Pathfinder Is Still Bad

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 6:37 am

My sister noticed the "War hummer" too.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 1:05 pm

Avoraciopoctules wrote:Anyone notice how the player of the "Catgirl Maid Prostitute" specifically indicated in the introduction that their character would be irritating to the rest? I don't think I've ever seen a player be so explicit about creating a character to annoy others before.

If my Paizil watching is correct, that's the same person that seems to think a D&D game involves such wonderful bullshit as Sundertards (regularly), Great Wyrm dragons at level 5, and random shit like Disgaea Geo Tiles.

The question is, does it also involve Finger of Death wands that kill the user if not the intended user? Because it certainly does sound as if its favorite edition is second edition.

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 6:57 pm

Oh well, at least PF is selling books for nice guys ... Dreamscarred Press sold out of their first two prints of their XPH port pretty much instantaneously.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sat Dec 25, 2010 2:03 am

Disgaea Geo Tiles.

What.

Dreamscarred Press sold out of their first two prints of their XPH port pretty much instantaneously.

Prepare for herp and derp.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sat Dec 25, 2010 3:17 am

Psychic Robot wrote:
Dreamscarred Press sold out of their first two prints of their XPH port pretty much instantaneously.
Prepare for herp and derp.

psionics nova lol

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sat Dec 25, 2010 12:40 pm

So I just found a nice little gem:

Paizil Mod wrote:...As far as removing "long and helpful" posts for a single offhand comment instead of removing just the offhand comment, there are several reasons we don't do that:

1) We don't believe in rewriting history more than necessary. This is the same reason why we don't allow the editing of posts past a small window for fixing typos. The most we're going to change in a post is redacting an unsafe link, fix a broken bold or italics tag, or adding a spoiler tag. After all, you wouldn't want me putting words in your mouth, would you?

2) Editing a post makes more work for the moderators. You might notice that none of the Paizo staff who serve as moderators have "Moderator" next to our names. We have real jobs to do besides keeping tabs on the messageboards. Removing a post is a simple process.

3) By removing offending posts and all replies, we encourage people to not make offensive posts and to flag, rather than reply, to those types of posts. If we simply edited the post, posters would feel free to take parting jabs at one another, leaving someone else (see #2) to clean it up. I'd rather they learn not do it in the first place.

Translation: We're too lazy to do our fucking jobs, so we're going to violate our own rule about "Don't be a jerk." which was specifically added because the Crusader of Logic kept smiting them and delete long and useful posts while leaving short, troll posts alone. And then we will wonder why our forums are so unproductive and useless. A laughing stock of the Internet, and a source of great amusement for bored trolls, but unproductive and useless for its intended purposes.

If that was all it was it would almost be reasonable. But they also don't bother to tell you what they delete or why they deleted it, instead posting something vague and cryptic that doesn't tell you what you did they didn't like. And then they wonder why so many people bait the ever living fuck out of each other there. Useful posts are impossible. In my case, they're actively banned. Sure, it's not Josh J Douchebag Frost doing it anymore, but that's because they found a spiritual successor before firing them.

I for one find the lurking hilarious.

sake · Post by **sake** » Sat Dec 25, 2010 2:27 pm

MfA wrote:Oh well, at least PF is selling books for nice guys ... Dreamscarred Press sold out of their first two prints of their XPH port pretty much instantaneously.

Hm... Was the Book of Weeaboo Figh- Nine swords OGL? Might be a nice time to slap an conversion and few fixes on it and throw it out as a PF splat to make some quick cash.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sat Dec 25, 2010 3:49 pm

sake wrote:
MfA wrote:Oh well, at least PF is selling books for nice guys ... Dreamscarred Press sold out of their first two prints of their XPH port pretty much instantaneously.

Hm... Was the Book of Weeaboo Figh- Nine swords OGL? Might be a nice time to slap an conversion and few fixes on it and throw it out as a PF splat to make some quick cash.

Nope. If it's not in the SRD, it's not OGL.

And besides. The Paizils hate giving beatsticks nice things.

Midnight_v · Post by **Midnight_v** » Sat Dec 25, 2010 4:57 pm

MfA wrote:Oh well, at least PF is selling books for nice guys ... Dreamscarred Press sold out of their first two prints of their XPH port pretty much instantaneously.

Well if its any consideration I've been working on a Psywar for the Tome of Awesome.
It basically has a few more power points, and advanced learning feature (because really everyone used expanded knowledge anyway), as long as he's psionic focused he can use his manifester level as his bab, plus a few other bonuses for holding it, AND a list of effects are good enough to USE that psionic focus and make you WANT to expend it.

So what the one DSP came out with look like? Psywar was the class that was one of my faves. Did they count it as a caster and make it awesome for the "Caster edition" of did the ream the idea and make it a "warrior"
... Paizo hates dudes with swords. I hope for all those poor paizils its the former.

Dominicius · Post by **Dominicius** » Sun Dec 26, 2010 12:43 am

Midnight_v wrote:
MfA wrote:Oh well, at least PF is selling books for nice guys ... Dreamscarred Press sold out of their first two prints of their XPH port pretty much instantaneously.
Well if its any consideration I've been working on a Psywar for the Tome of Awesome.
It basically has a few more power points, and advanced learning feature (because really everyone used expanded knowledge anyway), as long as he's psionic focused he can use his manifester level as his bab, plus a few other bonuses for holding it, AND a list of effects are good enough to USE that psionic focus and make you WANT to expend it.

Psionic focus is a... curious mechanic. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

On one hand, it encourages people to retreat from battle since the most optimal time to regain you PF (

) is out of combat. But on the other hand, no sane player will actually retreat from combat to restore his psionic focus because the retreat mechanics suck so much, so it's never worth it.

So really the most optimal place for PF user is when he has his enemies in combat but he himself is out of combat. It's funny like that.

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Sun Dec 26, 2010 4:21 am

Dominicius wrote:So really the most optimal place for PF user is when he has his enemies in combat but he himself is out of combat. It's funny like that.

Or, it's basically an encounter power that you can opt to spend a full turn regaining if that's a worthwhile trade at the time. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

stormhierta · Post by **stormhierta** » Sun Dec 26, 2010 9:31 am

Midnight_v wrote:
MfA wrote:Oh well, at least PF is selling books for nice guys ... Dreamscarred Press sold out of their first two prints of their XPH port pretty much instantaneously.
Well if its any consideration I've been working on a Psywar for the Tome of Awesome.
It basically has a few more power points, and advanced learning feature (because really everyone used expanded knowledge anyway), as long as he's psionic focused he can use his manifester level as his bab, plus a few other bonuses for holding it, AND a list of effects are good enough to USE that psionic focus and make you WANT to expend it.

So what the one DSP came out with look like? Psywar was the class that was one of my faves. Did they count it as a caster and make it awesome for the "Caster edition" of did the ream the idea and make it a "warrior"
... Paizo hates dudes with swords. I hope for all those poor paizils its the former.

Well, we did perform an Open Betatest and all the files are still available for download if you wanna take a look at the general concepts. Now, naturally, not everything is exactly like in the final, but the PsyWar Beta->Final didn't change all that much. So come take a look?

www.dreamscarredpress.com - although downloads of files requires registration.

Midnight_v · Post by **Midnight_v** » Sun Dec 26, 2010 3:51 pm

Really did you now?
You say we and I'm gonna ask are you a DSP contributor or just someone from the playtest?
I can't really look right this sec but I'll give it a microscope this afternoon after church.
In other words I'd hate to have my ideas influenced by what they've done. Still I'm sad I missed the open call, dsp might be waaaayyy better than paizo at designing but... its for pathfinder so I remain leery. Anybody else given this a look yet?>

stormhierta · Post by **stormhierta** » Sun Dec 26, 2010 4:36 pm

Me and Jeremy are the owners of Dreamscarred Press, so I'd say I'm a contributor

But besides owning the company, I've also actively taken part in the writing of the book.

We are doing an Open Playtest/Design for our Psionics Expanded, but as you say, it's for Pathfinder and if you find some of the core concepts of Pathfinder to be broken or impossible to live with, then there might be a chance that we can't accomodate you. However, as the VERY lively discussions on our forums will attest, we do listen to reason and much of the design changes implemented in Psionics Unleashed was derived from the very intense discussions we had.

So, feel free to join our coming Open Playtests and add your voice to the discussion.

Ghostwheel · Post by **Ghostwheel** » Sun Dec 26, 2010 5:37 pm

Mild derail--I personally liked a lot of the work DSP did with Untapped Potential (3.5), especially as far as racial class replacements and such were concerned, along with many of the PrCs and feats--especially the mantras, if I'm remembering correctly what they were called.

My biggest quibble is that they didn't go far enough in ramping up the soulknife's power to allow it to compete with major rogue-level characters. Rather than monk-level, it was just boosted up to fighter-level, which still didn't let it come nearly close in power to wizard-level, or even rogue-level classes.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Sun Dec 26, 2010 5:50 pm

In an attempt to save myself and others here from digging through your boards trying to determine the style of your playtest, I'm just going to ask you about it stormhierta. Paizo has a long history of looking for happy fuzzy "real game" reports and actively ignoring or talking down deconstructive, recursive, math / probability heavy playtesting that is common in other games industries. Which did you actively solicit and respond to in your playtest?

stormhierta · Post by **stormhierta** » Sun Dec 26, 2010 7:31 pm

@Ghostwheel: A "striker"-focused Soulknife will do a fair amount of damage. Not competing directly with a Rogue, but he's also far more of a "fighter" type than a damage dealer. Atleast this is the path we chose to take with the class.

@TarkisFlux: Both. We had two campaigns that went from levels 1-20 using our rules (fuzzy real game reports) as well as people doing specific playtesting, crunching math (until my eyes bled) and deconstructing classes.

One can for example look at the recent discussion of Mind Armor to see Syonique and Dabbler going round after round of math/probability discussions on what the best approach to the concept of "mind armor" would be. Link: http://dreamscarredpress.com/dragonfly/ ... t=987.html

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sun Dec 26, 2010 10:24 pm

One can for example look at the recent discussion of Mind Armor to see Syonique and Dabbler going round after round of math/probability discussions on what the best approach to the concept of "mind armor" would be. Link: http://dreamscarredpress.com/dragonfly/ ... t=987.html

Developers who do math? I, for one, am shocked and pleased.

stormhierta · Post by **stormhierta** » Sun Dec 26, 2010 11:09 pm

Well, since we have such awesome fans, we do a modicum of math and the rest is hashed out by fans and contributors. So not only do we do math, we listen to others who also do math.

Midnight_v · Post by **Midnight_v** » Mon Dec 27, 2010 4:12 am

stormhierta wrote:Well, since we have such awesome fans, we do a modicum of math and the rest is hashed out by fans and contributors. So not only do we do math, we listen to others who also do math.

Okay Stormhierta, you've convinced me at least to click the link with an open mind, course I"ve always kinda respected you guys for going from the boards to your own company so. . . maybe its not that hard a sell.

stormhierta · Post by **stormhierta** » Mon Dec 27, 2010 10:41 am

As I said, we look for any and all feedback and that backed by math, heavy playtesting or "real game" playtesting takes precedence over opinions.

So in some regards, we are very much like Paizo - a real game experience can tell us things that math cannot - like if a class feels boring to play, if it has weird synergies that we hadn't foreseen and so on. But math and recursive playtesting is the other part to that.

With the help of fans and supporters we make a better product.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Dec 27, 2010 5:52 pm

Stormhierta,

I have no previous ill-will or negative expectations from Dreamscarred. I suspect that the comment you just made was just written too quickly, and not indicative of a systematic problem in your approach. But, "whether a class has weird synergies you hadn't foreseen" absolutely belongs in the realm of "things which can be revealed by math and hypotheticals," not "things learned only from experience." And frankly, while complete information about what is boring may be experience-dependent, there are also solid ways to predict which classes will be more boring than others.

I suspect that you probably intuitively know this, and know more or less what destructive testing is good for, but it might be worthwhile to make an explicit document outlining what you want to gain from mathcrafting and play reports, respectively.

Data Vampire · Post by **Data Vampire** » Mon Dec 27, 2010 8:37 pm

Orion, if you foresee the synergies you can test them with hypotheticals and math. If you do not foresee them, then you cannot.

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Mon Dec 27, 2010 8:48 pm

Data Vampire wrote:Orion, if you foresee the synergies you can test them with hypotheticals and math. If you do not foresee them, then you cannot.

Odds are, somebody foresaw them, which is why they decided to use them in their character's ability set.

Data Vampire · Post by **Data Vampire** » Mon Dec 27, 2010 10:58 pm

But that doesn't mean that the designers foresaw them, or even know about them. Feedback, and listening to feedback, is necessary for this reason.

After that you can move onto math and hypotheticals for that synergy.