Pathfinder Is Still Bad

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Thu Aug 11, 2011 7:19 pm

Incidentally, Paizo just announced Advanced Race Guide.

SKR had cover credit on Savage Species.

Hmmmmmm.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Thu Aug 11, 2011 7:24 pm

well it can't really get much worse now can it?

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Thu Aug 11, 2011 8:18 pm

I've had a chance to look over Ultimate Combat a little bit. What I am struck by is that there didn't seem to be any feats that let a Barbarian with a great axe kill things faster. Which is what you'd expect a martial oriented splat-book to do, provide feats that let the fightery types kill things 4% faster.

There are a bunch of feat trees for Monks called stances. They are no where as useful or interesting as what is provided in the book of nine swords. Despite the amount of content in this book I don't think it will usher in much if any power creep, which is a testament to how underwhelming the content is.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Fri Aug 12, 2011 2:46 am

Ironically, browsing through it, one of the better things in there seems to be a feat for casters that stuns people when you dispel them. Because screw martial characters, I guess.

K · Post by K » Fri Aug 12, 2011 11:24 am

So it looks like Paizo put their Ultimate Magic stuff into their SRD. That's interesting.

DragonChild · Post by **DragonChild** » Fri Aug 12, 2011 2:30 pm

K wrote:So it looks like Paizo put their Ultimate Magic stuff into their SRD. That's interesting.

If you're talking about the d20PFSRD, Paizo doesn't actually run it. They do, however, let all their books go into it, with an agreed-upon two week delay. So expect to see Ultimate Combat in there soon.

There is also, for some reason I'm not sure, the worst half of some incredibly terrible homebrew books. I mean, there's classes in those books that are playable, but they instead decide to post up the classes that are *literally unplayable* because their abilities are so bullshit and badly worded. That I can't explain.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri Aug 12, 2011 3:16 pm

DragonChild wrote:
K wrote:So it looks like Paizo put their Ultimate Magic stuff into their SRD. That's interesting.
If you're talking about the d20PFSRD, Paizo doesn't actually run it. They do, however, let all their books go into it, with an agreed-upon two week delay. So expect to see Ultimate Combat in there soon.

No, he's talking about the www.paizo.com/prd (I presume).

I gather they hired a new guy to help with some of their web site stuff so they can put their "Ultimate" and "Advanced" book material up faster.

areola · Post by **areola** » Fri Aug 12, 2011 3:22 pm

Well I think it's great they release their splat contents as open..

DragonChild · Post by **DragonChild** » Fri Aug 12, 2011 3:23 pm

hogarth wrote:
DragonChild wrote:
K wrote:So it looks like Paizo put their Ultimate Magic stuff into their SRD. That's interesting.
If you're talking about the d20PFSRD, Paizo doesn't actually run it. They do, however, let all their books go into it, with an agreed-upon two week delay. So expect to see Ultimate Combat in there soon.
No, he's talking about the www.paizo.com/prd (I presume).

I gather they hired a new guy to help with some of their web site stuff so they can put their "Ultimate" and "Advanced" book material up faster.

Huh. Interesting. My bad.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Aug 12, 2011 4:50 pm

areola wrote:Well I think it's great they release their splat contents as open..

Are they obligated to because it's based on OGL material? I don't know how that works.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:38 pm

RobbyPants wrote:
areola wrote:Well I think it's great they release their splat contents as open..
Are they obligated to because it's based on OGL material? I don't know how that works.

You can't turn Open Content into non-Open Content when you use the OGL, but anything you come up with yourself doesn't have to be Open Content.

I think that most OGL users think it's a little hypocritical to not make their stuff Open Content, but it happens. For instance, Arcana Evolved is a mix of Open and non-Open Content (e.g. the feats chapter is open, but other chapters are not).

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 6:40 pm

For the "That is why you fail" files:

James Jacobs, on the Paizo forums: wrote:The ACTUAL reason why we quit running the iconics in each volume actually had nothing to do with that. Folks will complain about things no matter what, after all, and the iconics were never intended to be a place for us Paizo designers to show off our design skills at making unstoppable, perfectly optimized characters. (The fact that such characters are, frankly, super boring and not suited at all for characters who also have personalities and quirks that make them interesting is a topic for a thousand other threads.)

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 6:44 pm

Good ol' James, keeping Stormwind alive...

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 7:31 pm

Mr. Jacobs,

The "these aren't the pinnacle of optimization" argument would be fine if you had actually built them to what you expected an average character of that level to look like, you know if they could actually survive against at least 50% of level-appropriate encounters. That you didn't even do that leads me to conclude that you actually lack character design skills - which is a crucial failing for a game designer.

But where it moves past simple denial of incompetence and into espousing a dangerous ideology is where you claim that optimized characters are inherently boring and somehow incapable of having personalities and quirks. That sort of thing makes Superman cry.

-Josh K.

K · Post by K » Sun Aug 21, 2011 9:10 pm

I am no longer surprised by designers who don't know how to play their own game, and then get super defensive when someone points it out.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 9:40 pm

How bad are the iconics?

And if they can't survive in their own gameworld...it doesn't matter how many personality quirks they have, their asses are still dead.

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 10:12 pm

Any character can survive in the game world regardless of mechanical fitness, because DMs are "supposed to" scale challenges to meet party strength instead of rigidly obeying the CR system.

At least that's what I've always assumed fed the line of thinking that poorly-built characters were okay.

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 11:58 pm

CapnTthePirateG wrote:How bad are the iconics?

See for yourself. Here's their 14th-level fighter.

This devastating attack is made at a +23 bonus and it deals 3d8+21.

And their level 20 Eldritch Knight.

Finally, upon gaining his 10th level in eldritch knight, Seltyiel gained the spell critical feature. Whenever Seltyiel scores a critical hit, he can cast any spell as a swift action without increasing the spell’s level. [...] Its bad enough to be hit with a critical, but to add a cone of cold on top of it can truly be devastating.

This is oooooooooooooooooooooooooold news, though.

It is kind of a headscratcher that James Jacobs is still sore enough at me making fun of them nearly two years ago that he was complaining about it in an unrelated thread.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 1:08 am

K wrote:I am no longer surprised by designers who don't know how to play their own game, and then get super defensive when someone points it out.

Fun fact: The original designer of the Mayfiar game "Empire Builder" used to get his ass kicked at every convention. Of course, being a board game designer he didn't have the super ego of most RPG game designers.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 2:07 am

K wrote:I am no longer surprised by designers who don't know how to play their own game, and then get super defensive when someone points it out.

My favourite is Sajan, the monk. He's a level 8 monk with the feat Greater Disarm, despite the fact that (a) it has the prerequisite of +6 BAB so he can't take it before level 8 and he doesn't get a feat at level 8, and (b) he doesn't have the prerequisite of 13 Intelligence. So their own character ignored two prerequisites in order to take a feat that sucks ass in the first place. Sweet!

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 2:36 am

hogarth wrote:
K wrote:I am no longer surprised by designers who don't know how to play their own game, and then get super defensive when someone points it out.
My favourite is Sajan, the monk. He's a level 8 monk with the feat Greater Disarm, despite the fact that (a) it has the prerequisite of +6 BAB so he can't take it before level 8 and he doesn't get a feat at level 8, and (b) he doesn't have the prerequisite of 13 Intelligence. So their own character ignored two prerequisites in order to take a feat that sucks ass in the first place. Sweet!

Wow, I can understand making crappy low powered characters, but when you can't even make characters that follow the rules? Fuck that shit.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 2:54 am

Would someone who isn't banned on Paizo please go point that out about the Monk?

"He can't take Greater Disarm because he doesn't have the requisite score of 13 Intelligence. Just like the designer who wrote him."

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 2:58 am

Maxus wrote:Would someone who isn't banned on Paizo please go point that out about the Monk?

"He can't take Greater Disarm because he doesn't have the requisite score of 13 Intelligence. Just like the designer who wrote him."

A) It's picking a fight from two years ago. Who cares?
B) I kind of like not being banned there. Insulting Jason Buhlmann isn't going to keep things that way.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 3:09 am

A Man In Black wrote:
Maxus wrote:Would someone who isn't banned on Paizo please go point that out about the Monk?

"He can't take Greater Disarm because he doesn't have the requisite score of 13 Intelligence. Just like the designer who wrote him."
A) It's picking a fight from two years ago. Who cares?
B) I kind of like not being banned there. Insulting Jason Buhlmann isn't going to keep things that way.

True enough. Damn the luck.

Ah, well.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 3:20 am

they don't IP ban from paizo just make a new account