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Silver2195 posted:Occult is basically vibes-based magic, yeah. Depends on the type of bard, throwing a brick is definitely punk and thus perfectly in line with a bard
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 00:50 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 08:44 |
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Piell posted:Depends on the type of bard, throwing a brick is definitely punk and thus perfectly in line with a bard The issue is that things like Telekinetic Projectile and Object Reading clearly evoke specific tropes associated with "psychic powers" rather than "magic." (Object Reading would feel less "psionic" and more "bardic" if it involved listening to the object instead of touching it, for example.) Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Jul 19, 2023 |
# ? Jul 19, 2023 01:01 |
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Silver2195 posted:The issue is that things like Telekinetic Projectile and Object Reading clearly evoke specific tropes associated with "psychic powers" rather than "magic." (Object Reading would feel less "psionic" and more "bardic" if it involved listening to the object instead of touching it, for example.) Definitely fits the parlor tricks and minor charlatan act a lot of bards have going on, though.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 01:10 |
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Occult is the least thematically coherent spell list because it loads the tropes of psychic powers down with the baggage of D&D's psionics (and, to a lesser extent, PF1e's distinctly Victorian pseudoscientific occultism), so you get the weird situation where bards can, for some reason, teleport and summon aberrations.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 01:18 |
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Random Golarion lore thought: doesn't the connection between Osirion and Egypt have an element of "one-shot revisionism" to it? It just calls attention to how a bunch of other countries on Golarion resemble Earth cultures with no explanation. Or are we supposed to assume that the Ulfen culture was influenced by the Norse gods, and the reason they don't worship them anymore is that the Norse gods all died during Ragnarok 1000 years ago?
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 01:27 |
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Silver2195 posted:Random Golarion lore thought: doesn't the connection between Osirion and Egypt have an element of "one-shot revisionism" to it? It just calls attention to how a bunch of other countries on Golarion resemble Earth cultures with no explanation. Or are we supposed to assume that the Ulfen culture was influenced by the Norse gods, and the reason they don't worship them anymore is that the Norse gods all died during Ragnarok 1000 years ago? It does feel more like a legacy of D&D having the egyptian gods present in the big list o' gods than a choice made with wide-ranging worldbuilding in mind anyway idk what "I want more super minor magical effects given mechanical backing, because it's cool and offers a glut of characterization options to have minor, out-of-combat superpowers that don't all come through the medium of spell circles forming around your hands or whatever the exact travel guide specifics are" has to do with wanting a return to ridiculous scaling growth or universal utility for magic users that typified old D&D editions/PF1 Things like the big table of side effects of deviant abilities are things I'd like more of, minor tools that offer a way of engaging with the in-game world through supernatural means and which flavor a character such that a magically adept player or NPC does more than being fundamentally mundane beyond casting a very specifically limited number of spells, both per day and in general, all through a very specific, formalized process this has nothing whatsoever to do with my nonexistent disdain for PF2's magic system, the game balance, or even most of the secrets of magic book lol
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 01:47 |
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A Meatslab posted:Agreed! One possible way to consider it is how the basic blocks of it compare and contrast. The difference between arcane and occult is the Material/Spiritual essence. So where arcane deals more with the material plane and how things interact with that, occult hits up ethereal and planes like that a lot more. In a similar fashion, it contrasts Life/Mind with divine. So while divine deals more with the physical body, conditions, etc, occult has all the mental effects that divine doesn't touch.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 01:59 |
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Occult magic is about narrative, stories, and symbology and also cthulhu
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 03:48 |
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Silver2195 posted:Random Golarion lore thought: doesn't the connection between Osirion and Egypt have an element of "one-shot revisionism" to it? It just calls attention to how a bunch of other countries on Golarion resemble Earth cultures with no explanation. Or are we supposed to assume that the Ulfen culture was influenced by the Norse gods, and the reason they don't worship them anymore is that the Norse gods all died during Ragnarok 1000 years ago? I suspect the actual answer is just "Golarion has the actual Egyptian gods in it because Forgotten Realms has the actual Egyptian gods in it, and nearly everyone who was formative in developing Golarion previously wrote stuff for FR and carried a lot of baggage over from one setting to the other"
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 04:18 |
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To be fair, several official D&D campaign settings over the years have used entire pantheons of real-life gods. Mystara had tons of them. I still have my Wrath of the Immortals book somewhere.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 04:55 |
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I'm pretty sure Rasputin shows up in Golarion lore somehow, I know for a fact Baba Yaga shows up and is the same one from Earth. Re: Occult spells, I agree that telekinetic projectile is a bit of an odd fit for occult stuff but I've always thought of it as THE SPIRITS getting mad and throwing poo poo around, poltergeist style. Its just an inaccurately named spell.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 05:30 |
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Silver2195 posted:Things like Telekinetic Projectile do feel strange for a Bard, though. Flavour this as the bard rocking out so hard the vibrations cause objects to shake loose from nearby shelves.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 08:01 |
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If anyone wants to watch an AP that definitely isn't scripted and simulates the real game experience I recommend this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDYPUMl1inQ It's awful. One of the players doesn't seem to have ever read her spells or abilities before sitting down at the table, and for some reason they gave her one of the most complicated classes, for a super authentic experience just like your table at home. Spoiler: she forgets what "Healing Plaster" does every single episode. Great at improv, hopeless at rules.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 08:05 |
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boxen posted:I'm pretty sure Rasputin shows up in Golarion lore somehow, I know for a fact Baba Yaga shows up and is the same one from Earth. I think there's an AP where Baba Yaga sends oyur party to 'our' Earth where you fight Rasputin, save Anastasia and being her back to Golarion to become a ruler. Or something along those lines. Golarion is very much a Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms mishmash and it's better for it sometimes.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 12:42 |
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Hunter Noventa posted:I think there's an AP where Baba Yaga sends oyur party to 'our' Earth where you fight Rasputin, save Anastasia and being her back to Golarion to become a ruler. Or something along those lines. Yep, that’s Reign of Winter for 1e. It has the amazing art of the iconic gunslinger getting an early mounted machine gun and just going ham with it while she grins like a fiend.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 13:10 |
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boxen posted:I'm pretty sure Rasputin shows up in Golarion lore somehow, I know for a fact Baba Yaga shows up and is the same one from Earth. https://www.aonprd.com/MonsterDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Animated%20Tank Please enjoy this monster
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 13:14 |
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Arivia posted:Yep, that’s Reign of Winter for 1e. It has the amazing art of the iconic gunslinger getting an early mounted machine gun and just going ham with it while she grins like a fiend. It's fine art.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 13:32 |
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Reign of winter is incredible. I’m currently running it for a 2e group (converting on the fly) and it’s been a blast for all involved. They’re just about to kick off book 3, but I’ve been seeding in some of the Russian aspects as they go and having Rasputin take a slightly more active role. My only real issue with the adventure path is that the canon ending puts a Romanov in charge of Irrisen of all the stupid things, but one of the PCs has designs on that throne so I can happily ignore it for any future campaigns.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 16:47 |
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LukasR23 posted:Reign of winter is incredible. I’m currently running it for a 2e group (converting on the fly) and it’s been a blast for all involved. They’re just about to kick off book 3, but I’ve been seeding in some of the Russian aspects as they go and having Rasputin take a slightly more active role. She isn't really a Romanov.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 17:01 |
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Hunter Noventa posted:I think there's an AP where Baba Yaga sends oyur party to 'our' Earth where you fight Rasputin, save Anastasia and being her back to Golarion to become a ruler. Or something along those lines. Yeah, I remembered it being something insane like that. Baba Yaga is in the Lost Omens Legends book as well as being a "rare" witch patron I think. Has Paizo ever retconned a part of Golarion lore? Made something non-canon? One thing I like and other people I've talked to like about Pathfinder is that there's an established world with its own history and lore. Some of that is from Adventure Paths (with a canon ending), other stuff is from lore dump books (like the lost omens stuff) or the novels, but all of it seems like its cohesive.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 17:24 |
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boxen posted:Yeah, I remembered it being something insane like that. Baba Yaga is in the Lost Omens Legends book as well as being a "rare" witch patron I think. They are engaging in some fairly major retcons as we speak in the process of De-OGL-ifying things (mostly to do with renaming stuff).
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 17:32 |
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boxen posted:Yeah, I remembered it being something insane like that. Baba Yaga is in the Lost Omens Legends book as well as being a "rare" witch patron I think. Yes. Golarion was originally kind of cobbled together on the fly, and the first set of retcons was mistakes putting things together, stuff they grabbed from D&D inadvertently and other sources that they couldn't really use. This thread goes over a good portion of it: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2t9d7?Lets-collect-retcons A second set of changes started in about 2013 and was fixes to make the world more inclusive and better about representation. This has continued through today and future products, with stuff like the Mwangi Expanse and the new books on Tian Xia. There has also been a very small amount of content that's been made non-canon because Paizo had some gross ideas about what should be included in terms of evil and horrifying acts, monsters, etc that's been removed. The most prominent example is Folca, the daemon harbinger of child abduction, strangers, and candy! (https://aonprd.com/DeityDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Folca, Erik Mona's apology here: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uq7d&page=4?SoFolca#182) And then yeah, there's going to be more changes with the removal of OGL content.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 17:40 |
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One thing that's always irritated me is the way the Pathfinder lore wiki doesn't always take into account retcons (especially when they're implicit rather than explicit) or even the changes caused by in-universe events, and ends up treating a lot of (often inane or tasteless) outdated lore as canon. A good example of what I mean is the article on slavery. Half the countries listed have abolished slavery in-universe, and another quarter have been implicitly retconned as never having slavery in the first place. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jul 19, 2023 |
# ? Jul 19, 2023 18:00 |
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Silver2195 posted:One thing that's always irritated me is the way the Pathfinder lore wiki doesn't always take into account retcons (especially when they're implicit rather than explicit) or even the changes caused by in-universe events, and ends up treating a lot of (often inane or tasteless) outdated lore as canon. The Pathfinder wiki (unless you mean a separate Pathfinder lore wiki) is extremely under-serviced and just out of date in general. I don't think it's intentional, I think basically no one actually works on it.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 18:03 |
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Arivia posted:There has also been a very small amount of content that's been made non-canon because Paizo had some gross ideas about what should be included in terms of evil and horrifying acts, monsters, etc that's been removed. The most prominent example is Folca, the daemon harbinger of child abduction, strangers, and candy! (https://aonprd.com/DeityDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Folca, Erik Mona's apology here: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uq7d&page=4?SoFolca#182) On a similar note, there's been some shifts in focus that I'd call retcon-adjacent. Things didn't necessarily change in-universe, but the way they handle the concept has changed enough that there's a noticeable difference and it makes it hard to . Ogres were designed as the villains of an incestuous hillbilly horror movie and they're still described as such in the Bestiary, but they aren't writing adventures like the Hook Mountain Massacres that throw their grossness right in people's faces. The iconics and general female character design tended towards the weirdly horny, but they aren't retroactively more chaste. They just put on a thicker shirt in the past decade. Until they're retconned out in the OGL changes, drow fit here too. They're still there, but when they come up their weird racial curse vibes are downplayed but not retroactively removed. But then, I'd also call a lot of the changes they made to make the setting more inclusive this kind of change instead of a retcon. The Mwangi Expanse didn't retroactively not have a Cheliax colony taking up space for no good reason. It just got overthrown between editions and they started being written better.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 19:37 |
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The drow have been completely retconned out of existence as of the Remaster. They're just not a thing in Pathfinder and Golarion anymore.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 21:31 |
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Lame! Drow and dark elves are hot and popular, nerds are almost as horny for them as they are for tieflings nowadays; just rename them or something.
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 21:39 |
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The Cavern Elf heritage will still be around, so you can still play an underground elf if you want to. The big change here is to ongoing Darklands-related plotlines, where drow have basically been replaced by zyss serpentfolk. I'm not really a fan of this; just as drow were gradually moving away from their "always evil" baggage, they've been replaced by mustache-twirling villains (or at least they would be if snakes could grow mustaches). I think the Paizo writers are aware of this and plan to add some nuance to the serpentfolk, though. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Jul 19, 2023 |
# ? Jul 19, 2023 21:40 |
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Arivia posted:Yes. Golarion was originally kind of cobbled together on the fly, and the first set of retcons was mistakes putting things together, stuff they grabbed from D&D inadvertently and other sources that they couldn't really use. This thread goes over a good portion of it: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2t9d7?Lets-collect-retcons But yeah most of Pathfinder's changes stems are more subtle than drastic. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Jul 19, 2023 |
# ? Jul 19, 2023 21:59 |
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Silver2195 posted:The Cavern Elf heritage will still be around, so you can still play an underground elf if you want to. I haven't read up on the serpentfolk beyond what shows up in Strength of Thousand, but I feel like you can add that necessary nuance pretty easily. They had enough texture in that adventure path that they could be a clearly antagonistic force while having humanizing touches like how their xenophobia is wildly toxic internally, or how they're easing up on their slave caste in border communities because there's more crossover with other societies there and keeping them completely locked down with no respect given is not going to fly for much longer. (Then again, I was first exposed to Pathfinder drow when they were still at their edgiest and most vaguely racist with Second Darkness, so I'm not exactly going to miss them.)
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 22:38 |
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shame, mustache twirling evil rules
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# ? Jul 19, 2023 22:58 |
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2E is really taking me a while to take a shine to. My first character was a Druid, but I was new enough to 2E and it felt different enough that I never really felt good about playing it. I was also really unsatisfied by my Alchemist- this was before the errata and frankly the way it plays even now doesn't really appeal to me. I'm playing a Rogue now, and that's much more appealing to me. I like the role in combat well enough, and the skills are great (something I felt the Alchemist and Druid really lacked). I'm still stuck on 1e, I guess. I'm trying to find the language to articulate why that is beyond, "I tend to have more fun". Maybe it has to do with the side of the table I'm playing on? I DM my 1e games and play in my 2e ones.
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# ? Jul 20, 2023 00:13 |
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To be fair, alchemist is the worst feeling class in the game and it isn't even close. You basically have a limited number of cantrips, spellcaster levels of accuracy, and an array of buffs that don't stack with magic items.
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# ? Jul 20, 2023 01:06 |
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Being knocked unconscious also knocks your weapons out of your hands This is a clear bias against dual-wielders. I only ever need one free hand in life, sovereign glue my hand to my primary weapon please. There's mutagens that actually do it but they only last like ten minutes instead of, like, the one hour I need to be properly prepped for battle.
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# ? Jul 20, 2023 01:15 |
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KPC_Mammon posted:To be fair, alchemist is the worst feeling class in the game and it isn't even close. You basically have a limited number of cantrips, spellcaster levels of accuracy, and an array of buffs that don't stack with magic items. It's so nonsense to me that bombers/mutagenists/toxicologists don't get better proficiency in the thing their study emphasizes (so alchemical bombs/unarmed strikes/simple weapons respectively). I really don't think bombers getting expert at 5th and master at 13th in bombs only would really ruin things.
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# ? Jul 20, 2023 01:21 |
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Hey, sorry if this is the wrong place to ask (seeing as, well, this is in TG! Doesn't seem like there's a thread in VG though) but I've got some quick WotR questions, if anyone wouldn't mind sharing insight. SO! I'm pretty inexperienced with Pathfinder as my TTRPG experience with it is minimal, but I've started playing as an overwhelming sorcerer as my first character. (Half-elf btw, with 'Kindred bloodline', I think it's called?) I'm thinking I'll mostly focus on evocation, as it's always fun to incinerate enemies, but what mythic paths are good for it? I'm still early on, but as I'm NG-aligned, I'm thinking about either Angel or Azata, especially as they more-or-less seem to make the most sense for a good crusade leader role as per the story, while also having some nice abilities. But also, what's the deal with multiclassing in Pathfinder/WotR? Is that worth pursuing for a sorcerer, or would I be better off sticking with the one class? I wouldn't mind some kind of rogue-ish abilities (assuming stealth can actually be useful in this, rather than being a bit 'meh') for example, but class synergies are the main thing I'm unfamiliar with in Pathfinder
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# ? Jul 20, 2023 07:44 |
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Major Isoor posted:Hey, sorry if this is the wrong place to ask (seeing as, well, this is in TG! Doesn't seem like there's a thread in VG though) but I've got some quick WotR questions, if anyone wouldn't mind sharing insight. I think you wanted to ask people in the PF CRPG thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3869934 This thread is about the second edition of PF, which is very different mechanically from the first edition which was used in the CRPGs. Those are good games though; have fun!
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# ? Jul 20, 2023 09:08 |
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Megazver posted:I think you wanted to ask people in the PF CRPG thread: Ahhh, right! Not sure how I missed that thread - thanks!
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# ? Jul 20, 2023 09:59 |
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Paizo is redoing their website to make it actually usable by a human! This is the best news ever and everyone should rejoice. Go to their website while you can and marvel at how loving awful it is, and how you can't actually log in.
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# ? Jul 20, 2023 13:24 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 08:44 |
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I am rejoicing! Their current website is straight out of the early '90s. It's absolutely insane they've managed to scrape by as much success as they have with such a terrible website and store. A sign of the quality of their stuff I guess.
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# ? Jul 20, 2023 14:04 |