Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[tussock]

I would imagine that if you looked at the number of pledges per price point for most kick starters it would form a bell curve.

It shouldn't do, there's studies out there about how when you charge several prices for basically the same content only one of them is the real price that 90%+ of your customers will pick.

The other price points are there for psychological reasons, to make people feel better about paying what they were thinking about paying you anyway (why pay over $50 for one when you can get two for $65? But wait, we'll add a two nuffledusters and you can get the lot for $69.95, that's a saving of over $70! Act now, stocks limited, etc).

Some people still choose the psych price points, but not many.

[hogarth]

3,400 pledges for $100. That's interesting. The plurality of pledges is pretty high for a MMORPG.

I would imagine that if you looked at the number of pledges per price point for most kick starters it would form a bell curve. Maybe a non-symmetrical bell curve but a bell curve none the less.

You're probably thinking of something like a Poisson distribution.

The reason there are spikes at certain levels is because some of the bonuses were relatively popular. For instance, I think the $100 level gives you a Pathfinder module, and some people were more interested in the module than the actual MMORPG!

[Libertad]

I was wondering about that. If you're running a Kickstarter, can you donate money to your own project to make it look more popular than it actually is?

There are rules explicitly against this on Kickstarter. It's a violation of their TOS.

If Goblinworks tried that, it won't look good for them, or for Kickstarter as a whole. It would erode the trust of the crowd-funding idea if anybody could just plunk down their own money on it.

While I'm pretty sure your tongue is somewhere in the vicinity of your cheek, if Goblinworks did try something like this I'd be very, very surprised if Kickstarter didn't nip it in the bud as soon as they became aware of it. Kickstarter has a vested interest in promoting their brand of crowdfunding, and part of that is the feeling of confidence you have in that if you pledge support for a project that then fails to generate sufficient funding on its own merits that you'll get your money back/not be charged for it. That dynamic changes significantly if companies/project starters are suddenly allowed to plonk down a chunk of their own money in order to turn a KS that would normally reverted back to its pledgers into one which locks everybody into their payment like some kind of reverse eBay sniping.

[Starmaker]

There are rules explicitly against this on Kickstarter. It's a violation of their TOS.

Oh for fuck's sake. Kickstarter readily acknowledges that for a LOT of projects, pledges come from "friends and relatives". They aren't going to flag your granny's $5000 just because she's your granny - quite the opposite, that's only expected. And if you give your friends and relatives something as thanks for the generous pledge, privately of course, how are Yancey and Co to know?

[Juton]

Unfortunately I don't think we'll ever really know if there where shenanigans involved in the Kickstarter. Assuming there was then they'll get cash hungry sooner in their dev cycle than they normally would, since they have less starting capital. I think they'll end up doing what Mechwarrior Online did and they will sell alpha access and sell other bennies during the beta.

There is also a non-zero chance that this will just be vapourware. I think it is more likely that they release something buggy and broken as an alpha as a way to dredge up more money.

[icyshadowlord]

I saw a small article on the game at the Escapist, and I just wondered if that was another shitty publicity stunt for the game.

Something just tells me that only the folks running around Paizo's forum are even going to try it, and less than half plan to stay.

[hogarth]

Something just tells me that only the folks running around Paizo's forum are even going to try it, and less than half plan to stay.

That's my feeling, but then again I probably would have said the same thing about Eve Online and that game seems to stay afloat somehow.

[GâtFromKI]

Does anyone knows what are the rules to engage a fight using Spell combat ? As I understand it:

1/ The magus uses spell combat, and teleports near his target as part of this action.
2/ The surprise round begins.
3/ The magus can't use spell combat during a surprise round. Therefore he didn't.
4/ Therefore he didn't cast teleport, he didn't engage and there's no surprise round.
5/ Universe implode.

[rasmuswagner]

Does anyone knows what are the rules to engage a fight using Spell combat ? As I understand it:

1/ The magus uses spell combat, and teleports near his target as part of this action.
2/ The surprise round begins.
3/ The magus can't use spell combat during a surprise round. Therefore he didn't.
4/ Therefore he didn't cast teleport, he didn't engage and there's no surprise round.
5/ Universe implode.

IMO, he can't use spell combat until the fight music has started.

[hogarth]

IMO, he can't use spell combat until the fight music has started.

The whole system kind of falls apart when it comes to doing combat actions outside of combat (e.g. readying actions outside of initiative).

[MisterDee]

I'm not sure spell combat works like that - basically, it's doing a full-attack while wielding a weapon in one hand and a spell in the other. If you can't do an attack, you can't be spell combat-ing.

But even if you can, I think the logic would go:

1-Magus decides to attack;
2-Surprise rounds begins;
3-Magus declares actions, can't use spell combat in surprise round, instead delays to act first in real round #1
4-Magus spell combats and pops up and strike.

[GâtFromKI]

I'm not sure spell combat works like that - basically, it's doing a full-attack while wielding a weapon in one hand and a spell in the other. If you can't do an attack, you can't be spell combat-ing.

You can attack a door, a wall, or even the floor. Therefore, you can attack at any moment.

[tussock]

There are no actions and turns until combat starts, which is when opposed parties are aware that combat is starting, or when one party surprises another and begins combat.

1: Magus has not been seen, so may act without combat rules getting in the way. He 'ports.
2: The DM rules post-port (when the enemy could first be aware, but are MTP surprised by that) starts a surprise round, actions now begin.
3: Magus rolls init and stabs in surprise round.
4: Surprised parties roll init, first round starts.

Alternately ...

2: DM rules pre-port starts the surprise round (maybe the enemy heard casting?).
3: Magus rolls init and ports in surprise round.
4: Surprised parties roll init, first round starts.

Either way, your action is to port in and stab (and enspell) people as much as possible before they can react. How well that works depends on how well surprise works (stealth) and how long they stay flat-footed (initiative). On the first regular round of combat, "Spell Combat" also comes into play.

[hogarth]

Paizo published a list of a few topics they'll be covering in their new book Ultimate Campaign (sort of a DMG 3):

10. Do Over! Ready for something different? Wish you hadn't taken that one suboptimal feat at first level? Eager to test out the newest base class? The choices you made yesterday don't have to sour the game you're playing today now that you have complete rules allowing characters to retrain class features, whether they be feats and skill ranks or entire class levels!

9. There's a Table for That. How many siblings does your dwarf character have? What were your parents' professions? What has your alchemist character been up to before you started playing him? What is your relationship to your fellow adventurers? You'll know, because with the background generator, there are tables for all that and much, much, much more.

8. Build a Legend. The downtime system unlocks awesome new challenges for your character to take on between adventures, like creating a headquarters for your adventures, starting a tavern, or even building a castle. With downtime, use your wealth, influence, and magic to shape your game world like never before.

7. You're the Boss. Downtime isn't just about building structures; it's also about building groups. Once you've constructed a temple to your own glory, you're going to need sycophants to staff it. Cults, mercenary companies, thieves guilds, ships crews, and more are ready and awaiting your orders.

6. Alain Is a Jerk. Sutter and I tackle the fiction snippets at the start of each chapter, and this time around you'll love to hate our pompous iconic cavalier.

5. It's Going To Be Good To Be the King. Are you the heir to a lost dynasty, seeking to reclaim your throne? Of course you are! And now you can turn your quest into a benefit for your character with story feats, a new breed of feat that helps drive you toward a character objective and that gets even better once you achieve your goal.

4. Play Harry Potter. Or Arya Stark, or Aang the Last Airbender, or whomever your favorite young hero might be, with rules for playing young characters.

3. Theater of War. A dramatic system for running massive battles gives you a way to quantify your tales of battle. Lead skirmishes between war bands, decide the outcome of legendary battles, or even take your nation's knights toe to toe against the towering tarrasque!

2. On Your Honor. Honor points allow your valorous knight, your noble samurai, your rogue with a criminal code, or any other character with rigid guiding principles to gain benefits from their strict lifestyles. Choose a code to live by or create your own!

1. Kneel Before Me! The Kingdom Building rules popularized during the Kingmaker Adventure Path have been revised and expanded, allowing you to found a dynasty, build cities, and chart the course of your nation in more depth and with more control then ever before!

My two cents:
* Bragging that your book has filler fiction bits is ridiculous.
* Having some (optional) retraining rules is a good idea.
* The idea of paying a feat to access minigames for being a king or a gang leader or whatever is probably no worse than the Leadership feat. But I dislike the Leadership feat; it's either too powerful (if that's the only way to have sidekicks) or pointless (if that's not the only way to have sidekicks) and at any rate it encourages one player to play some kind of single-player game while the others sit around and wait for GM attention.

[ishy]

10: sounds good, though it depends on how the rules actually work I guess.
9: sounds stupid. Either you make something up, or you browse the web for some tables? Don't really see the point in a DMG type rpg book.
8 + 7: Sounds like two sides of the same coin. Actually could be really good and something that could be a lot of fun. Though I don't think the Paizo writers are good enough to pull it off.
6: "Bragging that your book has filler fiction bits is ridiculous. "
5: This is going to be as terrible as the Achievement Feats right?
4: Is this like the inverse of the aging rules? If not, what do they mean?
3: See 7 / 8
2: Gain benefits from a strict lifestyle + create your own strict lifestyle which happens to be whatever you were planning to do anyway. It doesn't sound like something anyone is ever going to play with,
1: The kingdom building rules never actually interested me. Possibly because everything you build gave +x to stats you don't really care about. Though I do wonder how they'll work in relation with part 8.

[rasmuswagner]

10. Do Over! Ready for something different? Wish you hadn't taken that one suboptimal feat at first level? Eager to test out the newest base class? The choices you made yesterday don't have to sour the game you're playing today now that you have complete rules allowing characters to retrain class features, whether they be feats and skill ranks or entire class levels!

This should have been a sidebar in the Core book! But we're gonna give it a whole chapter in and end-of-cycle book!

9. There's a Table for That. How many siblings does your dwarf character have? What were your parents' professions? What has your alchemist character been up to before you started playing him? What is your relationship to your fellow adventurers? You'll know, because with the background generator, there are tables for all that and much, much, much more.

This is going to be worse than some neckbeard's old Geocities page.

8. Build a Legend. The downtime system unlocks awesome new challenges for your character to take on between adventures, like creating a headquarters for your adventures, starting a tavern, or even building a castle. With downtime, use your wealth, influence, and magic to shape your game world like never before.

7. You're the Boss. Downtime isn't just about building structures; it's also about building groups. Once you've constructed a temple to your own glory, you're going to need sycophants to staff it. Cults, mercenary companies, thieves guilds, ships crews, and more are ready and awaiting your orders.

3. Theater of War. A dramatic system for running massive battles gives you a way to quantify your tales of battle. Lead skirmishes between war bands, decide the outcome of legendary battles, or even take your nation's knights toe to toe against the towering tarrasque!

1. Kneel Before Me! The Kingdom Building rules popularized during the Kingmaker Adventure Path have been revised and expanded, allowing you to found a dynasty, build cities, and chart the course of your nation in more depth and with more control then ever before!

Everybody wants the good kingdom building and war game to patch seamlessly into their D&D experience. I don't even trust Frank, or Jürgen Hubert, to write this, much less these asshats.

Also, hahaha, knights against the Tarrasque. Even funnier, the terrible, terrible Kingmaker rules.

5. It's Going To Be Good To Be the King. Are you the heir to a lost dynasty, seeking to reclaim your throne? Of course you are! And now you can turn your quest into a benefit for your character with story feats, a new breed of feat that helps drive you toward a character objective and that gets even better once you achieve your goal.

Achievement feats are not automatically stupid. But Paizo has consistently failed to grasp the change in scale that happens as you level, so their previous installments have been: Do X, Y times, to get a bonus to all future X, where Y=enough times that you don't care about X anymore when it's done.

2. On Your Honor. Honor points allow your valorous knight, your noble samurai, your rogue with a criminal code, or any other character with rigid guiding principles to gain benefits from their strict lifestyles. Choose a code to live by or create your own!

Custom Code of Honor for in-game benefits? Sure, I'll abuse that for a laugh.

[Korwin]

Who is Jürgen Hubert?

[zugschef]

Who is Jürgen Hubert?

maybe this one: http://jhubert.livejournal.com/

[hogarth]

Who is Jürgen Hubert?

I think he played the bad guy in "The Spy Who Loved Me".

[zugschef]

Who is Jürgen Hubert?

I think he played the bad guy in "The Spy Who Loved Me".

*smack* That was Curd Jürgens.

[rasmuswagner]

Who is Jürgen Hubert?

maybe this one: http://jhubert.livejournal.com/

Yeah, that guy. He wrote some really good stuff on the implications of magic and "high level", in his Urbis setting and on the SJGames boards.

[hogarth]

Everybody wants the good kingdom building and war game to patch seamlessly into their D&D experience. I don't even trust Frank, or Jürgen Hubert, to write this, much less these asshats.

I'm not sure that it even makes sense to ask for a single player game (which is what a kingdom building minigame or PCs-vs.-NPCs mass combat game would amount to in most cases) to patch seamlessly with a multi-player game.

[Antariuk]

Does anyone here know off the top of their heads if there are any cool necromancy options in Pathfinder? I will be the GM of a Pathfinder game in like a month, so currently I'm educating myself about rules and stuff. But since switching forward and backward between the Necromancer Handbook and the PRD is only of so much use with so many rules altered/twisted/removed, I'm kinda lost.

The Death domain looks shitty. The laughable 1st-level power is both (Sp) and a meele touch attack, but also against living creatures only... I feel like someone is trolling me. I mean, even the Nobility domain looks like a better choice for being a necromancer.



Random Rant: Why the fuckidy fuck is the ethereal condition not explained anywhere in Pathfinder? The only place you find any information is the spell ethereal jaunt. Sean K Reynolds has an article on his website explaining the difference between incorporeal and etherreal, but apparently forgot about it or something. I am really angry and annoyed right now.

[sabs]

I'm at a complete loss on which of the many incredibly crappy feat trees to take for my character.

I'm 4th abot to be 5th..
Ratfolk
rogue 2/alchemist 1(vivisectionist)/wizard1
The over all level plan is
rogue 2/alchemist 1/wizard3/Arcane trickster 10/wizard 4 (if we ever make it that far).

I currently have weapon finesse, dodge, two weapon fighting
a 20 dex, and a 20 int. I'm also the only other 'melee ish' character. Our Tank is a Barbarian/Oracle,
Ranger/Inquisitor with a bow
Alchemist/wizard with bombs

I'm the trapfinder/rogue/melee dps character. Or at least trying to be.
I have swarm tactics, and a small sized familiar that can stack with me, so basically if I'm in threat range, I can do precises damage.

I'm just not sure what feat chain to go after.

Any suggestions would be welcome..

PS
I know pathfinder sucks
I know I'd be more powerful as just straight up wizard.. but that wasn't an option with my DM. The only things available are from printed Pathfinder source books.. but they're all available.

I keep being torn between
mobility/Disorienting maneuver/underfoot which has the problem that it's about moving, which means i can't use my two weapon fighting + tail attack very well.

Combat reflexes (because +5 - +7 dex)
Combat expertise
Trip would have been nice, but with me being size small, the cmb minus is just unsurmountable.

Combat Casting/Uncanny concentration with the idea of casting spells in melee a fairbit.. which makes me wonder if I shouldn't have played a magus (except their spell list sucks)

I know I'm going to pick up Craft Woundrous items either at 7th or 9th..

[hogarth]

Does anyone here know off the top of their heads if there are any cool necromancy options in Pathfinder?

The Undead Lord cleric archetype is relatively popular for PCs; you only get one domain (the crappy-ish Undead subdomain) but you get a free skeleton/zombie buddy and a couple of bonus feats.

Also for PCs, the bloody skeleton variant is pretty awesome; they have more hit points, fast healing, and they're difficult to permanently destroy.