Mothers Day and Fathers Day are promoted all across this country by businesses. Restaurants, florists, greeting card manufacturers, and a host of other small and large industries rely on and promote the holiday to drive sales.
And this is not what this post is about.
I think a lot of people have a lot of stress on these two holidays. Every family has issues, and it seems like no matter what issues you might have, you are expected to set these aside one (or two) days a year and tell your mother and father how great a job they did, and by-the-way, here's some flowers, or a tie, or a lunch.
But there's a lot of people that really would like to skip that holiday altogether. If you grew up in an abusive home, why would you want to tell the abuser that they are a great parent? For that matter, it's a reminder of just how crappy you had it growing up. Let's rub some salt into that wound.
What if you have lost one or both parents. You get a yearly reminder of that empty spot in your heart, and the phone calls you no longer get to make.
Even worse. What if you are a parent, and you don't get that phone call, or card or lunch? Is it a condemnation of your parenting? Or is your child simply forgetful, or very busy? What if you've lost a child? God, to think that every year, other parents are celebrating a holiday with their kids that you will never ever get to celebrate again. There's a Lifetime-For-Women movie in there somewhere because it makes me sad just to consider abstractly.
Then there's sibling issues. What if you have a brother or sister and they celebrate "better" than you do? Now somehow you have to start competing to show your parent that you love them just as much as your brother who by-the-way also lives in a nicer house and has a wife with a better ass? As if you didn't have to worry about enough things in your life that you really wanted to add "Do I show my mom I love her enough?"
Or what if your parents are aging, and you start wondering how many holidays they might have left with you. Do you make them into bigger celebrations in some morbid "prove my love before he/she dies" kind of thing?
Anyway.
All of this seems like a lot of stress.
I love my parents. I hope my son loves me. He texted me "Happy Fathers Day. Relax and have lemonade!" Which was nice, but I'm not sure on the whole lemonade thing. I don't have any strong memories of us ever sitting back and enjoying lemonade together. And I'm going to puzzle over that one for at least a few days.
Maybe we should get rid of these two holidays, and just tell the people in our lives that we appreciate, that we appreciate them.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Savage Worlds - Old West
KEJR ran a Savage Worlds one-shot last night at the Gopher. (Best game store in town.)
We were a group of old-west outlaws with a price on our heads. The run started with us encountering a set of slightly less outlaw types who wanted to kill/capture us for the bounty. We took them down fairly quickly, except that the very first round my character took two wounds, that he had for the remainder of the night.
We met some city-slicker guy named Gabe, who gave us directions to a town - Revelation. In the town, we met up with various people who had been killed by a corrupt Marshall that we knew from our outlaw days. Except these people were all undead of one sort or another, and we had to take them down.
Eventually we met up with the marshall himself in th church. A difficult fight ensued, but we won - only to meet some other guy named Lu who wanted us keep going down the dark side, while Gabe encouraged us to be good guys. We eventually decided that maybe Gabe was a better friend that that Lu guy, and made the choice to try to be better people.
All in all it was a fun one-shot. KEJR did an awesome job, as always.
We were a group of old-west outlaws with a price on our heads. The run started with us encountering a set of slightly less outlaw types who wanted to kill/capture us for the bounty. We took them down fairly quickly, except that the very first round my character took two wounds, that he had for the remainder of the night.
We met some city-slicker guy named Gabe, who gave us directions to a town - Revelation. In the town, we met up with various people who had been killed by a corrupt Marshall that we knew from our outlaw days. Except these people were all undead of one sort or another, and we had to take them down.
Eventually we met up with the marshall himself in th church. A difficult fight ensued, but we won - only to meet some other guy named Lu who wanted us keep going down the dark side, while Gabe encouraged us to be good guys. We eventually decided that maybe Gabe was a better friend that that Lu guy, and made the choice to try to be better people.
All in all it was a fun one-shot. KEJR did an awesome job, as always.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Long time, no post...
I've been meaning to post, but I haven't had a reason to write much.
I've been trying to stop bashing Paizo in print (electronic or otherwise), so no matter how high my frustration level is with what's going on with the Paizo messageboards, I haven't commented. Much. Lately. And I can't really go into any details without breaking my own posting fast. (Though KEJR and I email back and forth a lot.)
My wife and I celebrated our 24th anniversary on Monday. It was really a weekend of celebration. We went to Silvercreek restaurant on Friday to see David Howie play. (Local guitarist/singer/songwriter - he's really talented, and a very nice guy.) We told him that we were celebrating our anniversary, and he sang "All you need is love" for us. Very very cool!
On Monday, we went to Boomerangs because my wife wanted to see and possibly play in their open jam. We had a great time, and she got up on stage to play for the first time in many years. Awesome fun!
We did Trivia at another bar last night, and teamed with Team Funk. We won the music round thanks to my wife's awesome song knowledge of 80's music.
But nothing controversial, or particularly interesting.
Tomorrow I have Pathfinder with KEJR's Council of Thieves game. That should be great fun, and I'll hopefully write up a recap.
Other than that, I'm trying to get a lot of coding and hardware done before the end of the month trip to the Home Office.
I've been trying to stop bashing Paizo in print (electronic or otherwise), so no matter how high my frustration level is with what's going on with the Paizo messageboards, I haven't commented. Much. Lately. And I can't really go into any details without breaking my own posting fast. (Though KEJR and I email back and forth a lot.)
My wife and I celebrated our 24th anniversary on Monday. It was really a weekend of celebration. We went to Silvercreek restaurant on Friday to see David Howie play. (Local guitarist/singer/songwriter - he's really talented, and a very nice guy.) We told him that we were celebrating our anniversary, and he sang "All you need is love" for us. Very very cool!
On Monday, we went to Boomerangs because my wife wanted to see and possibly play in their open jam. We had a great time, and she got up on stage to play for the first time in many years. Awesome fun!
We did Trivia at another bar last night, and teamed with Team Funk. We won the music round thanks to my wife's awesome song knowledge of 80's music.
But nothing controversial, or particularly interesting.
Tomorrow I have Pathfinder with KEJR's Council of Thieves game. That should be great fun, and I'll hopefully write up a recap.
Other than that, I'm trying to get a lot of coding and hardware done before the end of the month trip to the Home Office.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Overlooked Sci-Fi Weapon of Coolness
I'm watching old Andromeda reruns, and I'm thinking that if I could only ever have one scifi weapon, this might be the one.
From Wikipedia:
So let's recap:
From Wikipedia:
The High Guard Force Lance (from Andromeda)
The Force Lance generally looks like a harmless metal rod approximately 1/3 of a meter in length which fires high energy plasma shots, but can extended to almost 2 meters and be used as a melee weapon. The Lance is keyed to its handlers DNA and can also be reprogrammed, a person will be electrically shocked when trying to use another's programmed Lance. It can also be used as a taser.
The Force Lance can launch a number of self-guided tiny attack drones (called “effectors”) that both target opponents and intercept incoming bullets and missiles. It has a grappling hook function, it can be placed in a stationary position to be set on auto fire, & finally it can be used as a plasma grenade by setting it to overload.
So let's recap:
- It's a quarterstaff
- It fires plasma bolts
- It's a taser
- It fires self-guided drones that target either people, or incoming bullets and missiles
- It has a grappling hook
- It can work as a sentry gun
- You can use it as a grenade (but then you don't have one anymore)
- And...If anyone but you tries to use it, they automagically get tazed!!
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Roads less travelled
Okay, the title is cool, but really is only slightly related to topic.
The wife and I went to trivia last night. We decided to team up with Breyfunk and his Grife (Girlfriend/Wife - long story). Usually we prefer to just be by ourselves, as it's kind of a date night. But we actually did two bar trivia's this week.
The first was a small pub called Bentley's. Older crowd, and the trivia was incredibly difficult. Questions like "Who is the composer who finished Mozart's last work?" Or something like that. We got about half of all the questions right, and that put us way down on the list.
So on Tuesday, we went to our usual spot. This place has a younger crowd, somewhat rowdier, and sometimes more inebriated. But the questions are a little more our speed. Breyfunk and his grife stopped by, and we sort of did the should we sit near each other, or farther away thing, and eventually decided to team up. Usually my wife and I are Team Blue, and they are Team Funk. (Actually a lot less imaginative than such team names as "Obama has a Small Stimulus Package" and "My Big Fact Hunt") But together we went with the name Blue Funk.
We didn't win any rounds, though we got 54 out of 55 points for 80's music. My wife really knows 80's music. (Except apparently Violent Femmes. That was the one point we missed.) We did place second overall, as we consistently got good scores that just weren't quite high enough to win any round.
The wife and I went to trivia last night. We decided to team up with Breyfunk and his Grife (Girlfriend/Wife - long story). Usually we prefer to just be by ourselves, as it's kind of a date night. But we actually did two bar trivia's this week.
The first was a small pub called Bentley's. Older crowd, and the trivia was incredibly difficult. Questions like "Who is the composer who finished Mozart's last work?" Or something like that. We got about half of all the questions right, and that put us way down on the list.
So on Tuesday, we went to our usual spot. This place has a younger crowd, somewhat rowdier, and sometimes more inebriated. But the questions are a little more our speed. Breyfunk and his grife stopped by, and we sort of did the should we sit near each other, or farther away thing, and eventually decided to team up. Usually my wife and I are Team Blue, and they are Team Funk. (Actually a lot less imaginative than such team names as "Obama has a Small Stimulus Package" and "My Big Fact Hunt") But together we went with the name Blue Funk.
We didn't win any rounds, though we got 54 out of 55 points for 80's music. My wife really knows 80's music. (Except apparently Violent Femmes. That was the one point we missed.) We did place second overall, as we consistently got good scores that just weren't quite high enough to win any round.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Wordcasting Suckage
So, after my last post (probably not related to my last post) KEJR decided to allow Ultimate Magic in the Council of Thieves game.
"Great!", I thought to myself (who else would I think to? anyway...). Now I can convert my level 8 bard to wordcasting. The concept held a lot of promise for me, and I was kind of excited to get to use something in this $40 book I have. Something. Anything.
So I asked KEJR, and he okayed a change. He even gave a thumbs up to retraining Spell Focus (Enchantment) and Greater Spell Focus (Enchantment) (which I've referred to as the bran muffin of a spellcaster. It's a really good thing to make it harder to save, but it's two whole feats invested. But at the time, and still, I think/thought that it's a good thing to do. Bran muffins - not always what you would prefer to eat, but it's better for you.)
So I sat down to see exactly what I could do with the casting. And the results were surprising.
As an 8th level human bard, with bard as favored class, I get an extra spell each level (at least one level lower than highest spell I can cast). So at 8th level, I get:
Spell Level Spells Known
0 9
1 8
2 6
3 3
And I can spend these spells on either effect words or meta words. So far, so good.
So I look at what words are available to bards.
Spell Level Effect Words Meta Words
0 6 3 (1 is given free at first level)
1 11 3
2 15
3 10
Okay, so right off, there's a problem. I know 9 level-0 words, but there are only 8 available to bards. Hmm. Well, there's a wasted bonus. I guess that would turn into a skill point. (grumble,grumble).
Then I look at the level 1 meta words. There's "Careful", "Quiet", and "Simple", which are effectively eschew materials, silent spell, and still spell (not in that order). But hey, I thought bards couldn't use silent spell? Look in rules. Look at Bards. Hmm. Nothing in the rules. I can't believe this isn't an oversight, so I throw that out anyway to limit my own power gaming. (Yes, it's really me.)
Then I start actually looking at the words. Okay, what I understood to be the idea behind the wordcaster was that he gave up some power level in exchange for versatility. For any spell, you specify a target word, one or more effect words, and then one or more meta words. I can live with that. I like versatility.
So I'm looking at the target words. I get things like Selected (one creature), Burst, Line, Cone. Cool! But waitasec. I'm looking at my effect words.
Out of 32 words available to me as an 8th level bard, only six allow any kind of choice in targeting. And three of those are the choice between Personal and Selected. Which mean that for just about all of my potential casting, targeting words really do nothing. Wow. This is not as good as I thought it might be. In fact it's less good than I'd probably want to deal with.
Oh. But waitasec again!!! I get Meta words!! Three times a day, I can apply a meta word to my spells, just as if I had applied a metamagic feat! That's pretty cool. So what Metas do I get?
I automatically get Boost. So I'm looking at my spells, and either the boost is a 1 level bump to the spell level (accounting for the repeats on my available words list, which cut down the actual number of words I get), or they are 3 level bumps to the spell level. Which put them outside of my ability to cast. And really just turn "1 Creature" target spells to "1 Creature/Level". Hmmm.
Okay, so I can sort of see some logic here. They really didn't want to give wordcasters any brokenness. They wanted to give them flexibility.
EXCEPT THEY AREN"T FLEXIBLE!!!!
All the spells I get, are either the same level, or higher level than a straight spellcaster. All the spells I get (well, basically all) are hardwired as to what I can choose as a target word.
So what I'm left with is an extremely short spell list, that provides far less power than if I were just a straight caster.
I really really wanted to like this system. But it's really just 34 pages of unusable dreck. It's a restatement of basic spells, under the guise of being a new system. A spontaneous caster should be able to do lots of cool awesome stuff by mixing and matching effects and targets and metas, but really, nothing is mix-and-matchable.
Sigh.
As one of the designers pointed out on the Paizo messageboards, sometimes players make poor choices in building their characters, and Paizo views it as their job to provide those poor choices. (Or something suspiciously familiar to that.)
"Great!", I thought to myself (who else would I think to? anyway...). Now I can convert my level 8 bard to wordcasting. The concept held a lot of promise for me, and I was kind of excited to get to use something in this $40 book I have. Something. Anything.
So I asked KEJR, and he okayed a change. He even gave a thumbs up to retraining Spell Focus (Enchantment) and Greater Spell Focus (Enchantment) (which I've referred to as the bran muffin of a spellcaster. It's a really good thing to make it harder to save, but it's two whole feats invested. But at the time, and still, I think/thought that it's a good thing to do. Bran muffins - not always what you would prefer to eat, but it's better for you.)
So I sat down to see exactly what I could do with the casting. And the results were surprising.
As an 8th level human bard, with bard as favored class, I get an extra spell each level (at least one level lower than highest spell I can cast). So at 8th level, I get:
Spell Level Spells Known
0 9
1 8
2 6
3 3
And I can spend these spells on either effect words or meta words. So far, so good.
So I look at what words are available to bards.
Spell Level Effect Words Meta Words
0 6 3 (1 is given free at first level)
1 11 3
2 15
3 10
Okay, so right off, there's a problem. I know 9 level-0 words, but there are only 8 available to bards. Hmm. Well, there's a wasted bonus. I guess that would turn into a skill point. (grumble,grumble).
Then I look at the level 1 meta words. There's "Careful", "Quiet", and "Simple", which are effectively eschew materials, silent spell, and still spell (not in that order). But hey, I thought bards couldn't use silent spell? Look in rules. Look at Bards. Hmm. Nothing in the rules. I can't believe this isn't an oversight, so I throw that out anyway to limit my own power gaming. (Yes, it's really me.)
Then I start actually looking at the words. Okay, what I understood to be the idea behind the wordcaster was that he gave up some power level in exchange for versatility. For any spell, you specify a target word, one or more effect words, and then one or more meta words. I can live with that. I like versatility.
So I'm looking at the target words. I get things like Selected (one creature), Burst, Line, Cone. Cool! But waitasec. I'm looking at my effect words.
| 0-Level Bard Words | Targeting Limitation | ||||||
| Beacon | Divination | Personal | |||||
| Cramp | Pain | None | |||||
| Decipher | Language | Personal | |||||
| Echo | Illusion | Burst | |||||
| Lift | Gravity | Personal | |||||
| Sense Magic | Detection | Cone | |||||
| 1st-Level Bard Words | |||||||
| Friendship | Command | Selected | |||||
| Simple Order | Command | Selected | |||||
| Fade | Concealing | Selected | |||||
| Spook | Fear | Selected | |||||
| Glide | Flight | Selected | |||||
| Lesser Cure | Healing | Personal, Selected | |||||
| Radiance | Illumination | Burst(emanation) | |||||
| Decipher * | Language | Personal | |||||
| Wrack | Pain | None | |||||
| Servitor I | Summoning | Selected | |||||
| Dash | Time | Personal | |||||
| 2nd-Level Bard Words | |||||||
| Paralyze Humanoid | Binding | Selected | |||||
| Enhance Form | Body | Personal, Selected | |||||
| Disappear | Concealing | Selected | |||||
| Sense Hidden | Detection | Cone | |||||
| Sense Thoughts | Detection | Cone | |||||
| Suppress | Dispelling | Selected | |||||
| Float | Flight | Selected | |||||
| Moderate Cure | Healing | Personal, Selected | |||||
| Gloom | Illumination | Burst(emanation) | |||||
| Glimmering | Illusion | Burst(emanation) | |||||
| Translate | Language | Selected | |||||
| Discordant Note | Sonic | None | |||||
| Servitor II | Summoning | Selected | |||||
| Accelerate | Time | Selected | |||||
| Decelerate | Time | Selected |
Oh. But waitasec again!!! I get Meta words!! Three times a day, I can apply a meta word to my spells, just as if I had applied a metamagic feat! That's pretty cool. So what Metas do I get?
I automatically get Boost. So I'm looking at my spells, and either the boost is a 1 level bump to the spell level (accounting for the repeats on my available words list, which cut down the actual number of words I get), or they are 3 level bumps to the spell level. Which put them outside of my ability to cast. And really just turn "1 Creature" target spells to "1 Creature/Level". Hmmm.
Okay, so I can sort of see some logic here. They really didn't want to give wordcasters any brokenness. They wanted to give them flexibility.
EXCEPT THEY AREN"T FLEXIBLE!!!!
All the spells I get, are either the same level, or higher level than a straight spellcaster. All the spells I get (well, basically all) are hardwired as to what I can choose as a target word.
So what I'm left with is an extremely short spell list, that provides far less power than if I were just a straight caster.
I really really wanted to like this system. But it's really just 34 pages of unusable dreck. It's a restatement of basic spells, under the guise of being a new system. A spontaneous caster should be able to do lots of cool awesome stuff by mixing and matching effects and targets and metas, but really, nothing is mix-and-matchable.
Sigh.
As one of the designers pointed out on the Paizo messageboards, sometimes players make poor choices in building their characters, and Paizo views it as their job to provide those poor choices. (Or something suspiciously familiar to that.)
Monday, May 23, 2011
Ultimate Writers Cramp
I've been meaning to post for a few days now, but life seems to conspire against me. Or maybe I conspire against myself. I've had few ideas, and the ones I have I'm not sure I want to write about. But here's the number one on my list.
I stated on Paizo's boards a couple of months ago that I was done buying Paizo material for a while. But I broke my own (vow? no, not really a vow, more a pronouncement) statement and went ahead and bought Ultimate Magic. I pre-ordered it from The Gopher because I believe in supporting my FLGS. By pre-ordering it, I got a nice discount that would just about cover the cost of the PDF, because I've been trying to buy my PDF's lately instead of just bootlegging them all outright.
Ultimate Magic has had some fairly bad pre-press, as most of the content got posted up on a fan site a couple of weeks early. (Fan site not named as I'm still petty about the fact that they lifted all of their initial content from a site that I created.) People started going through and finding some of the content as being either unbalanced, or just plain bad.
Examples:
The feat Antagonize. This feat has no prerequisites (the fan site misquoted this and said that it required 13 Dex. There is no actual prerequisite, only making the feat that much more broken.), but allows the character to make an intimidate or diplomacy check against a ridiculously easy DC (Target's HD + WIS modifier. You get a bonus to the check equal to your CHA mod with an easy to make Sense Motive check). If successful, the target of the feat is either forced to attack the character in melee (if intimidate was used) or to suffer -2 to any action that isn't on attack on the character (if diplomacy was used). Here's the actual text:
What's wrong with this feat? Hmm. Several things:
1) It's mind control with no save.
2) The DC is very low. The check is very easy. A 10HD enemy with a +3 WIS mod is a DC 13 check. A 1st level character with Intimidate as a class skill, and a +3 CHA modifier who makes the Sense Motive check, starts with (1 [rank Intimidate] + 3 [class skill bonus] +3 [charisma bonus] + 3[additional charisma bonus from sense motive check]) +10 to the check. Which means that he needs to roll a 3 on the die to succeed.
3) If successful, the enemy is forced to attack him in melee. Never mind if the enemy is a ranged combatant, or a pure spellcaster. The enemy must attack in melee. Even if this isn't an autokill for an enemy sucking up attacks of opportunity on the way to the feat-user, it still ties him up for at least one turn.
4) If the enemy cannot get to the feat-user, the feat-user can spend an immediate action to extend the effect for one round. Thus tying up the enemy completely for another round.
5) Petty point, but they even fail to spell "intimidate" correctly. They spell it "intimitade" in the text of the feat.
There are a few other glaring problems in the book so far, but by far this seems to be the biggest sore spot.
So you might be saying to yourself (or me), "What's the big deal. There's lots of material in the book, and there's bound to be a few errors that slip through. Look at the 90+% of the book that isn't screwed up and watch them fix this in an errata sometime. (I've seen this argument on the Paizo messageboards.)
And this argument really pisses me off. Here's why.
1) The presence of spelling errors indicates a lack of even basic editing. Every word processing program on the planet at this point has a spell-checker. Unless you happen to be using Notepad as your text editor. I think even vi has a spell checker at this point. {just looked. Vim does. Vi may not.) Aitch E Double Toothpicks, the blogger software I'm writing this on has a spell checker. To allow spelling errors through is simply unacceptable, and is indicative of a break down in the quality control process somewhere. (If the spelling mistake is of a homonym that is misused, I can almost forgive as the spell-checker probably won't point it out, but even then, the human editor should notice such things.)
2) This company is a publisher of printed material. And has been for some time. I've worked for an employer where part of my job was producing written material for publication. And every single word that was published went through a sign-off process where the writer would submit his text to an editor. The editor would review the material and send it back with a markup indicating what needed to be changed for clarity and correctness. Once the writer and editor had both come to an agreement on the text, it then went to a senior reviewer for his comments or changes. Once the senior reviewer was satisfied, the material was able to be published. None of this really took a lot of extra time, and I found, as a writer, that my work got better after I had seen how the editor wanted form to be. When writing, I would include "Hmm, John is going to want to know how I got this number. I should include it now. He'll also not like my use of the passive voice here, and tell me to rewrite it. I'll just write it how he wants it now." My work would tend to match that form the first time I submitted it, and the amount of suggested changes gradually decreased.
By the time anything was published, it had been signed off on by the writer, the editor, and the senior reviewer. Project proposals that I would submit to an outside funding agency were also reviewed by our finance department for correctness, and were also reviewed by the head of the department and his head of section.
It's inconceivable to me that Paizo does not have something similar in place to manage their editing. None of this actually affects the ability to get projects done on time, it simply means that you need to plan the pipeline and make sure that things get done when you need them done. (My project proposals has something like a six week turn-around time from the date the funding agency announced they were going to accept proposals until they were due in-hand at the agency. This means I had two to three weeks to figure out what I was going to propose, to write the proposal and develop a budget. And then I had two to three weeks to get the write up entirely through the editing/approval process. And I was the lowest of the low on the totem pole when it came to assigning projects priority. (I was a scientific researcher without a degree competing for state research money with teams of PhD's.)
3) Power Level/Balance - I'm not sure how anyone at Paizo didn't recognize the insane power level of this little feat. Does this mean that it was a throw-in at the last minute, or that they simply didn't playtest this product? Similar power level issues occur with at least one spell that breaks the very guidelines for spell construction that are part of the new material in the book.
4) The "lots of stuff, bound to be a few errors" argument doesn't hold water for me. The idea behind quality control is that if you implement correct QC procedures, you make it impossible for mistakes to get through to the final product. It's like saying "That car you bought has 7000 parts. It's inevitable that a couple of percent of those parts are going to be badly designed." This would amount to something like 140 parts in a car being of poor design. In fact the opposite is true. When something is found to be of bad design in a particular car, it's generally a big enough deal that the car company fixes it for free. And they look at how something like that got through and how they can avoid it in the future. There's a whole field of Quality Control/Quality Assurance designed around preventing bad design items from slipping through.
So overall, I'm in a quandry with this book. I've got one DM saying that nothing in it will even be considered until it's posted on Paizo's PRD. I've got another DM that I'm not sure I want to even approach about using material out of until it's had time to go through errata. Which leaves me with $40 worth of doorstop for now. Looking at what Paizo's own campaign allows, it carves out a fairly large chunk of the book as not worthy of being included in their shared-world. No words-of-power. None of the alternative options. But they do allow the above- mentioned Antagonize (I spelled this wrong initially, and my spell-checker caught it. Hmm. Spell-checkers in 2011? Amazing!) feat. So I'm pretty much wishing I hadn't bought the book, or that I had only bought the PDF.
Wow, I sound like I'm bashing Paizo. Maybe I am on this one. KEJR made the point that people who only cheer for Paizo do them a disservice, as they give the false impression that everything is fine instead of rightly pointing out where Paizo could do better. I once worked for a company that had made big money in the early 80's by putting out a product at the exact right time. No matter how badly they managed the company, they still made money hand-over-fist for years, because of their initial timing. They got to the point though where they thought the money proved that all their bad decisions were good ones because no matter what they decided they made money. (They were getting false positive reinforcement on bad decisions which warped their future decision making process.)
I've said before that I really hope Paizo does well as a company. I still hope so. But if UM is an indication of where the company is headed, then I'm afraid that they might have some hard lessons ahead. As for me, I'm going to hold off on any more purchases until I start seeing a change.
Edit:
Under the heading of "If you know so much, then you fix it", this was my first pass at a fix in an email back and forth to KEJR, trying for something more balanced that still might have similar effect:
I stated on Paizo's boards a couple of months ago that I was done buying Paizo material for a while. But I broke my own (vow? no, not really a vow, more a pronouncement) statement and went ahead and bought Ultimate Magic. I pre-ordered it from The Gopher because I believe in supporting my FLGS. By pre-ordering it, I got a nice discount that would just about cover the cost of the PDF, because I've been trying to buy my PDF's lately instead of just bootlegging them all outright.
Ultimate Magic has had some fairly bad pre-press, as most of the content got posted up on a fan site a couple of weeks early. (Fan site not named as I'm still petty about the fact that they lifted all of their initial content from a site that I created.) People started going through and finding some of the content as being either unbalanced, or just plain bad.
Examples:
The feat Antagonize. This feat has no prerequisites (the fan site misquoted this and said that it required 13 Dex. There is no actual prerequisite, only making the feat that much more broken.), but allows the character to make an intimidate or diplomacy check against a ridiculously easy DC (Target's HD + WIS modifier. You get a bonus to the check equal to your CHA mod with an easy to make Sense Motive check). If successful, the target of the feat is either forced to attack the character in melee (if intimidate was used) or to suffer -2 to any action that isn't on attack on the character (if diplomacy was used). Here's the actual text:
Antagonize
Benefit: You can make Diplomacy and Intimidate checks to make creatures respond to you with hostility. No matter which skill you use, antagonizing a creature takes a standard action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity, and has a DC equal to the target’s Hit Dice + the target’s Wisdom modifier. You cannot make this check against a creature that does not understand you or has an Intelligence score of 3 or lower. Before you make these checks, you may make a Sense Motive check (DC 20) as a swift action to gain an insight bonus on these Diplomacy or [sic] Intimitade checks equal to your Charisma bonus until the end of your next turn. The benefits you gain for this check depend on the skill you use. This is a mind-affecting effect.
Diplomacy: You fluster your enemy. For the next minute, the target takes a –2 penalty on all attacks rolls made against creatures other than you and has a 10% spell failure chance on all spells that do not target you or that have you within their area of effect.
Intimidate: The creature flies into a rage. On its next turn, the target must attempt to make a melee attack against you. The effect ends if the creature is prevented from reaching you or attempting to do so would harm it (for example, if you are on the other side of a chasm or a wall of fire). If it cannot reach you on its turn, you may make the check again as an immediate action to extend the effect for 1 round (but cannot extend it thereafter). The effect ends as soon as the creature makes a melee attack against you. Once you have targeted a creature with this ability, you cannot target it again for 1 day.
What's wrong with this feat? Hmm. Several things:
1) It's mind control with no save.
2) The DC is very low. The check is very easy. A 10HD enemy with a +3 WIS mod is a DC 13 check. A 1st level character with Intimidate as a class skill, and a +3 CHA modifier who makes the Sense Motive check, starts with (1 [rank Intimidate] + 3 [class skill bonus] +3 [charisma bonus] + 3[additional charisma bonus from sense motive check]) +10 to the check. Which means that he needs to roll a 3 on the die to succeed.
3) If successful, the enemy is forced to attack him in melee. Never mind if the enemy is a ranged combatant, or a pure spellcaster. The enemy must attack in melee. Even if this isn't an autokill for an enemy sucking up attacks of opportunity on the way to the feat-user, it still ties him up for at least one turn.
4) If the enemy cannot get to the feat-user, the feat-user can spend an immediate action to extend the effect for one round. Thus tying up the enemy completely for another round.
5) Petty point, but they even fail to spell "intimidate" correctly. They spell it "intimitade" in the text of the feat.
There are a few other glaring problems in the book so far, but by far this seems to be the biggest sore spot.
So you might be saying to yourself (or me), "What's the big deal. There's lots of material in the book, and there's bound to be a few errors that slip through. Look at the 90+% of the book that isn't screwed up and watch them fix this in an errata sometime. (I've seen this argument on the Paizo messageboards.)
And this argument really pisses me off. Here's why.
1) The presence of spelling errors indicates a lack of even basic editing. Every word processing program on the planet at this point has a spell-checker. Unless you happen to be using Notepad as your text editor. I think even vi has a spell checker at this point. {just looked. Vim does. Vi may not.) Aitch E Double Toothpicks, the blogger software I'm writing this on has a spell checker. To allow spelling errors through is simply unacceptable, and is indicative of a break down in the quality control process somewhere. (If the spelling mistake is of a homonym that is misused, I can almost forgive as the spell-checker probably won't point it out, but even then, the human editor should notice such things.)
2) This company is a publisher of printed material. And has been for some time. I've worked for an employer where part of my job was producing written material for publication. And every single word that was published went through a sign-off process where the writer would submit his text to an editor. The editor would review the material and send it back with a markup indicating what needed to be changed for clarity and correctness. Once the writer and editor had both come to an agreement on the text, it then went to a senior reviewer for his comments or changes. Once the senior reviewer was satisfied, the material was able to be published. None of this really took a lot of extra time, and I found, as a writer, that my work got better after I had seen how the editor wanted form to be. When writing, I would include "Hmm, John is going to want to know how I got this number. I should include it now. He'll also not like my use of the passive voice here, and tell me to rewrite it. I'll just write it how he wants it now." My work would tend to match that form the first time I submitted it, and the amount of suggested changes gradually decreased.
By the time anything was published, it had been signed off on by the writer, the editor, and the senior reviewer. Project proposals that I would submit to an outside funding agency were also reviewed by our finance department for correctness, and were also reviewed by the head of the department and his head of section.
It's inconceivable to me that Paizo does not have something similar in place to manage their editing. None of this actually affects the ability to get projects done on time, it simply means that you need to plan the pipeline and make sure that things get done when you need them done. (My project proposals has something like a six week turn-around time from the date the funding agency announced they were going to accept proposals until they were due in-hand at the agency. This means I had two to three weeks to figure out what I was going to propose, to write the proposal and develop a budget. And then I had two to three weeks to get the write up entirely through the editing/approval process. And I was the lowest of the low on the totem pole when it came to assigning projects priority. (I was a scientific researcher without a degree competing for state research money with teams of PhD's.)
3) Power Level/Balance - I'm not sure how anyone at Paizo didn't recognize the insane power level of this little feat. Does this mean that it was a throw-in at the last minute, or that they simply didn't playtest this product? Similar power level issues occur with at least one spell that breaks the very guidelines for spell construction that are part of the new material in the book.
4) The "lots of stuff, bound to be a few errors" argument doesn't hold water for me. The idea behind quality control is that if you implement correct QC procedures, you make it impossible for mistakes to get through to the final product. It's like saying "That car you bought has 7000 parts. It's inevitable that a couple of percent of those parts are going to be badly designed." This would amount to something like 140 parts in a car being of poor design. In fact the opposite is true. When something is found to be of bad design in a particular car, it's generally a big enough deal that the car company fixes it for free. And they look at how something like that got through and how they can avoid it in the future. There's a whole field of Quality Control/Quality Assurance designed around preventing bad design items from slipping through.
So overall, I'm in a quandry with this book. I've got one DM saying that nothing in it will even be considered until it's posted on Paizo's PRD. I've got another DM that I'm not sure I want to even approach about using material out of until it's had time to go through errata. Which leaves me with $40 worth of doorstop for now. Looking at what Paizo's own campaign allows, it carves out a fairly large chunk of the book as not worthy of being included in their shared-world. No words-of-power. None of the alternative options. But they do allow the above- mentioned Antagonize (I spelled this wrong initially, and my spell-checker caught it. Hmm. Spell-checkers in 2011? Amazing!) feat. So I'm pretty much wishing I hadn't bought the book, or that I had only bought the PDF.
Wow, I sound like I'm bashing Paizo. Maybe I am on this one. KEJR made the point that people who only cheer for Paizo do them a disservice, as they give the false impression that everything is fine instead of rightly pointing out where Paizo could do better. I once worked for a company that had made big money in the early 80's by putting out a product at the exact right time. No matter how badly they managed the company, they still made money hand-over-fist for years, because of their initial timing. They got to the point though where they thought the money proved that all their bad decisions were good ones because no matter what they decided they made money. (They were getting false positive reinforcement on bad decisions which warped their future decision making process.)
I've said before that I really hope Paizo does well as a company. I still hope so. But if UM is an indication of where the company is headed, then I'm afraid that they might have some hard lessons ahead. As for me, I'm going to hold off on any more purchases until I start seeing a change.
Edit:
Under the heading of "If you know so much, then you fix it", this was my first pass at a fix in an email back and forth to KEJR, trying for something more balanced that still might have similar effect:
Antagonize
Whether with biting remarks or hurtful words, you are adept at making creatures angry with you.
Prerequisites: Skill Focus (Intimidate) or (Diplomacy).
Benefit: You can make creatures respond to you with hostility. Antagonizing a creature takes a standard action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity. You cannot affect a creature that does not understand you or has an Intelligence score of 3 or lower. The result of this action is dependent on which skill you have Skill Focus in. If you have Skill Focus in both skills, you may select either effect. In either case, the target may make a will save (DC is equal to 10 + your charisma modifier + 1/2 your hit dice). This is a mind-affecting effect. Once you have targeted a creature with this ability, you cannot target it again for 1 day.
Diplomacy: You fluster your enemy. For the next minute, the target takes a –2 penalty on all attacks rolls made against creatures other than you and has a 10% spell failure chance on all spells that do not target you or that have you within their area of effect.
Intimidate: The creature flies into a rage. On its next turn, the target must attempt to make an attack against you. (The form of the attack is of the target's choice, but will generally be typical of his type or class). The effect ends if the creature is prevented from attacking you, or attempting to do so would cause unavoidable harm to it. If it cannot attack you on its turn, you may make the check again as an immediate action to extend the effect for 1 round (but cannot extend it thereafter). The effect ends as soon as the creature makes an attack against you.
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