Le sigh.
That is all. Glad I only play with a heavily house-ruled home group who won't let this kinda backtrackin' stand!
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Le sigh.
That is all. Glad I only play with a heavily house-ruled home group who won't let this kinda backtrackin' stand!
To be fair, a lot of GMs weren't allowing the early entry rule anyway.
They could've left this one alone imo.
(Though to be perfectly honest, I wasn't using PrCs anyway.)
If I'm reading that right, that still allows Aasimar Daylight shenanigans, right?
What a pointless 'fix'.
It seems to now be "only if the thing you're trying to get into requires Daylight specifically." In other words, NOT if it requires "3rd-level spells."
And given the example they used... perhaps someone was trying to get their Barghest into, I dunno, Razmiran Priest or something. (I couldn't think of any PrCs that require 4ths.)
I'm generally all for making things easier to get into, and providing more options instead of less, but even I thought that early entry via SLA was bogus as a general rule. Prerequisites should mean something. Now if some abilities are so anemic that getting them 10 levels early doesn't unbalance anything, then the problem is that those abilities suck.
Same thing with ECL = CR. For a number of monsters, that's fine. As a carte-blanche rule? No way in hell. I know that LA was usually way overpriced, no argument there. But a Nymph is not a 7th level character, and a Ghaele Azata is not a 13th level one, especially not the way the rules are written (counting the given stats as 10-based, and allowing a full rebuild).
Not at all. James Jacobs just hates fun.
It wasn't even the early entry I cared about, it was the flexibility in dealing with abilities that didn't actually require spells in use but had an arbitrary prerequisite that said "You need x amount of spell training. For reasons." Feats like Arcane Strike and the like.
Sure, but the problem there is that most of what Paizo puts out is underpowered and over-prerequisited. I'd rather spot-fix things the players want to use up to spec. than basically throw away prerequisites entirely.
Although admittedly not an option in PFS. But PFS is already the "not too much fun" zone.
As far as logic goes, this is actually one that makes sense. SLAs are not spells.
Doesn't mean I don't think some feats and PrCs shouldn't be easier to get into, though.
Honestly, I'm surprised they let that go as long as they did.
And while we're on the subject of FAQ's...
Eldritch Heritage > WildBloodline finally has a definitive answer...
SpoilerNO!
Ugh, way to screw with us, Paizo. :smallsigh:
So when's that Eldritch Knight buff coming? What, never? You only stop supporting things? Got it.
Myrmidarch needed a patch, right? Did that come?
It's a little bit of both. Currently, all the prereq thresholds for the CRB archetypes are set too high, and the rewards for that investment are practically non-existent.
The prior ruling was nice in that it meant there were at least few viable options for accessing the associated character options. The limited number of races who could take advantage of them were unfortunate, but no more mechanically or thematically inconsistent than the 3.5 elf-only Arcane Archers, Dwarven Defenders, etc. Races with magic in their blood were more adept at learning techniques and styles that blended magic with other power sources or techniques; how is that weird?
My biggest issue with the FAQ is the same one I've had with a couple of their other ones, most notably the mounted combat FAQ: when there were two possible directions for the FAQ and balance was not an issue, they chose the direction that decreased viable character options. That bugs me just a little.
Now, I can see where this choice provides them with a more predictable rules base for future design, but seeing as how it's at the expense of existing materials and their previous FAQs and design decisions make it seem very unlikely that they'll do the kind of adjustments necessary to return the re-nerfed PrCs to viability... Well, it's a bit disappointing.
It also goes to show that Pathfinder Society is king in almost all of their decisions. It's showing up here, where the FAQ announcement was actually made in the PFS forums, it was the driving force behind the Crane Wing nerf, and it's been a major influence in other places. Since Pathfinder Society is the only place they can get solid statistics that include an even spread of system mastery levels, you can bet that whatever the consensus there is, it'll be reflected in the decisions made by the design team.
Look, if they started fixing things just because they were weak to the brink of useless, they'd be on a slippery slope of having to admit that crap options were actually undesirable, instead of "good fuel for roleplaying". :smallamused:
Far safer to just nerf the things that people whine about and/or catches their attention. I'd call it a bad plan, but their sales say otherwise. :smallsigh:
Edit: And agreed, PFS has much to answer for. At first I thought the relatively unrestricted access was a good thing, made it more tolerable in the case that I ever played a PFS game, but now I wish it went with a "walled garden" approach like Living Greyhawk had. At least then things that are only a problem when locked to pre-set encounters (Crane Wing) wouldn't be nerfed for the player-base at large.
Ssalarn is spot-on.
At the same time though, I can see why they might lean towards PFS as the driver for the balance decisions. After all, in a home game the GM can look at a FAQ ruling and say "yeah this feels too weak, I'm buffing it" or "this is still too strong, I'll take it down another notch." A PFS GM has none of these recourses - the law is the law. So since the home games can deal with it on their own, they tailor many of their decisions such that response (b) is hopefully less common than response (a).
But as far as buffing things - well, we've got the Melee Combat Toolbox coming out early this year (counterpart to the Ranged one we already got), and fixes/buffs for some of the ACG snafus, then after that we've got Pathfinder Unchained. And among all that, even more FAQs to come. Should be an interesting year!
That's a bit confusing though... let me see if I get this straight.
- Even though they're really just more distinct bloodlines, "wildblooded" counts as an archetype that replaces nothing, so they can't be taken by the Arcanist's bloodline exploit.
- Even though they're just more domains, "animal and terrain domains" and "subdomains" also count as an archetype. This means that the Inquisitor can't take them, and neither can the Divine Hunter (for who it would be fitting to take an animal domain, but no dice).
- Wizard arcane discoveries are also an archetype, not that that matters since there's no out-of-class way to pick them up.
- Wizard subschools, however, are not an archetype, so the Arcanist can still take those with his school exploit.
- Bard masterpieces are also an archetype, however the Skald class specifically mentions that it can take them anyway.
I can totally see the fluff-related arguments for and against this. I personally just think it seems smooth and logical that, like, races who are inherently magical have an easier time combining like thievery and magic (AT) or fighting and magic (EK) than people who don't, like, have magic in their frickin' blood. Anyway, I could see people not buying that, and that's fair enough. Fluff is very subjective.
This whole thing just kinda irks me because there was no inherent abuse, it made a lot of fun if suboptimal PrCs (like AT, which is something that doesn't really have a base class equivalent in PF in terms of role) viable. I mean, yeah, my group will probably just houserule this away. I guess I mostly feel bad for PFS folks and people whose GMs treat Paizo FAQs as gospel or whatever. Like, it doesn't personally affect me (at least unless our group votes to play by this new FAQ) but it seems unnecessary and, like Ssalarn said, I cannot fathom why you'd ever wanna rule in favour of fewer build options when abuse or balance ain't an issue. Anyway, yeah. Not the dramatic moment of the year. Just a mild, dull letdown.
I'm just glad that everyone is finally noticing how Paizo is a bunch of hacks who don't really care about making things fun. If only Dreamscarred made their own d20 spin off.
Who is this "everyone" you speak of? :smallconfused:
I'm expecting a lot of fake outrage over this as people angrily point to all the PrCs they weren't using anyway taking another level of waiting to get into.
Did I think the FAQ was fine as it was previously, sure, but I'm not about to lose sleep over it either way. Archetypes are the way to go in PF.
Wildblooded is meant to be a thing specifically for sorcerers. People were complaining when the Arcanist came out that there wouldn't be a need for sorcerers anymore; first Arcanists came along and effectively became the spontaneous caster that could swap out their spells known every morning, and along with that, the Blood Arcanist came along and took the bloodline abilities too. This is the quick and dirty fix to that - by making wildblooded and crossblooded be sorcerer-specific things, sorcerers still have things only they can do, such as being the arcane caster who can use all three mental stats. This ruling also means that they can tie bloodlines and hexes and other such modular things to specific archetypes (and thus bump them up in power) without worrying about it being easy for a non-member of that archetype to grab them. For example, this ruling means that a Hexcrafter Magus cannot crib the Frozen Caress hex from the Winter Witch. And while the ruling is specific to archetypes, it suggests that rules elements unique to a PrC are off limits too, like the Winter Witch PrC's Numbing Chill Hex also being off limits to a Hexcrafter.
For the masterpieces, yes, specific trumps general and the Skald gains access.
Ethereal: negative
NightbringerGGZ: meh
Arbane: unclear, put down as negative
icefractal: positive
Ilorin Lorati: negative
Raven777: seems positive
grarrrg: meh
Snowbluff: negative
Ssalarn: meh
Kurald: responding to different topic
Mithril Leaf: negative
That's 4/11 responses to the ruling being negative, then I throw in mine (meh) so I'd say you're being premature.
I'm seriously annoyed by this, but I'll just cross post
Quote:
Oh man, SLAs just got Crane Wing'd hard, as did most casting based prestige classes.
I dislike this ruling, but not because I liked the original one. It was silly, made for silly situations, and wasn't great. But it did help give Pathfinder more of a unique feel to it, something that made it feel different from 3.5 in a ruling sense. Something that in 3.5 would have been considered a 'no brainer' was an actual rule here, and I appreciated the amount of unique builds and such that this ruling allowed.
So while it's probably more balanced (that's debatable), it's also more boring and constricting, which feels like a large problem here. I liked my strange builds that were possible due to this, and letting it go for this long is the real problem. We grew comfortable with the old ruling and accepted it as a quirk of the system, and even made interesting concepts around it.
So yeah, this ruling just sort of bums me out.
Well, if you scrap the votes that don't care, you have 4 negative to one positive, right? I mean, you don't make a change for the people who don't think it matters, right?
Could you explain this one to me? I like mounted combat.
I think it might be less of a consensus and more of a vocal minority.Quote:
It also goes to show that Pathfinder Society is king in almost all of their decisions. It's showing up here, where the FAQ announcement was actually made in the PFS forums, it was the driving force behind the Crane Wing nerf, and it's been a major influence in other places. Since Pathfinder Society is the only place they can get solid statistics that include an even spread of system mastery levels, you can bet that whatever the consensus there is, it'll be reflected in the decisions made by the design team.
I'm actually quite happy with the ruling. But only because I think the SLA = Cast Spell of Level X admission thing to be a terrible bug and really should have been patched sooner. I do understand that people are disappointed with the ruling though.
Anyways, I think this'll cut down on the number of people using SLA's to break into PrC's that might be slightly dysfunctional for them. IE, using an SLA that scales by total class level to get into a spellcasting boosting PrC. I'm sure there's still plenty of holes, it's just this removes most of 'em.
How many people in this room use prestige classes? How many of you are affected negatively by this descision? While I have my own feelings, still I do understand many of you are dissatisfied
What I'm getting out of some responses: "wah wah, I can'tcheatcreatively work my way around RAI therefor the changes are stupid and horrible and everyone who tries to fix the game so it works as intended is a douche"
Cry me a river. I never allow cheap workarounds like that in any case so even if it was explicitly permitted and approved by the devs, it wouldn't fly at my table.
Why would you? "Meh" is in fact a valid response to this.
Besides, I was counting not to support the ruling itself, but to counter Mithril's bogus claim that "a majority in this thread" had some kind of epiphany about Paizo's black heart and chitinous exoskeleton based on the ruling. :smalltongue:
(On that note - 1 more negative and two more positive)
Do you let people play wizards? Playing a wizard is objectively stronger than nearly any usage of this workaround.
For the record not once did I say majority. I said everyone which was hyperbole. I don't respect how Paizo handles things as a rule of thumb, although the base rules of Pathfinder are in fact marginally better than 3.5s. They haven't real done anything beyond buff casters as far as balancing goes though.