that falls apart, i drop that character for another concept that allows the full package that works for me. So it can lead to a ridiculous amount of back and forth and it's burning up my good will with the DM because i have to ask so many questions... As I said, annoying for everyone involved and not ideal.
A ban list is a lot of combing and scrutinizing work, and the person you're asking that work of is already doing all the work for every session after session zeroIt isn't though? For instance, the DM doesn't have to burn any brain cells to figure out if they like firearms or not in the game: that take care of an uncommon class and weapon type. Again, they'll know if teleport and survival spells will be disruptive so just say that: they don't have to list each one, just ban the group. They already know how they feel about Exemplar dedication most likely. I have no problem with asking about the off item, but generally DM already know what they want and don't, even if it's in broad terms. I'm not asking any DM to go item by item, just cut down the list as much as is feasible so I'm not asking for each and every thing.
I'm a weirdo hyperfixated on undead stuff so my favorite ancestry is Skeleton, my favorite Archetype is Lich and now my favorite class is Necromancer, and before that it was Wizard Runelord of Gluttony and before that it was Wizard School of Necromancy before remaster.
I also love undead master the archetype, but I ignore the must be evil prerequisite because we don't have alignment anymore.
Even though everyone says the undead companions are worse than the living ones. And right now at level 7 my companion (Skeleton Servant) only has a +12 to hit on its jaws and claws, but I don't know how much a regular animal companion would have.
But all of the above is rare or uncommon except maybe the Necromancer class. I know for a fact skeleton is rare, and Lich is rare, and I know for a fact Skeletal Servant and Skeletal Mount are uncommon as is undead master. I can't remember how Necromancer is tagged, if it even is.
But that said, sometimes it's harder to find people willing to let me be the characters I like to make.
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I think one disconnect happening here is that some players don’t want to make any choices at all without knowing for certain if that is allowed or not. But the thing is, you just ask your GM if there is an option you are interested in that you are not sure if they will allow or not. They might not know until you ask them if they would allow it or not and that is true with or without a rarity system.Again, I'm playing by post and I might be interested in this race with that class and maybe that equipment with this spell and if any of that falls apart, i drop that character for another concept that allows the full package that works for me. So it can lead to a ridiculous amount of back and forth and it's burning up my good will with the DM because i have to ask so many questions... As I said, annoying for everyone involved and not ideal.
I have GMed play by post and I would be pretty sad to think that I had a player that was worried that asking me about their character concept was going to burn good will with me or annoy me. I put hundreds of hours of prep time into every campaign I run and a lot of that is figuring out how to bring my world alive around the characters at my play table. I am sorry you have had experiences that led you to be hesitant to ask your GM questions that will help you play the character you want. I won’t always say yes to my players requests, but I will think about if we can make it work.
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Can you expand on this because as a GM, this is my preference on how to handle it and I'm not sure why that's frustrating?
Now, I do typically start off by saying "Hey, in this campaign you guys are going to start off as residents of Sandpoint Varisia and the campaign is going to be about traveling from there to Tian Xia, though you character has no reason to know about that". This would be my 5 second pitch for Jade Regent AP. Is it because the theoretical GM doesn't give you that kind of information to center/ground your character?
My Jade Regent campaign had two PCs from Tian Xia. I had given largely the same pitch, though with more details, and two players decided that since the 1st module was not in Tian Xian, they would bring Tian Xia to Sandpoint via their characters. Two more players joined up in the 2nd module (we needed more players because some had moved to another state) and both decided that their characters were from the Jade Quarter in Kalsgard, whose parents or grandparents were from Tian Xia. The out-of-state retired PCs were not from Tian Xia, so I declared that after the end of the 1st module, when the PCs learned that the quest required a journey to Tian Xia, those non-Tien characters had decided stay in Varisia. Some details are at Amaya of Westcrown.
The people that write adventures for Paizo correctly understand that there's an impulse in players to sometimes "do the opposite" of what the adventure intends (e.g. play a Hobgoblin in Ironfang Invasion, or play a Paladin in Blood Lords, etc.) and sometimes this can be great fun. But it also is something that invokes a bunch of extra work for the GM, so for this to be productive it has to be something that not only the GM signs off on but also works with the player to craft a story that resonates with the reason the player has decided to swim upstream.
I mentioned the goblin champion Tikti in my Ironfang Invasion campaign back in comment #108 as an example of an unarmored champion.
Why do my campaigns repeatedly have examples of "Been there, done that" when other people say, "GMs would want to avoid this"? All these counterexamples worked out great!
This means if you go "Commonly available stuff is fine, anything else needs approval", I'm left with making several characters and hoping one meets approval, or ignoring uncommon+ elements; both of which are annoying vs someone having a ban/houserule list where I can see my options and just make a character. It's honestly why I PbP mostly as I get [mostly] clear unambiguous requirements for character construction before i even join. I don't mind a sales pitch, but I have to have something before I do that.
My players and I generally agree on what makes roleplaying games fun, so they are not going to chose fun-destroying options. I have no need for restrictions on them. One player loves exotic characters, so she is playing the ghoran bard Stargazer. Another player loves experimental characters, so she is playing the fleshwarp rogue Roshan. A third player loves roleplaying deep in the setting, so she is playing the anadi wizard Idris. My wife, who also goes for the roleplaying, teases that the others make her tengu bard Jinx Fuun look normal. I don't see anything wrong with those rare and uncommon ancestries, especially given the Magaambya Academy setting.
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Not trying to throw shade at anyone...
But there is a part of me that wonders if some of the people pushing back against the Rarity system in Pathfinder...if it just boils down to a GM telling that person they couldn't have something flatly because it wasn't common and they're upset because of that interaction. They were denied something they saw and thought was cool and now they hate the system.
As a GM...honestly I love the system.
I'm a GM who has to tell players to ignore the whole rarity system and explain it to newbies every time they first see a feat that plays around with it how it's going to be irrelevant for this game because we aren't playing in the inner sea. The rarity system doesn't speed the conversation of what is available in my campaign up for me, because I'm not going to spend days coming up with lists of what is available and what isn't and instead need to go through convos for everything and audit everything to the same degree as if everything was equivalent to uncommon (definitely run games where even Humans were unavailable as options).
At the very least, if there was some distinction between the options with different rarity because of gameplay impact rather than regional flavour, I could point to that but instead paizo decided to conflate the two.
I have GMed play by post and I would be pretty sad to think that I had a player that was worried that asking me about their character concept was going to burn good will with me or annoy me. I put hundreds of hours of prep time into every campaign I run and a lot of that is figuring out how to bring my world alive around the characters at my play table. I am sorry you have had experiences that led you to be hesitant to ask your GM questions that will help you play the character you want. I won’t always say yes to my players requests, but I will think about if we can make it work.I think one disconnect happening here is that some players don’t want to make any choices at all without knowing for certain if that is allowed or not. But the thing is, you just ask your GM if there is an option you are interested in that you are not sure if they will allow or not. They might not know until you ask them if they would allow it or not and that is true with or without a rarity system.Again, I'm playing by post and I might be interested in this race with that class and maybe that equipment with this spell and if any of that falls apart, i drop that character for another concept that allows the full package that works for me. So it can lead to a ridiculous amount of back and forth and it's burning up my good will with the DM because i have to ask so many questions... As I said, annoying for everyone involved and not ideal.
Overall I've had fairly good luck but i generally go for games with a clear ban/houserule list. I have had a game with 'just run it past me' end up just painful as I seemingly just couldn't guess the confluence of game elements that they'd allow even with some of them what I thought of as pretty mundane options. By the end I just agreed to pass on the game as I think we'd both run out of patience.
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That's extremely easy. Because any GM has the right to say: "I want it so".And I was always against such entitlement as GM. "I want it so" is something I hear often. From my 5 year old, cause he wants his candy.
If you wanna be boss, create business company. RPG table is not your subordinates wanting for your email approval. It's collaboration and you given more responsibility and trust as GM does not equal you now being above players and dictate them how you want them to play or what you want them to play.
Discussion I can understand or very good common sense reasons like "please no Cleric of Pharasma in Blood Lords AP".
But saying "I want it so" because he doesn't like MY character to wield katana as Iomedae Automaton Champion should think twice who is that character for. And if he got his candy this morning.
If there's no Katanas/Guns/Whatever in my setting, there's no Katanas/Guns/Whatever in my setting. You don't get to overrule that just because you want one. If you want one anyway, you talk to the GM. If they say no, then you deal with it or go join a table more suited to your play style.
It's really ironic that your post talks about how unreasonable GMs are while coming across as incredibly entitled. Especially when you complain about other people being insulting while you're hurling around insults like this 5 year old candy stuff.
(The last time someone asked for a Katana I just shrugged and said "sure", because rarity is really easy to ignore when it's not relevant. But when someone shows up with a rare background that requires a bunch of extra work, I'm going to have questions.)
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At the very least we should have separate rarity systems for system power (i.e. "this option is more powerful than other options" or "this option may be potentially disruptive for your campaign") and actual rarity (i.e. "members of this group of people have access to this option" and "only a few of this option were ever made").
Can't be that difficult, for a future edition of the game, to just add another tag on top.
I'm not sure that "power" tags are doable, given that it's a fact of game design that very few game designers know, before release, which options are going to be especially powerful. You might have an idea, but assuredly there are lots of things that you thought would be powerful that land with a thud and someone figures out how to do something you didn't anticipate so something else is really powerful.
Yeah, this is the big problem with a tag that says "this might be overtuned": it requires the person writing it to know they created something overtuned.
A lot of stuff that is overtuned is accidental. It wasn't meant to be that way, but stuff happens when you create hundreds of feats/spells/items/etc. Especially when a lot of it doesn't get much or any testing. But even if it did, there's no way Paizo can exhaustively test every option to catch this stuff. And what you release might be perfectly fine until 3 years later when you release something else that creates an unintended combo.
If the goal actually is to create an overtuned thing, then it's easy enough to tag it in some way, but such things tend to be noted in some way or unique (like the super-Apex items one AP gives you).
It's not an easy thing to perfectly solve, especially when the idea of what is powerful shifts over time. back at CRB release, out of combat healing was more limited and stuff like Garden of Healing would have been viewed as ridiculous. These days it's still an outlier, but downtime healing has gotten easier in general so it's less of an outlier than it used to be.
The tag works better for disruptive things, which were a big problem in PF1 since magic could just outright solve a bunch of problems and certain types of campaign elements stop working as soon as you got it. The rarity on those is a flag to think about it you actually have that problem or not and then decide if you want to allow it or not.
It's not a "teleport bad" warning, it's a "teleport might mess up a plotline you have planned so you should think about it" warning. If that warning doesn't apply to you, then you allow it and players are happy.
But I guess more generally, what I was trying to say is, if you are playing a character raised in Sandpoint (which to the best of my recollection has no inherent connection to anything providing firearms) and told me you wanted to play a gunslinger, my default answered would be "No". But if you came to me and said you wanted to play a character whose parent had fled the life of the shackles as soon as they had enough money, but had made it out with a old coat pistol. And that your character had an interest in it since they were child, and worked with the local alchemist to learn how to create black powder and the blacksmith to learn to smelt lead I would consider it.
I think a productive way to handle rarity questions in session 0 is to respond to a request to use a rare/uncommon option by asking the player about the story behind their concept. I don't really mind if mechanics lead the way, but I do want you to think about the story behind the concept because I literally do not know anything about your character's backstory unless you tell me about it- and I am interested.
Like if you've decided to play an Exemplar, I would assume you thought about what happened when you got your spark, and why it ended up in the ikons that it did. If you're not doing that sort of thing, you probably should start given the whole premise of these sorts of games is "make stuff up using your imagination based on prompts to tell a story with your friends." I want players to be as involved in storytelling as I am (and this is a thing they can absolutely use to their advantage- I will "yes,and" almost anything a player makes up during a scene).
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I am also curious because I haven’t seen anyone address this point yet, but am I the only GM integrating the requested uncommon options over time?
Like I don’t usually mind my parties getting spells for scrying and teleporting, but I sometimes don’t want them to be immediately available the second the character hits the corresponding level.
Rarity isn’t just about yes or no, it is also another lever for giving out rewards and abilities at different times than level ups, often in a way that is narratively driven.
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You're effectively telling me I can only take uncommon as I don't have a backstory when I make up the character
I'm obviously speaking only for myself but my reaction to this would be
Player : Can I take <uncommon or Rare> option?
One of
GM 1: No, sorry, that isn't allowed in this campaign because ...
GM 2: Sure, no problem
GM 3: I'll allow it but either you alone or both of us together will have to come up with a decent back story to justify it. But you can proceed now on the assumption that we'll be able to come up with a mutually agreeable back story.
Would that be acceptable to you?
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I am also curious because I haven’t seen anyone address this point yet, but am I the only GM integrating the requested uncommon options over time?
I've sometimes taken requests for uncommon/rare options and come up with ways to introduce them later in the campaign. So no, you're not the only one.
But I do that fairly rarely. I'm much more likely to look at an option and immediately go "Yes" or "No". Mostly that is because the question itself forces me to think about something I hadn't really considered until then and most of the time I decide that it is or is not acceptable in that particular campaign. And sometimes the question sparks no inspiration in me, no idea of a cool way of introducing it into the campaign so it is just easier to say no. But sometimes the idea DOES spark inspiration and I get a cool idea of how to introduce it later.
You're effectively telling me I can only take uncommon as I don't have a backstory when I make up the characterI'm obviously speaking only for myself but my reaction to this would be
Player : Can I take <uncommon or Rare> option?
One of
GM 1: No, sorry, that isn't allowed in this campaign because ...
GM 2: Sure, no problem
GM 3: I'll allow it but either you alone or both of us together will have to come up with a decent back story to justify it. But you can proceed now on the assumption that we'll be able to come up with a mutually agreeable back story.Would that be acceptable to you?
I'm perfectly fine with all 3. I'd make up the backstory anyway so I'd welcome #3 and #2 without reservations. #1 I might have follow up questions, like if gunslingers are a no, is that because of firearms and if so, would a crossbow gunslinger be ok? But ultimately, I'm fine with options being off the table.
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The problem I have with rarity is that it's inconsistent. Here's some examples.
Rarity is not meant to denote if something is more powerful, but there are many rare things that are clearly over-tuned for the level they are. I'm sure everyone has seen an example of this. Rarity is 'meant to signal if something might cause a problem in a DM's campaign', but often something is uncommon for no reason other than 'it's a little weird'.
Rarity seems to lean toward indicating the rate that things can be encountered in standard Galorian but we have things like Leshy being common but Catfolk, Centaurs, Hobgoblins, Iruxi, and Kobolds being uncommon. Furthering this issue is that people places and things are mixed up in adventure paths and Lost Omens books that are considered cannon and part of a meta-narritive of the world. This makes the distinctions of rarity mean even less. In fact, I cant think of an adventure path that cared one bit of a character option was common, uncommon, or rare. In most cases everything is listed as at least appropriate, so not even the Paizo writers are taking rarity into account in their narratives.
There are a lot of very weird unlocks for certain uncommon things. Be this ethnicity, or from this part of the world is one that comes up often, which anyone can make up for their character. Then there are uncommon things that only become available if you take a feat or a class option. There are some uncommon feats or spells that require you to take a prerequisite which is, itself, common. I mean, that's a little weird isn't it? I take a common feat and I get an uncommon spell?
Many focus spells are uncommon, but the only way you could get them is by being a member of a (common) class that can use them; all of the Witch focus spells are uncommon for example. Why, why is uncommon being applied to class spells or features for a class that is common? Is the DM suppose to consider every Witch hex as something that could complicate their campaign?
There are a lot of things that seem like they might be uncommon. People are just as likely to see a Necromancer walking around as they are a fighter? A Kineticist is just as common as a Cleric? And of course there is still the debate about if the Examplar deserved to have the Rare trait just because of some story telling implications.
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I'm not advocating for there to be more things that are considered common or uncommon or rare or to do away with the concept. I'm just pointing out that the rarity traits are so inconsistent that they verge on being completely useless. Maybe they are to most people.
I know in my own groups we almost entirely ignore the uncommon trait precisely because uncommon is the biggest offender of being inconsistent and often nonsensical (just look at how many perfectly reasonable bombs are uncommon).
I don't know what the solution is, if there even is one. Maybe Common, Rare and Unique are the only rarity traits we needed.