Quote from: JeremyR;905176Mongoose was the company that did that. But I'm skeptical they made much, if any, money off of it. D&D almost certainly had far larger print runs, thus the profit margin for WOTC was higher than Mongoose.  (And to Mongoose's credit, they released the rules of their Runequest Legend and Traveller games under the OGL, the former resulting in OpenQuest and GORE)

Actually, Green Ronin did this first with their Pocket Grimoire books. Again, they didn't bother updating these books to 3.5 so I suspect they were poor sellers.

Quote from: Crüesader;905200You two might actually have me considering the purchase.  I'll see if I can't find one of those bookstore gift cards that I got and see if I can knock it down below $30.00.  If so, it'll be a purchase.

Anything really useful you suggest ordering if I buy it?

Honestly if you're really on the fence, the SRD really does have pretty much the whole game, and the PDF is just $10 on Paizo's website.

No need to drop full print price until you actually know you want the product.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;905217As for the art a few posts above mine, how to Piazo not get crucified by the SJW crowd for that first piece of art?  Male gaze and cheesecake galore.

Paizo initially didn't care about that very much; there's a page in the Core Rulebook of Seoni (their iconic sorceress, who wears almost nothing) from the back with just a thong covering her ass. That isn't to say that they weren't trying to have diversity - they had quite a few races even among their Core iconic characters, and several women who were covered up - but they recognized that "diversity" meant having a wide appeal, and that includes having a sexy woman.

This isn't to say that the SJWs didn't go after them for it, however.

Nowadays, Paizo does seem to be moving a bit more towards the SJW side of things, but only in small increments (enough so make me wonder if there's a schism within the company about this, as certain voices on their staff tend to pipe up with regards to this issue, while others seem to be notably silent).

The best thing about having the PF core book, is that you can beat your players with it when they get out of line. The thing is massive.

When a fellow gamer asks if they should buy the PF core. My response usually is to ask if they like 3.5. If they do I recommend it yet do point out that it's mostly rehash with a few house rules thrown in. If they don't I recommend against it. As it does very little to fix the flaws of 3.5. If one dislikes how Wizards overshadows Fighters in 3.5. The Pathfinder core does not do much to remedy the problem imo. As well i also warn anyone interested of some few bad design choices on the part of the devs. Their gun rules are horrible imo. Many fans told them that targeting Touch AC is a bad thing. Yet in the end went ahead and kept them in anyway. So now out of three ranged weapons in the game. One is way too powerful than the other two. At least two APs end up becoming turkey shoots against large creatures. Rise of the Runelords and Giantslayer as giants have horrible touch AC. It's almost guaranteed a Gunslinger will almost never miss imo .

Quote from: Crüesader;905200Anything really useful you suggest ordering if I buy it?

It all depends on what you want to do.  I really like Ultimate Intrigue but it would be almost useless for some sorts of campaigns.  Inner Sea Gods and The Inner Sea World Guide and very useful if you plan on using Paio's Golarion setting and much, much less useful otherwise.

Paizo's releases go through phases.  The content is clustered around the theme of whatever adventure path (essentially a published campaign in 6 parts) is coming out at the time.  The Iron Gods adventure path is themed around technology.  While it was coming out, there was a lot of sci-fi themed material put out.  The robot scorpion thing is from Iron Gods.  My Iron Gods group fought it.  The current one is Hell's Vengeance.  It's schtick is that the PCs are evil or servants of evil so you are getting books like Path of the Hellknight about playing evil characters.  When Strange Aeons starts coming out, expect lots of Lovecraftian stuff.

Another problem with Paizo release is many of them or hit and miss. More miss than hit imo. When designing new material they stubbornly refuse to find a proper middle ground. Either a option is too good or simply not worth taking. Guess which out of the two is more common. Here is a good example. The Craft Ooze feat: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/item-creation-feats/craft-ooze-item-creation

So I need to spend money and material crafting a ooze. As well taking other feats and skill points. To get a ooze I can't control and is not loyal to me. As well as even the rare intelligent oozes with created with this feat. Are still dumber than a bag full of hammers. If not mistaken in Ultimate Intrigue their a archetype that behaves exactly as the Frenzied Berserker. Why bring back a archetype that's a pain to use at the table and a liability. More than once on their website we have asked for decent options. As usual. Great fluff poor mechanics. I enjoy the rpg and play and run it. But man it could be a hell of a lot better imo.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;905161No.  It did not.  The thing is, you apparently never saw this, I forget who, but a third party publisher was cutting whole chunks out of the PHB and reselling them as their own books, because OGL let them legally.  The license was a horrible idea from a business stance.  For us the consumer, it was fucking AWESOME, we could by what we wanted, ignore the rest.  But for WoTC, when you have a company chopping out bits, like the Arcane Spells and Divine Spell lists and putting into an 4x6" paper back book and not seeing any profits from those says that's horrible business.

Except that not how it worked out. The 3.5 era ended because Wizards sunset the rules in favor of 4th edition. All throughout the 3.5 era most publishers would up doing their own thing with the d20 rules and the 3.5 crowd was pretty much in a Wizards only mode.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;905245The best thing about having the PF core book, is that you can beat your players with it when they get out of line. The thing is massive.

That's one of the reasons I'm a Hero System fan. (I keed, I keed)

Quote from: Alzrius;905243Paizo initially didn't care about that very much; there's a page in the Core Rulebook of Seoni (their iconic sorceress, who wears almost nothing) from the back with just a thong covering her ass. That isn't to say that they weren't trying to have diversity - they had quite a few races even among their Core iconic characters, and several women who were covered up - but they recognized that "diversity" meant having a wide appeal, and that includes having a sexy woman.

This isn't to say that the SJWs didn't go after them for it, however.
.

Nothing like a little sinful female skin showing to get 'em riled up.

Quote from: estar;905298Except that not how it worked out. The 3.5 era ended because Wizards sunset the rules in favor of 4th edition. All throughout the 3.5 era most publishers would up doing their own thing with the d20 rules and the 3.5 crowd was pretty much in a Wizards only mode.

Mostly, but there were some non-Wizards lines for D&D 3.5 that were successful, notably Pathfinder Society.  I don't think it was anything like as popular as Forgotten Realms but it was doing okay.

To those who clarified things for me here:

I managed to sift through the Christmas cards I got, and between a bookstore gift card and a Visa gift card I managed to scoop up the book and spent only ~$16.00 of my own pocket money.  I did some searching on the Adventures and stuff, and it seems like there's quite a bit.

Also, I kinda dig the artist for this book.  Not real keen on their attempt to turn every weapon into the game into an exotic version of the weapon, but it's interesting.  Especially like the portrayal of the Cleric as a sort of Arabian Lady.  

Downloaded Iron Gods free PDF, too.

So, basically I think now I'll be able to play a sort of low-key Android Adventurer.  Not sure which class to go with yet, and I've always been partial to Fighters...

Quote from: Crüesader;905344To those who clarified things for me here:

I managed to sift through the Christmas cards I got, and between a bookstore gift card and a Visa gift card I managed to scoop up the book and spent only ~$16.00 of my own pocket money.  I did some searching on the Adventures and stuff, and it seems like there's quite a bit.

Also, I kinda dig the artist for this book.  Not real keen on their attempt to turn every weapon into the game into an exotic version of the weapon, but it's interesting.  Especially like the portrayal of the Cleric as a sort of Arabian Lady.  

Downloaded Iron Gods free PDF, too.

So, basically I think now I'll be able to play a sort of low-key Android Adventurer.  Not sure which class to go with yet, and I've always been partial to Fighters...

You like Wayne Reynolds art?  OK, to each their own.  He does have a great sense of colour, but proportions?  Not so much.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;905347You like Wayne Reynolds art?  OK, to each their own.  He does have a great sense of colour, but proportions?  Not so much.

It is very stylized, and the proportions are off (but I'm an amateur and can't do much better art).  I do like how he's got the guts to make elves look creepy again.

I don't play PF but a guy in the game store explained to me that the whole PF product line may have ruined itself when they came out with some sort of revised classes book. Every revised version of the class is, as I understand it, much better than the original and thus the originals don't get played much anymore in campaigns that allow this particular rulebook. He thought they were setting the stage for Pathfinder 2E or something like that.

What annoyed me about PF is that the GM's in the store I frequent were telling new players not to buy product off of the shelf but to get the free downloads off of the internet. If you are going to play in a store, you ought to support that store.