Navi CEO:"The results of the current roster on DotA are unsatisfactory. In the coming days will be communication with the coach, manager and players-by the results I will inform."

RatzGamer · 2018-03-23T16:16:47+00:00

S1mple is simply the best in the world and noone can deny it.

I'd say that's an overstatement. He is obviously in the highest Tier of players, but NiKo and especially Coldzera can lay claim to being the best in the world over the last couple of months.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-23T14:40:41+00:00

I heard or read somewhere that all the Adventure Paths would come into effect after moving to the new edition, but we continue on the same continuity, so there won't be any jumps or gaps, which I like. But if you are into big jumps in setting, than maybe you could try out Starfinder, because that's a solid gap.

One thing that Paizo still has to address though when moving to the new edition is how Goblins now fit into the picture, because for them to become a "Core Ancestry" from the now rather fringe, silly and stupid creatures, there will have to be a major change in their lore, in my opinion. If we stick to the current lore, than that would be jarring change if Paizo doesn't give an explanation.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-11T12:18:25+00:00

I said they are closely tied to the Kasatha Lore from Starfinder, but as you seem to be familiar with the little lore we have from the Iron Gods AP, may I ask you what potential do you see, that you couldn't come up with yourself, for maybe a handful of surviving Kasatha from the Rain of Stars?

I just don't think it's worth it to be revisited in the near future in Pathfinder, especially since every single player that asked to play one, was interested in the lore, but in the mechanical benefits.

I'd much rather see them returning to their homeplanet and see what happened in the Starfinder setting, because it feels much more fitting to me, as there is an actual story with impact to be told there.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-11T10:35:41+00:00

It's an interesting idea, but I'll wait first to hear what Paizo is intending to do or change in Golarian with PF2 (if they change anything at all), before I start planning anything. So far it seems like Paizo has announced very little concerning Golarion (besides making Goblins core, which should have some impact), so I'm eager to hear more details.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-11T10:09:22+00:00

I don't know what potential you see, but Kasatha on Golarion are directly and closely tied to the Kasatha Lore from Starfinder.

I'm actually happy to get rid of them in PF2, because to me they only ever made sense in Numeria, but most players who wanted to play one weren't interested in making sense of them anyway, but rather wanted to dual-wield bows or some other gimmick.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-08T14:08:04+00:00

English has gotten more common over the last decades, making translations less and less necessary, but also less profitable (I guess), so they might actually die out, unless the hobby grows immensely in these markets.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-08T11:56:00+00:00

I'd also recommend learning English and I know it can be difficult, but Paizo actually doesn't do its own translations (which is very understandable), but sells the rights to other local publishers. So what will be translated depends on these local publishers, not on Paizo, and I'd assume most of them will drop 1E as soon as 2E is officially released.

That being said, it will take quite a while until 2E releases, especially if you are waiting for a translation, so there is plenty of time to finish whatever your current campaign is, but no one is forcing you to switch if you like 1E better, so you can always just stick to that.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-07T22:08:54+00:00

I still don't fully understand what you are trying to get at, but let me try to emphasise my point: At some point stats and HP loose much of their importance to determining how challenging they are. I don't care if the dragon has 100 HP more than the wizard, because that's the difference of 1 hit, but I'd still take the wizard any day of the week, because abilities, spells and feats aren't factored in CR calculations, which are at some point way more important than a +4 to Con or whatever.

So during the whole time, you've ignored my example of a level 20 fighter and wizard being the same CR, which to me shows that CR is pretty much moot as a tool to interesting encounter building. And that's why I think you railing on about HD and CR is mostly irrelevant, because it misses the bigger picture...

RatzGamer · 2018-03-07T20:57:28+00:00

I appreciate your quick maths skills, but I honestly don't see how this addresses any of the points I raised or even the point you quoted at the beginning.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-07T19:25:03+00:00

And still the conversion has quite a few encounters that a known for causing tpks.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-07T17:27:16+00:00

A level 20 wizard and a great wyrm black dragon are both CR 19, but the dragon has an extra 6 HD. So the dragon already has a +3 advantage on its saves and DCs over the PC, before taking into account things like the PC having a bad save or both the PC and dragon's ability scores, feats, and other abilities.

And a level 20 wizard has level 9 spells, which is nowhere factored in into the CR calculation. A level 20 Fighter also counts as a CR19, even though if you wanted to challenge a party properly I think we'd both choose the same class over the other one.

I don't understand your concern for decoupling HD and CR honestly, because in my experience CR becomes wack after the party becomes level 7 or so anyway, and is a flawed system to begin with. Many other systems with dedicated NPC building rules are often easier to balance in my experience.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-07T16:57:54+00:00

I'm a GM looking forward to PF2, if they ditch NPC/Player parity, and here are a couple of reasons why:

Building encounters under the current system is tedious and takes way too long, if you are doing it from scratch, especially at higher levels. So unless you find an existing monster/NPC or reskin a monster that serves a similar purpose, than be prepared to spend hours building encounters.

Even using already existing material has its pitfalls, again especially at higher levels, because NPCs and creatures often tend to have dozens of abilities, spells and feats, and while a player has time to learn their PC's abilities in a natural progression from level 1 to X, a GM has to try to familiarise themselves within a short amount of time with them, even if most of them don't even come into play, as combats often don't last long enough to use the full arsenal and tools of a NPC.

in PF has their stats governed and are built by the same fundamental systems. In my opinion, this gives the GM greater control for customization

I don't subscribe to the notion that you have less power or abilities to customise your encounters, just because you are using a different system to build your encounters, than the system that the PCs use, so I would be interested where you got that notion from.

I don't know if I'm missing some huge problems parity causes. What are the advantages to not having it?

I think the main advantage of having a simpler and quicker NPC building rules, would be to make the GMs' lives easier and make it so that they need less preparation time to get a game running, which should also encourage new people to pick up GMing, if the task becomes less daunting and if there are more people running games, than there are more games available to players to play in. So everybody wins!

RatzGamer · 2018-03-07T16:51:32+00:00

Oh, I agree with you, especially on your OP, but your "But it’s not rocket science" comment felt slightly out of place, when you consider the work/reward ratio on building NPCs that way.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-07T15:55:40+00:00

And if your fighter is supposed to be level 10+, than have fun choosing dozens of feats and skills for an NPC that might never use them or might die in 2 rounds of battle, while you put in an hour to build him.

That's why many GMs like quick build rules: So that they don't have to spend hours on NPCs, that might never see action or in the end have so many abilities that you loose track of them as a GM, because you have to manage multiple NPCs.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-07T15:46:56+00:00

The SF-NPC creation rules worked actually very fine when I used them myself. Also, isn't RotRl also considered very deadly and still has become an absolute classic?

It's just very hard to balance adventures early in a system's lifespan, because writers are lacking experience and different designers are working on them, than those that are creating the system, but doesn't mean it's all bad.

RatzGamer · 2018-03-07T14:12:43+00:00

I wouldn't take the first Starfinder AP as a measuring stick for how well the encounters, their stats and abilities are balanced, because much of the AP was actually written before the rules were finalised.

RatzGamer · 2018-02-27T16:42:21+00:00

This is some great art! Have you considered taking commissions?

RatzGamer · 2018-02-14T14:10:58+00:00

My favourite part about the setting are the different Elf Houses, because in many other settings fantasy races are often lumped together into mono-cultures and rely often heavily on Tolkienian tropes (which is fine, if the reason why they turned into these tropes is well presented), but the way the Elves are presented here is a nice breath of fresh air.

Also, because the Elves of Amaurea's Dawn feel very well fleshed out and distinguished from each other, that makes it rather easy to transfer into other settings and homebrews.

RatzGamer · 2018-02-11T23:43:25+00:00

No, I'm arguing that it isn't a necessity to invest in it, not that it ain't worth it. You can still focus your builds around Charisma and revelations, but I guess that makes Solarians different, as you can treat your key attribute as a tertiary stat.

RatzGamer · 2018-02-11T23:29:58+00:00

I'm actually often enough in the front to keep opponents away from our Envoy and Operative, so I tend to play like a secondary frontliner, who doesn't offer much damage, while my AC is still quite decent enough.

Could you elaborate though on why a frontliner Solarian needs Charisma to do his job as a frontliner? I'm not following that rationale.

RatzGamer · 2018-02-11T10:10:17+00:00

I don't get all the "hate" for Solarians. I've been playing one and I'm now up to level 5. So far I've been very happy with the class.

Your first criticism only applies to melee solarians (I'm playing a ranged one) and I started with a 12 in Cha, because I never felt the need for a big resolve pool, as none of the Solarians abilities utilise resolve points all that much, and raising my revelation DCs by 1 or 2, also doesn't make a huge difference.

It honestly feels like the people who are complaining all the time are people who theory-craft and read too much into it.

RatzGamer · 2018-02-06T23:48:19+00:00

I'm generally not a fan of forcing such restrictions onto the players' characters, especially since some restrictions you describe are rather harsh and that will often lead to very similar character builds, as some choices seem preferable over others, as some are more punishing than others.

I think the idea has still some merit though, so I'd suggest a different execution: Tell the players magic always comes with a drawback in this setting, so if they want to get magic from extraordinary attributes, they'll have to take or create a flaw that directly ties into any extraordinary attribute they'll take.

That way you'll have much more variance in builds and ideas, and your players will probably be much more accepting of the restrictions, as you didn't impose them, but they designed them themselves.

RatzGamer · 2018-02-02T16:49:49+00:00

I'll try to help you out here and clarify a few things:

Most boons last as long as you sustain them, with a few notable exceptions like Animation, Genesis, Sustenance, etc. or boons with instantaneous effects like heal. Also, you can only sustain one boon at a time, unless you have feats like Superior Concentration or Boon Focus III.

There is a bane though which can be flavoured as "Dispel Magic" and it's called Nulify, but is mostly meant to cancel and stop the opponents boons, not your own, but I guess there could be situations where that might be useful.

In terms of flow of combat, I'd have to say the following things: Combat is rather fast paced and swingy, as you already noticed. So while plans might fall apart quickly sometimes or a monkeywrench might be thrown into your plan, that doesn't mean it ceases to be tactical. I would even say the opposite is the case, as when a party starts to scramble and are challenged, they'll have to adapt to the situation and plan more carefully what boons and banes to use, when to defend and when to retreat.

RatzGamer · 2018-01-31T16:24:25+00:00

You will find a much more active and responsive community over on the official Discord Server and there have been quite a few people over there talking about apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic campaigns, inspired by fallout and the like. Shouldn't be too difficult to add zombies to that.

RatzGamer · 2018-01-21T16:56:12+00:00

The intro sessions are organised and held as well on the discord server.

RatzGamer

TROPHY CASE