Pathfinder might become less bad

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 7:21 pm

Sean K. Reynolds has been replaced by Mark Seifter, a.k.a. Rogue Eidolon, a respected poster in the Rules Questions forum over at Paizo.

He has the unique qualification of "not being a proven massive fuckwit".

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 7:30 pm

He's still only the mouthpiece for the entire dev team and can't answer FAQs/make errata without group consensus.

Don't expect anything major.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 9:54 pm

What TOZ said. While SKR definitely made the Pathfinder product significantly worse, he's not the one solely or even most responsible for its slide in quality.

If Pathfinder was to turn around from just this, this would require either A.) Lisa Stevens (who is currently the CEO of Paizo Publishing) to replace Jason Buhlman with this Rogue Eidolon either through promotion, firing, or replacement-via-retiring or B.) Rogue Eidolon to have such a positive effect on company culture that his peers start deferring to him.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Sun Jun 29, 2014 11:19 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What TOZ said. While SKR definitely made the Pathfinder product significantly worse, he's not the one solely or even most responsible for its slide in quality.

If Pathfinder was to turn around from just this, this would require either A.) Lisa Stevens (who is currently the CEO of Paizo Publishing) to replace Jason Buhlman with this Rogue Eidolon either through promotion, firing, or replacement-via-retiring or B.) Rogue Eidolon to have such a positive effect on company culture that his peers start deferring to him.

It could also improve through the laziness of the others just allowing him to do whatever he feels like.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 7:13 am

TiaC wrote: It could also improve through the laziness of the others just allowing him to do whatever he feels like.

Not really, no.

-Username17

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 8:32 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
TiaC wrote: It could also improve through the laziness of the others just allowing him to do whatever he feels like.
Not really, no.

-Username17

Remember, this is the company that responded to SKR failing to understand the flurry rules in a forum post by changing the rules to align with his batshit insane interpretation even though it broke the game in a number of ways. They didn't change it back for months.

They like to back up their employees even when they go off the rails.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 3:50 pm

TiaC wrote:Remember, this is the company that responded to SKR failing to understand the flurry rules in a forum post by changing the rules to align with his batshit insane interpretation even though it broke the game in a number of ways. They didn't change it back for months.

They like to back up their employees even when they go off the rails.

That is not true. Before making that post, SKR asked Jason how those rules worked. Jason fucked up just as hard as SKR did there.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 5:50 pm

Any good samples of rogue eidolons writing?

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 6:05 pm

This?

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/communit ... o-fighters

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 7:19 pm

Important to keep in mind: you can retrain your feats, unlike all other classes, thus letting you take Cleave or other short-term feats and then discard them later. They also forgot to put in any clause against switching into a feat you didn’t qualify for at the time you took the original, which I thought should have been a no-brainer.

Yeah, god forbid you use your unique retraining class feature to switch out old techniques for level appropriate ones.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 7:50 pm

Confirmed, Rogue Eidolon is shit and everything he ever writes will be shit.

Here is my non exhaustive list of WTFs on the first two pages.

1) "Fighters never get enough love" Wow, this guy might not be an idiot, he understands that fighters need to actually have things to be able to do in the game, and that designers never give them anything worth actually doing, so no one should ever play them.

... " And in Pathfinder they really should. They’re an excellent class, and they’re the baseline to which I compare all other non-spellcasters."

Oh. He didn't mean the smart thing, he meant that people don't want to play the boring shitty class with nothing cool to do as much as they should... Fuck my life. This idiot.

2) "Archery:

Cons:
Can’t Take the Front Line"

Oh... this idiot thinks that you can tank by standing near monsters, even though it is trivially easy for them to move around you and hit anyone else if they want.

3) "Power Attack will now usually give better payoffs than it could ever do in 3.5."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!

2, Continued) "but there isn’t a ‘hate’ mechanism in our game like in other popular RPGs involving Sword and Shield characters. This is for the best, I think, because it encourages a lot of creative thinking for the Sword and Shield fighter, and I enjoy creative thinking of all sorts when playing Pathfinder. So what’s my solution to that challenge? Too many players of Sword and Board Fighters focus all their effort on turtling up with 52 AC or something. But the Sword and Board Fighter needs to make the enemies fear her. She needs to make them question their judgment and quiver slightly in their boots whenever they have to make the choice to turn their attention away from her due to her high defenses. And then, if they do turn on her allies, she punishes them unmercifully."

Noticeably absent, and suggestion of how critical thinking turns into tanking. Also noticeably absent, Any discussion of possible ways to punish people for turning attention away from you.

2 Continued, Continued) "Sword and Shield:

Pros:
Hold the line till the cows come home"

Yeah, you hold that line... with your 5ft square body that gets to make an attack against one enemy if 14 run past you. That line holding. So amazingly OP that it would be broken if you could do it in a 10ft wide hallway... so you can't.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 7:53 pm

But good on him for reacting to it correctly.

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Mon Jun 30, 2014 7:58 pm

Whipstitch wrote:
Important to keep in mind: you can retrain your feats, unlike all other classes, thus letting you take Cleave or other short-term feats and then discard them later. They also forgot to put in any clause against switching into a feat you didn’t qualify for at the time you took the original, which I thought should have been a no-brainer.
Yeah, god forbid you use your unique retraining class feature to switch out old techniques for level appropriate ones.

He identifies the possibilities implicit in the class feature, and understands the concept of feats that start out good, but don't scale with level. And that's an old guide.

More recent: Doing the math on the new Swashbuckler class vs. the Fighter, Collating the rules for magical darkness and common counters (it's a fucking mess and the last ruling by a dev made it worse), Pointing out that Ki Arrow makes your monk archer worse.

Unlike SKR and Jason, this dude understands the game and is willing and able to do the math and look up stuff.

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Tue Jul 01, 2014 4:02 am

He plays a lot in PFS and the peculiarities of that inform a bunch of his opinions; he was a big supporter of the nerf to Crane Wing for example.

In a 3rd party product for fey in PF he made a barbarian archetype, the Masquerade Reveler, which swaps rage for packages of evolution points - similar to a summoner's eidolon. So, he isn't totally against melee having interesting things to do.

Most importantly though he doesn't go out of his way to be an arsehole the way SKR did.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Tue Jul 01, 2014 9:12 am

Why is it a bad thing if a low AC, always sneak attacking swashbuckler does comparative damage to a fighter (who does not pick up obvious damage increasing items)?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jul 01, 2014 9:42 am

ishy wrote:Why is it a bad thing if a low AC, always sneak attacking swashbuckler does comparative damage to a fighter (who does not pick up obvious damage increasing items)?

I don't even understand why you'd think using a falchion fighter as a comparison point would be something you would do. Rogue Eidolon seems upset that a Swashbuckler is outdamaging a falchion fighter at levels above 6. But... since Fighters above level 6 are subhuman parasites on party treasure, I don't even know how that's a thing.

There's a lot of math, but there's no analysis. There's no attempt to elucidate whether and how the Swashbuckler would assist in overcoming level appropriate challenges.

-Username17

GnomeWorks · Post by **GnomeWorks** » Tue Jul 01, 2014 9:49 am

FrankTrollman wrote:There's a lot of math, but there's no analysis. There's no attempt to elucidate whether and how the Swashbuckler would assist in overcoming level appropriate challenges.

Baby steps? I mean, it is at least a step in the right direction towards a reasonable approach to design...

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Tue Jul 01, 2014 12:41 pm

Is this a "specialist outperforms generalist" rant?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jul 01, 2014 12:52 pm

Rawbeard wrote:Is this a "specialist outperforms generalist" rant?

No. It's just Rogue Eidolon putting his money where his mouth is to his claim on the fighter guide that he compares all non-caster classes to Fighters with similar builds. This despite the fact that Fighter is basically an NPC class, and thus any class that didn't wildly outperform the Fighter would be a dead weight on the party by mid-level.

In the Fighter Guide, he totally said he'd do that:

Rogue Eidolon wrote:Fighters never get enough love. And in Pathfinder they really should. They’re an excellent class, and they’re the baseline to which I compare all other non-spellcasters. Now, that may have been the case in 3.5 as well, but when I compared them back then, it was always “So let’s see how this class is better than Fighter” whereas now, there’s a lot of “How can I build this class so that it’s doing better than a standard Fighter with a similar build. Can I do it?”

and that Swashbuckler rant is him proving that he in fact actually follows that methodology. That methodology is stupid, because it presupposes that standard Fighters aren't a pail full of digested bologna on legs, which they are.

-Username17

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Tue Jul 01, 2014 1:46 pm

well, at least he doesn't use weapon focus as the benchmark for a good feat. please tell me he doesn't.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Tue Jul 01, 2014 1:57 pm

He considers weapon focus to be a must-have feat for the fighter.
Even calls out greater weapon focus to be a part of 'the fighter advantage'.
For a sword and board fighter, he recommends taking both for s&b. So 4 feats total.

GnomeWorks wrote:Baby steps? I mean, it is at least a step in the right direction towards a reasonable approach to design...

I don't see any progress. SKR did terrible math too, but at least he usually provided some analysis to support his conclusion.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Tue Jul 01, 2014 1:59 pm

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jul 01, 2014 3:30 pm

The quote in question is:

Rogue Eidolon wrote:Weapon Focus and Greater: You will always appreciate the extra bonus to hit from these feats. Combined with Weapon Training, Greater Weapon Focus is part of the “Fighter Advantage” to attack bonus that will let you hit more often than anyone else for an ordinary blow.

Yeah man! Feel that +1 to-hit! That's totally a "Fighter Advantage" that in every way makes up for not having Rage. He also really goes off on long rants about Critical Focus. Just so we're on the same page, that is a 20% chance to get a critical when you already threatened.

Rogue Eidolon wrote:Critical Focus and Friends: This is once again blue assuming you went Falchion. This will give you nearly a 30% chance of getting a special effect per attack, which means you should expect to see one or two on most turns. Stunning is the best choice since it still Staggers them for a while even if they make the save, and Exhausting is an excellent debuff with no time limit for when it wears off.

Got that? The thing that makes Critical Focus a must-have is that you go to war with a keen falchion, and then you take Stunning Critical. Which you are totes going to do, because that's only a three feat chain that requires a BAB of Plus Seventeen in order to complete. For which you force a DC 27 Fort Save against Stunning every time you score a critical. I want to emphasize that despite this being the supposed reason that Critical Focus is blue, that Stunning Critical is not actually on any of his provided 20 level builds. Critical Focus gives a 20% chance of double damage on 30% of your attacks with the keen falchion he wants you to use. That is 6% of base damage per hit, which is exactly 20% better than Weapon Focus (if you are using a keen falchion and are not already hitting better than on a 6+ or worse than on a 15+).

Yeah man, that feat that's situationally a little bit better than weapon focus totally blows away the competition. And it's really reason enough to be a fucking Fighter for 9 levels straight, don't you think?

-Username17

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Tue Jul 01, 2014 5:29 pm

ishy wrote:He considers weapon focus to be a must-have feat for the fighter.

I kind of agree with that, only because pathfinder has shit feats for fighters for the most part. Of course, everytime anyone picks a fighter, you basically wonder why they didn't just make a magus.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Jul 01, 2014 5:31 pm

Kaelik's unrelenting cynicism wins again!