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Omegonthesane
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Post by Omegonthesane »

GâtFromKI wrote:
Omegonthesane wrote:You seem to be assuming that Pelor doesn't tell the truth of the afterlife in a crystal clear way to people he wants to convert from the worship of Asmodeus.

Or, apparently, the worship of Corellon Larethian.

(no I haven't checked that these are the correct Pathfinder knockoffs of "an NG god" and "the CG god of elves who somehow isn't by definition a racist shit")
Pelor = Sarenrae, Corellon Larethian = no one I remember in Golarion (there's a CN goddess with a lot of elf worshipers, but she doesn't look like Corellon at all. She's the goddess of sex and vengeance. She's not racist, she doesn't want you to kill orcs, she wants you to have sex with them instead - except if you have some vengeance to accomplish).

Anyway, the Good gods of Golarion are complete assholes. It's cannon since an infamous AP. So no, I don't think they tell the truth: they beat the shit out of you until you worship them (but you should worship the CN goddess of sex or the CE goddess of sex with hentai monsters instead).
Nothing about just being assholes contradicts the Good gods trying to harvest as many souls for their dinner as possible in the most brutally efficient fashion possible. If that happens to be beating the shit out of you until you submit out of pure terror instead of giving you accurate information then that's fine.

Then again see also the thing about petitioners explicitly having nothing to do with the person that left them behind.
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Post by Chamomile »

Blicero wrote:
So in that post, you seem to treat "being the goddess of honor" as implying "adhering to the precepts of honor culture". That makes sense to me. But does Paizo indicate that that is what "being the goddess of honor" means to them?
I didn't want to go into it in that post because it would take some wind out of the rantiness, and that post was as much entertainment as exhaustive criticism. That said, I think it's pretty fair to say that, in absence of giving Iomedae an actual code of honor to uphold, it's fair to assign her one that's prominent in the history of the real world culture that produced her and which values bravery, forthrightness, and martial valor. Especially since it's not like there's a particularly compelling case to be made that there is some other code of honor that she is instead adhering to, except the vapid argument of "she adheres to a code of honor designed after the fact to justify her terrible actions."
Last edited by Chamomile on Fri Dec 15, 2017 4:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by GâtFromKI »

Chamomile wrote:I summed up the problems with the adventure in this shameless plug.
Very good article. Unfortunately I'm not good enough in english language to express the problem with the encounter as well as you.

A few other remarks:

1/ Answering the first question requires a DC 25 (or 35) Knowledge check. According to the rules, DC 20 to 30 is for "really tough questions" and DC 35 knowledge check doesn't even exist. I'm not arguing if level 15 PCs should auto-succeed a DC 25 Religion check (spoiler: they shouldn't. A cleric can have ~+18 in Religion, ~1/3 of failure), I'm saying she's asking an obscure trivia like "Conventry City last won the FA cup in what year ?", and she hit PCs with lethal damages if they can't answer. That's not just unlawful and ungood, that's also stupid for any reasonable measure of "stupid". So stupid even a Chaotic Lolrandom god wouldn't do that.

2/ One of the "official" justification was that god in golarion aren't perfect, so they may lose their temper. But Iomedae isn't just "not perfect", she has act like a 5-year-old kid. In all seriousness, you could replace Iomedae by Cartman and the scene would work the same: Cartman abducts the PC, then he convinces himself it's an honor he's doing, and if they say something he doesn't like he shout "respect my authority" for sonic damages.

... OK, Golarion gods aren't perfect. But at least, the LG parangon could try to be perfect. Here she isn't even trying.

3/ Asmodeus is the god of fantasy nazis, so I imagine him beating the shit out of people until they say what he wants to hear. As opposed to Iomedae, who... beats the shit out of people until they say what she wants to hear? Thanks to this encounter, I can't tell the difference between the LG parangon and the LE parangon. The color of the lasers?

4/ The encounter could have been cool and consistent and dangerous. Until that point Paizo didn't write any rule about gods, so authors could have decided gods are so powerful, their mere presence hurts the PCs; and Iomedae is making conscious efforts to hold her power. Efforts detectable by an easy Perception or Psychology check (two skills usually much higher than Religion among players - at level 15, a DC 20 or even 25 check should be an auto-success for someone in the party). Each time she lose hes temper or her patience, she involuntary hurt the PCs - then she apologizes, because she know she should keep her temper not to hurt her subordinate (see how you can combine "not perfect" with "trying to be" ?). If this happens too often, she dismiss the PCs to protect them (and she don't hand out them some random gift she intended to offer: the encounter is a failure). I'm sure there are a lot of other ways to an OK encounter.

Or, the encounter could have been a cool encounter with no stake and no danger, designed to enlarge the penis of the players (a goddess invites them just because she want to spend a few time with them ! And she speaks with a lot of respect, she admit she need them and they're doing something she can't do, she even tolerate some of their fancy behaviors !) instead of the penis of the MC. The two pages of the encounter could have been spent into fellatio advice to give the most possible pleasure to the players, and into explaining how to handle disruptive PCs without the use of violence, instead of a nonsensical life-or-death lolrandom quizz. (The very first step to handle disruptive PCs is to give them the choice - to invite them instead of abduct them. They may decide not to come, but if they answer the invitation, they know it's their decision and they should do some efforts). The main problem of the encounter is its mere philosophy, the general Paizo philosophy : use any occasion to remind the player about how small they are in their pants.


Now, if someone is good at subverting images, he can create a "respect my authority"-iomedae and create a fake poster or cover for the AP. It would be useless, but funny.
Last edited by GâtFromKI on Fri Dec 15, 2017 9:59 am, edited 8 times in total.
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Longes
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Post by Longes »

Man, that encounter is stupid.

I'm kinda offended by James Jacobs' attitude on the forum that PCs need to be put in their place and that it's a problem that some PCs get too big for their britches and can't act "subservient" to anyone. In Planescape: Torment the Transcendent One boasts "My power can forge the Planes, it can destroy you!" and for PCs in question this is literally true. A level 15 wizard can cast "Create Demiplane" and forever live in a pocket world tailored to his every whim while Golarion burns.

Then again, PF specifically made its gods into rule-less nebulous entities so that no PC ever dares to become a god and/or kill a god.

I'm curious how that encounter would go with a lawful neutral cleric of Asmodeus in the party. Asmodeus literally wrote the book on divine conduct and I feel like he'd have a field day squeezing out reparations from Iomedae for assault on his faithful.
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Post by Longes »

Is Oracle any good?
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Post by Voss »

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Honor is cultural. Unless it's spelled out somewhere what honor is in Golarion, then it could be almost anything. It's not a stretch to think that honor includes humans offering fawning submission to divine authority, I see that attitude in a lot of D&D material.

This is not to say that the encounter isn't a pile of leper diapers just for shitting on the PCs. Indeed the goddess herself was setting autofail as soon as the authors forgot to write an honor code for her to represent. Without that, she's just the goddess of random Klingon rage.
Well, in Starfinder she's listed as a patron for the Mind Rape Mindbreaker specialization for Mystics. She's still supposedly the goddess of honorable battle, humanity, justice and valor, but she apparently offers the same power set as the goddess of pirates and space monsters, the LE god of conquest, duty and war, the 'Star Eater'- god of black holes, destruction and supernovas (which...not sure why natural physical processes need gods in an age of spaceships and computers), the goddess of disease, gluttony and undeath, and the god of darkness, envy, loss, pain and S&M.


@Longes- depends what you try to do with it. Its got the stupid spell progression delay sorcerers get, but other than shit saves, the oracle can be made to fit any particular role, but tend to excel at buffing, cherry picking spells, and using their 'handicap(s)' as a progressive immunity.
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Post by rasmuswagner »

Look over Oracle Mysteries like Lunar or Whimsy, and realize that the Extra Revelation fest exists. For Archetypes, Spirit Guide gives you flexibility, Dual-cursed gives you delicious Misfortune.
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Count Arioch the 28th
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

The Iomadae encounter was retarded but I've never seen a 15th level party that couldn't auto-succeed a DC 25 knowledge check. Then again, the only time I've seen a cleric roll a knowledge: religion check was because the bard and the wizard both failed. Could be our table rules, it's an unspoken rule that one person handles all the knowledge checks and that might nto be how you play.
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Post by Longes »

rasmuswagner wrote:Look over Oracle Mysteries like Lunar or Whimsy, and realize that the Extra Revelation fest exists. For Archetypes, Spirit Guide gives you flexibility, Dual-cursed gives you delicious Misfortune.
Whimsy looks like shit, what am I missing?
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Post by GâtFromKI »

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:The Iomadae encounter was retarded but I've never seen a 15th level party that couldn't auto-succeed a DC 25 knowledge check. Then again, the only time I've seen a cleric roll a knowledge: religion check was because the bard and the wizard both failed. Could be our table rules, it's an unspoken rule that one person handles all the knowledge checks and that might nto be how you play.
Knowledge skills are stupid. Especially at level 15: the base DC to recognize anything level-appropriate is 30 (15+CR, since every CR 15+ monster is quite rare), and you learn one piece of useful information for every 5 point above the base DC; CR 15 monsters have a lot of abilities. Let's say you roll a 40: "this is a red dragon. He can fly and he's immune to fire". Is this really worth the investment you put in the 10 different knowledge skills instead of UMD, Fly or Diplomacy?

If you play by the rules, no one bother with knowledge skills. Not even wizards nor bards - any bard will use an archetype to replace bardic knowledge.

Even if you don't play by the rules, only Wizard and Bards can be good at knowledge - if your party consist of a sorcerer, a cleric, an oracle and a summoner, there's probably no one who auto-succeed a DC 25 knowledge check.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Possibly the summoner's eidolon or the sorcerer's familiar, but that is not likely.
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Post by rasmuswagner »

Longes wrote:
rasmuswagner wrote:Look over Oracle Mysteries like Lunar or Whimsy, and realize that the Extra Revelation fest exists. For Archetypes, Spirit Guide gives you flexibility, Dual-cursed gives you delicious Misfortune.
Whimsy looks like shit, what am I missing?
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saithorthepyro
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Post by saithorthepyro »

Just my two cents on the Iomadae encounter, I think it's the result of the mindset that Lawful Good=Lawful Stupid. It's an interpretation that easily explains her entire attitude in the encounter, so I'd argue it's likely that the designer thinks that Lawful Stupid is what Lawful Good should actually be.
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Post by Longes »

saithorthepyro wrote:Just my two cents on the Iomadae encounter, I think it's the result of the mindset that Lawful Good=Lawful Stupid. It's an interpretation that easily explains her entire attitude in the encounter, so I'd argue it's likely that the designer thinks that Lawful Stupid is what Lawful Good should actually be.
The designer has explicitly said that he thinks that Iomedae's violence is an equivalent of slap on the wrist and that some PCs get too big for their britches and have to be taught humility in the presence of a goddess.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

James Jacobs has said that, but the original author was Wolfgang Bauer. We know the original damage was much, much lower, but not really a lot else. I mean, enough to know that some people didn't expect it to be a problem but that fits the larger pattern of them expecting people to ignore what the words say and run it the way they MEANT the words to say (based only on reading their mind).
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Post by saithorthepyro »

Longes wrote:
saithorthepyro wrote:Just my two cents on the Iomadae encounter, I think it's the result of the mindset that Lawful Good=Lawful Stupid. It's an interpretation that easily explains her entire attitude in the encounter, so I'd argue it's likely that the designer thinks that Lawful Stupid is what Lawful Good should actually be.
The designer has explicitly said that he thinks that Iomedae's violence is an equivalent of slap on the wrist and that some PCs get too big for their britches and have to be taught humility in the presence of a goddess.
Ah right, made the mistake of thinking there could be a reasonable excuse to it. Okay, then yeah Jacobs screwed up on it.

As a question, are there any AP worth running at all? I might need to GM some games and after working on some PBP campaigns I don't want to design another campaign from the ground-up.
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Post by Voss »

deaddmwalking wrote:James Jacobs has said that, but the original author was Wolfgang Bauer. We know the original damage was much, much lower, but not really a lot else. I mean, enough to know that some people didn't expect it to be a problem but that fits the larger pattern of them expecting people to ignore what the words say and run it the way they MEANT the words to say (based only on reading their mind).
To be fair, a lot of their fanbase lets them get away with exactly that. Both back then in that thread and currently with their more modern clusterfucks. The rationalization is pretty amazing, especially if you watch it happen in real time. The Doubter Signal goes up, and the fanboys and fangirls rush in to quelch any dissent.

Then CustServ comes in to 'tidy up' bad feelings in the thread and guess which side gets wiped away?

I'm actually a little surprised that there are still people carrying the banner for a fix for the Shifter, given how thoroughly the negative reaction to the Advanced Class Guide, Occult Adventures and Ultimate Intrigue were scrubbed away.

Edit: though checking back with it, they announced an impending nuke of the Ultimate Wilderness thread on monday. Anything that isn't 'discussion of the actual product' is targeted for oblivion.

Amusingly it even got one of the book's many, many contributors to chime in saying it reminded them of the discussion around Wrath of the Righteous, and that they expected it would be dealt with roughly the same way: buried. No errata, maybe a small FAQ, but not anytime soon.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Didn't James Jacobs once say that lawful good was another type of evil? I know one of the designers said that, I assume if it's something in favor of CG waifus with 8 wisdom it's something JJ said. You can call it a 4chan meme but I fucking hate that stupid elf chick in Hell's Rebels.
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Post by OgreBattle »

What pathfinder classes are a good weaker replacement/specialization for wizard, cleric, druid?

For a game where you want divine and arcane casters to still exist just not super ultra dominate with ultimate versatility.
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Post by Voss »

Weaker? Bard, Warpriest, Hunter
Maybe Occultist for wizard instead of bard, but that involves a lot of accounting, but less of a flavor change (though it randomly changes of how spell components work)
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Post by Mask_De_H »

Silksworn Occultist is very much a Wizard in mechanics (Arcane casting instead of psychic, lose weapon profs, can eventually cast from all schools), but is still accounting heavy. There's also the Warlock Vigilante or the Eldritch Scoundrel Rogue.
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Post by Longes »

deaddmwalking wrote:James Jacobs has said that, but the original author was Wolfgang Bauer. We know the original damage was much, much lower, but not really a lot else. I mean, enough to know that some people didn't expect it to be a problem but that fits the larger pattern of them expecting people to ignore what the words say and run it the way they MEANT the words to say (based only on reading their mind).
Jacobs claims that he's the one who wrote the encounter.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

That's more Paizo revisionism. On the first page of that thread he says:
James Jacobs wrote: The encounter itself, as originally written by Wolfgang, had the damage from the sonic blasts MUCH lower (2d12, 3d12, and 4d12), nonlethal damage for non-evil PCs, and no damage to lawful good PCs. It also caused paralysis for a few round. In hindsight, that's probably a better way to have handled it (even though these effects and the paralysis were pretty minor and inconsequential overall). The reason that I changed things to be more significant damage is as I explained above—Iomedae is somewhat impatient and has no time or interest in handling the PCs gently or coddling them. She wants to make sure they get how important things are, and due to the flaws in her personalty, she ends up perhaps taking too strong a hand in that if the PCs end up, in her eyes, wanting or failures. In any event, the real reason the damage got bumped up was because I wanted high level mythic characters to notice and feel like there was in fact risk involved—it's there to make sure the PCs are treating what really, at its roots, is a roleplaying encounter, as an equally important encounter to a fight with Baphomet.
Emphasis added.

I think Wolfgang Baur gets credit for the module. If the above statement is correct Jacobs may have made it significantly worse, but he didn't actually invent the scenario. In the quote you provided, he indicates "if I had a time machine I would warn past James to develop the encounter in an entirely different way from the author's original direction" which implies that he was essentially fleshing out an encounter that was outlined by Baur.
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Post by saithorthepyro »

While Baur's version still sounds bad, at least it sounds like it was much less of a punch and more if there were actual evil members of the party. So it's a degree less terrible at least.

Also, for a weaker version of full casters, while it doesn't really emulate any of them besides maybe Cleric, I'll hold up Alchemist as a good partial caster class that can be used instead of Cleric.

Edit: Reading some criticism some more, I found some new theories by people about the Shifter. One of which is that the designer is Stephen Radney-Macfarland, given that previously his pre-playtest classes like the Investigator were garbage and were somewhat like the Shifter.

Another one is that the reason for recent design issues was that SKR left? Some people apparently think he was having a moderating influence on the design team.

Finally, got a reference for why people think the Shifter was designed as an easy class. Apparently it was stated at the Paizocon Q&A
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Post by Longes »

Between Summon Neutral Monster and Summon Evil Monster feats, which one gives better monster list and is more worth having?
Last edited by Longes on Fri Dec 22, 2017 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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