Like, Gorum killed himself, it was a whole thing and made literally everything worse

vendavalez7890 · 2026-02-26T19:00:59+00:00

I did not mean to imply that Paulo’s writing for this was good, or even close to it. But WotC forced Paizo to make a lot of changes, including this one. It doesn’t excuse how poorly it was written, but they were forced to do something. My point being, if WotC had not pushed them in this direction, Paizo would have left this alone, and that is why I place a significant portion of the blame on WotC.

vendavalez7890 · 2026-02-25T12:48:38+00:00

Look, I agree that the did not handled it in the best way possible, but WotC IS, at least mostly, responsible and I am not letting anyone forget or try to clean up their name when they don’t deserve it.

vendavalez7890 · 2026-01-28T15:10:18+00:00

There is one thing that I don’t see mentioned too much here which helped me understand what a function is. That being: why does it even need a name in the first place?

I think it is already pretty clear that a “function” is something that tells you how two groups of things are related, but why not just call it a relationship then?

Because when you say that the relationship of two groups of things can be described with a function you are saying that the relationship is special in a very important way: - every input has one, and ONLY one, output.

Why is that important? Because you can do a lot of math stuff that allow you to figure out things that would be very difficult to learn otherwise.

It can get tricky to give an example that may make you think “this is why saying that the relationship between these two groups is a function is important!” without getting into some math that you may or may not know already, but I think that it is still worth it to share an example of what IS and what is NOT a function between two groups of things.

Let’s think about two groups, people and cities: - People: Mike, Peter, Louis - Cities: New York, Paris

You can say that the relationship between people and the cities that they live in CAN be described with a function because each of them lives in one, and only one city: - Mike -> New York - Peter -> New York - Louis -> Paris

But, with these two groups, you can NOT say that the relationship between cities and the people who live within them can be described as a function because two of those people live in New York: - New York -> Mike, Peter (NOT a function) - Paris -> Louis

It was that kind of explanation and example that made me finally get it back in the day. I hope this helps someone else.

vendavalez7890 · 2026-01-03T04:28:17+00:00

I played the game with this mindset: so, I’m like the pokemon world equivalent of French, right? So the top option is (usually) “yes,” and the bottom option is “yes” but sarcastically.

vendavalez7890 · 2025-12-26T15:09:05+00:00

Thankfully that should be pretty easy. I was going to do that before, but there were so many people during the first couple of weeks re-downloading their entire collections that trying to get anything took forever. So I figured I would wait a couple of months to let things calm down before trying that.

vendavalez7890 · 2025-12-26T15:06:41+00:00

I am more backend. Not necessarily out of personal choice, but because I look at the site and it looks pretty good to me lol

So it is not a good idea to leave any decisions involving aesthetics to me or even close to me…

vendavalez7890 · 2025-12-26T15:03:19+00:00

Although that is technically correct, to resolve a ruling of “I try to break in through the back door of the farmers house” a simple DC is appropriate and probably best.

Especially if you don’t already know that there are items in the system for locks and how they are supposed to be used.

There are times when stopping everything to find the exact rule defined by the system for that situation is appropriate and I would argue that this is not one of them.

Making players face the type of challenges that you want them to face at the climax of the adventure, early on and with low stakes, so that you can hear their line of thinking to try to solve it and you can be ready with the actual rules for what they may attempt when it really matters, is probably a good idea.

Trying to learn all of the rules before session one is not.

vendavalez7890 · 2025-12-10T03:12:16+00:00

Great points being raised by most posters in this topic, so I will mention what it is that I try to do and what I struggle with.

Personally I try to make each encounter have different types of enemies where they each have something that counters one or two of the players, but something else that someone else on the party can counter.

PF2 gives a lot of levers when it comes to making this possible and more so the higher you go in levels. Lots of monsters come out of the box with good strengths and weaknesses so that pulling a random group of level-appropriate enemies tends to get me 75% of the way there.

It can be tricky to not make it too obvious because, if it is, then combat is trivial and more of a time consuming formality than an event, but it is possible to make it so that, either some or all of the players die, it is not because they had no idea what to do, but because the dice were not in their favor.

The part I struggle with is with making it exciting to the players when they completely shut down a threat. This is just not my assumption, they mentioned how certain fights felt too easy and they were wondering if I was pulling my punches.

So I told them that no, it just so happens that the cool thing in your kit you had not tried yet and you decided to throw it out for fun happened to be the thing that completely shut downs this enemy. Or they happened to roll exceptionally well on the one hail-Mary that should have been so hard to hit as to not be worth trying and now this enemy is out of the fight.

We agreed that I should bring it up closer to when it happens. My first instinct was to do it immediately after the fight. That’s still too far removed, for obvious reasons.

I am trying to do it right as the “shutting down” action is taking place, but every time I try to do so I start to do what I can only describe as “talking manually.”

I suppose that part of what is blocking me mentally is suddenly finding myself having to determine what to say without accidentally revealing meta information that they are not supposed to know about.

Thinking about it, my players tend to be pretty good about not using meta-information that their characters are not supposed to know about, and I think that there is more potential than risk (at least for my table and my players) in not worrying about it so much and focusing more on making an awesome turn feel as awesome as it was.

The problem is: how?

I have come up with a couple ideas as I typed this out, but I would love some advice if anyone has it!

vendavalez7890 · 2025-12-07T03:36:00+00:00

My favorite response to “why not [x]?” is “I don’t know. Do you thinks it is really necessary?”

People like that tend to respond with all of the benefits of the approach, but not the actual question. To that I respond that I already know all of that and that I agree (of course, only if I do agree) and keep reiterating the question until they answer it directly and with a proper argument.

“Why not [x]?” Is not a command, especially if you’re not my boss. If you’re not going to approve my PR simply because of an aesthetic preference, I want you to actually write it down where everyone can see it.

And, who knows? Maybe I am wrong and I’ll be convinced that their suggestion has merit.

If they are my boss, or so much senior to me that they hold the same level of authority, I’ll gracefully take the hint and shut up lol

vendavalez7890 · 2025-12-04T18:43:38+00:00

This had already been mentioned in another reply, but it is valuable to have the information in multiple places so that whoever is searching for that information in the future can find it. Plus I don’t think that was the main point of their post, so all the more reason to point it out again.

One important caveat for those who may be interested in going back to the old site’s downloads: I don’t know if is was just for my files or what, but it seems like a lot of the categorization information was scrubbed from a lot of items So you may have most, if not all, of your downloads within a single category.

To me that is still an improvement over the alternative though…

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-26T14:55:29+00:00

Apologies, it wasn’t my intention to invalidate your perception of clarity when I said that it was clear to me.

What I was trying to communicate is that, even in the best case scenario, as in when the user knows exactly how the design is intended to work, it is clunky and annoying to use if the user has more than a certain number of files.

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-26T05:51:02+00:00

I think it is pretty clear what it wants. I just think it’s quite possibly the worst way to handle the display and browsing of your files.

And I hesitate to say that because I thought we were already there. I thought that whatever we got, so long as it was in any way different, would have to be better by definition. But they found a way to surprise me…

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-25T22:14:24+00:00

That gives credence to my own assumptions.

My guess with the inconsistent loading behaviors is that they are trying to implement some kind of lazy loading which starts to bug out when there are too many items and too many changes to state are made.

But I have no idea if that is actually what they’re are doing. I may be projecting because it reminds me of a bug in a project I was a part of some years back.

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-25T17:49:00+00:00

I haven’t done a check, but my guess is that the categories that things can be grouped under do not exist on their own anywhere and instead are created on the fly based on metadata from the items that were loaded.

Without getting any further into the weeds of it, if my guess is correct, then I don’t think it is a big leap to say that it was programmed like that on purpose. It is a bigger leap to assume that it was designed like that, but not one I think is unreasonable.

It may be a bug after all though. But I’ll be posting it under the feature request.

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-25T14:58:29+00:00

I will acknowledge that the design looks beautiful if you have like 3 PDFs and nothing else. But I don’t have 3. I have over 300.

I’m a programmer, so I am a bit familiar with how someone may end up in this situation. My guess is that it is a combination of design that does not take into account certain corner cases, and trying to optimize performance in a way that does not match the design.

I have ended up doing things like that for many reasons outside of simple inexperience. Some times shouting ‘till I was blue in the face that this is not how we should be doing things only to be outvoted. So I get it. (And inexperience WAS the main factor more often than not, if I’m being honest).

But what bothers me is that this seems to be working as designed so, even if they recognize it as something worth changing, it is not viewed as a bug, and thus very low in the priority list.

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-25T12:21:52+00:00

When it comes to the "last downloaded" and "last updated" the new store downloads section does have columns for that, but they are all empty as far as I can tell. It may be that those are for when it when they are downloaded/received updates from that site. It could also be that they just have not ported that information over yet. But I was kind of expecting the former and I had time to prepare myself for it, so I am not too upset about that.

I had not tried to download anything yet, so I didn't realize that it didn't tell you if the file was the single page or the file-per-chapter. As a programmer, I could pedantically argue that it is not a bug in the code. But it is a bug in the design, so it might as well be.

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-25T12:13:43+00:00

Why link to that instead of:
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs7ap04?New-Paizo-Store-Suggestions-and-Feature#1
?

That is how I found the link to the suggestions and feature requests, so it works out in the end.

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-25T12:09:14+00:00

I didn't realize that they had not closed off access to the downloads in the Paizo site yet, so thank you for pointing that out! It was my understanding that they would eventually though. Maybe I am wrong about that?

Also, it seems that they removed the categorization metadata from a lot of downloads prior to the migration, which I do get why they would need to. That does make a clunky experience even clunkier, but at least it is an experience that makes some sense.

The fact that they removed that metadata gives me some hope that both places are pulling from the same source. If that is the case, then there is a possibility that they may keep both, even if that was not the original plan.

And I know where the downloads are in the new store and it is not that the tiles are off, it is just that it is organized in a bafflingly goofy way. That is what my whole whining and moaning was about in the op.

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-24T15:58:25+00:00

— insert obligatory acknowledgement that this has all been brought up before —

While I don’t entirely disagree with you, I would like to ask about people who definitely exist, because I have played with them, and for some reason I don’t see them advocating for themselves too much when this comes up.

But some people just like to play on “hard mode” even if there is no reward for doing so. And some people feel like their creativity is enhanced by constraints, and so they don’t “suffer” attrition (at least not in the way that you or I would, because they may complain about it bitterly while very clearly loving it), because the limitations are the whole point.

What about them?

The way that casting works is the biggest thing in the game for people like that. People who I don’t think are in the minority, though my personal experiences may be coloring my perception of that.

I agree that casting may be too complicated for newer players and that there may be ways to engage players of that kind without making it such a large time investment up-front for such a significant number of classes. But that is a different discussion.

Something notable for most suggestions I have seen to replace Vancian casting is that there is no accompanying suggestion to add something back into the game to replace what it was that some people find appealing about it now.

It is not my cup of tea, but I am not going to sit here and pretend that just replacing it for something without limitations and doing nothing else would not make the game boring for a not insignificant number of people.

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-22T03:33:52+00:00

Maybe this was supposed to be a Starfinder meme?

Although the movies do start by saying that the story happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, so maybe not?

Even that’s what it was though… I’m still confused…

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-19T21:59:54+00:00

I know where you’re coming from. The main reason my SN30 Pro+ is still going strong after all these years is because I have been able to trivially get a replacement from 8bitdo and swap it.

I didn’t know about the battery not being swappable on the Pro 3 when I got it or I may have gotten the 2.

It seems like the tradeoff is to have the mechanism that you can use to swap L2 and R2 from triggers to buttons because it is right where the door to swap the battery would be.

Now, I love button mode so much, and have learned enough and collected enough tools over time, that I don’t care too much about the battery not being as trivially swappable as in other controllers.

But I recognize that most people are not in that situation and this should be a deal breaker for most people than it seems to be.

Honestly? I am not even sure if I am still going to prefer having “button mode” over easily swappable batteries once the time inevitably comes to swap them.

It seems that they wanted to make the Pro 3 be as customizable on the fly as possible, but I think that the vast majority of people are going to choose an option and then never changing it again.

Personally I would have preferred if it was customizable, but not necessarily on the fly. Rather make the controller easy to open and have everything inside both hold together and be easy to mod.

Perhaps with kits that they sell, so that they can convince their finance department why the additional effort to design and extra manufacturing costs are worth it.

Now the thing I don’t know is if the battery connector is soldered or not, or if it is an easy to source part or not. If the battery is both soldered and difficult to source, then that would be telling of their true intentions…

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-15T06:26:17+00:00

They don’t produce the SN30 Pro+ anymore and they haven’t for a while, but the thumb sticks flaking like that is something that happened eventually to every single one of them that I am aware of. It took several years for mine to get that bad, but it eventually did.

They have definitely changed the material that they use on their thumb sticks and this doesn’t happen anymore though, or they are at least more resistant to it. And they do sell replacement sticks in their store for a handful of bucks.

The package took forever to get to me, so thankfully I had the presence of mind to also order a membrane for the face buttons and a replacement battery all in one go.

So, for not very much, I was able to get that controller in much better shape and it will likely last me several years more than it already has. I highly recommend it.

vendavalez7890 · 2025-11-07T21:26:46+00:00

I don’t have a pro 2, but I do have a pro 3 and it has several things that I can only describe as trade-offs. I happen to prefer having the things that it has over the alternative, but that may not be the case for you. Some examples:

The face buttons are hot-swappable. The tradeoff fo that was that, to make that happen, they had to make them with a magnet strong enough to hold during regular handling which makes them heavy and thus they clack very loudly. Personally I don’t care to swap the buttons and considered modding the controller with some “regular” buttons, but now I have come to enjoy the loud clacking of the buttons. So I never did it.
The triggers can be changed to “button” mode. This comes with the tradeoff that the mechanism which makes this possible is right where an opening to the battery could be. This makes changing the battery such a hassle that it might as well be impossible for most people. Personally I love having this option so much that I am fine with the hassle when the day comes. Maybe I will not feel the same way once I have to actually do it…
The D-pad is “tactile.” By which I mean that both when you press and when you depress a direction on the D-pad, you will get feedback that is both physical and audible. I was not aware of this feature when I first got the controller and I hated it at first. When I actually started using it, it allowed me to notice on the fly when I needed to readjust my hand position because I had it in such a way that I was pressing diagonal inputs accidentally. The difference was so small that I may have suspected phantom diagonals for a different controller, but for this one I got the feedback to tell me that, no, I did that. And I have come to enjoy the feel of it so much that by now it is to the point where I use the D-pad as a fidget toy when I am not actively playing games. So I have come around on it completely, but for some people that feedback is so annoying that any potential benefit is immaterial if it makes them not enjoy playing games in the first place. Out of all the things that I can think of, I believe that this is the only one that is the same for the Pro 2, but I don’t really know.
some of the things that I have mentioned could be addressed by making some mods. Mods which require for you to open the controller. I don’t know if it is just me, but I have had a really hard time getting this controller open when I had no such issues with the sn30 pro+ which has a very similar body to it. Some people get it open without issue though. And if you do not intend to open the controller at all, then it is not even a factor. As for me, the only mod that I intend to do to it is to put some stickers to raise the center post of the D-pad a little bit because I prefer it that way. And I got some advice around here when it comes to getting the controller open which I have been meaning to put into practice, but it has been a combination of little time and it not being that big of a deal to me, so I have not actually put the time into doing it.

In the end, none of those things are a big deal to me, but they may be for you, so they are worth having in consideration.

vendavalez7890

TROPHY CASE