Ethics Gradient

This. Sure the game has had it's share of bugs, but it isn't running some sketchy, home-brew random number generator. It leverages the same basic RNG that just about every other Unity game relies on. Unity's standard functions may not be ideal for repeatedly shuffling a thousand-card deck or casino gambling, but it should still provide a lifetime of "better than tabletop" dice rolls before any pattern sets in. To believe that the RNG is skewed in a human-noticeable fashion, you would have to argue that almost every other Unity game is severely broken too, or that Pathfinder does something to derp the numbers (intentionally or not). You don't have to believe me or anything, but I've been looking at this for a while and have found little to suggest that rolls are tampered with somewhere between the RNG outputs and what appears on-screen. Anyway... Just as a couple others have pointed out, low rolls sting and the memory sits with you. It isn't nearly as noticeable when you steamroll over Pillbug Podiker for the hundredth time and nearly hit him for triple-digit damage.

It looks like a few replies have already been posted to your question on reddit. As someone has already pointed out, the only workaround for "offline" is to start the game when you have an internet connection then never shut it down. There is no actual offline mode right now. However, be very careful to avoid having an offline device and an online device playing at the same time. Under those circumstances, syncs can get very unpredictable when the offline device eventually reconnects.

Shuffles were (are?) one of the randomness issues that probably weren't a result of RNG flukes. The shuffle algorithm itself should be pretty solid when it is needed. The likelier issue was that the game calls for different types of shuffles depending on the situation. Sometimes it shuffles everything, sometimes it shuffles everything below the revealed card, sometimes it shuffles everything except some certain number of X cards, sometimes it doesn't have to shuffle at all. I think it is better now too, but I also swear there used to be an improbable likelihood that evaded monsters and fleeing villains were often found on the top of location decks. I'm also pretty weary of observational biases where RNGs are concerned, but as the patterns bore out, it didn't seem so much a randomness issue as it was the app potentially firing off the wrong sort under certain circumstances.

Do you recall if you used any other items during that check? If you were to play an item during your combat check, you cannot use an item later to mitigate damage if you fail that check. The app, as well as the physical game it was based on, only allows you to use one of each type of card during a check sequence.

No, it isn't hard to do. It is just sometimes be tricky to implement in an elegant fashion. For instance, when you you're throwing all the blessings you've got at a villain and wind up rolling something crazy like: 2d12+2d8+3d6+2d4, it's checking just under 32 million combinations for how many beat the check, then updating the results in a few milliseconds. Sure, you can brute-force an answer using some raw GHz, but the percentage feature would get old really fast if the UI were lagging every time you swapped dice around. MrBishop, the dev responsible for dice percentages, pretty much said exactly that during a Reddit AMA. Anyway, despite using basic math and standard RNG implementations, there's always been a lot of suspicion about how this game handles random numbers. I'm strongly of the opinion that things are fine enough (they're at least more random than most physical dice throws/shuffles). Others seem to have different experiences.

Ok, I'm relatively convinced that the stat calculator is working fine. The only catch is that it just models dice, bonuses, and the target roll. If there are any post-roll powers that modify dice or allow a reroll, it won't take those into account when it calculates a percentage. It probably could handle things like custom dice for the Keen Rapier 2d4{1,2,3,5}, but at least it shouldn't be over-reporting your odds.

Yeah, I know what you meant. Even with some future content on the horizon, the project has definitely shifted towards the support and maintenance phase of the development cycle. Though, you can't truly downsize what was already a tiny team. Even at peak development, you probably could have ordered the team two pizzas and expected there to be a couple slices left over.

For what it's worth, the this is one of the golem cards that has had a slight modification since the first edition. The original card says: You may not play spells with the attack trait. The revised edition says: The Iron Golem is immune to the Attack and Mental traits. The two statements are virtual identical in that they prohibit using attack spells during the encounter. However, by prohibiting damage traits instead of just the act of playing a type of spell, it also disallows the player from doing something like front-loading the encounter with a spell like Toxic Cloud. Also, I think the only spell that isn't an Attack spell, but does have the Mental trait is Sanctuary. Your character can't use it to confuse the golem and run away while it isn't looking. In any event, in the D&D and Pathfinder universes, golems usually have traits that make them immune to magic. The way the Pathfinder Adventures card is written, it is in keeping with that sentiment. Yes, it can certainly cause a problem if you made it to AD5 with a party of spell casters, but smashing golems with swords and bows is one of the many reasons to keep fighter-types in the party.

No, if you were to take that survey of Pathfinder ACG players, you would find that most people would just grumpily banish awesome cards if the game leaves them no other choice. Yes, the game mechanics are occasionally not in your favor, but that doesn't make they do not make sense. Why even bother playing the game to "grind" for cards if you can just grab whatever from the box in the first place? Sometimes the game grants you some awesome cards, and then sometimes on rare occasions it forces you to give them up. It is just the nature of how the game was designed. If you lost a loot card, yes, there are tricks to get it back by playing a single scenario. But any other card that gets returned to the pool might just have to wait until you randomly encounter it later.

Well, there really hasn't been a patch in the last month or so either. Hopefully we can revisit a few of these threads on the next release and see that the list of bugs got cut down a bit. Regarding the Blessing of Thassilonian Virtues, that card works fine... but, it is extremely counter-intuitive to play to close locations. It has the same feedback problem that the Favor of the Gods card has. They both default towards mimicking the blessings deck first before playing as their special power (e.g. automatically closing a location or playing additional blessings on a check). A couple users documented their experience a week or so ago in this thread: [Blessing of Thassalonian Virtues]

> Pathfinder is more or less done [Amused laugh] The tabletop edition of that game has rules debates that stretch back to like 2013. If the app is a faithful recreation of the physical version, it is entirely possible that it will never actually end up "finished." That game could easily provide a lifetime of steady employment!

Referencing back to another recent thread: [Lost purchases, gold and chests since installing on my new phone] If you are absolutely sure that you are logged into the correct Google Play account , there is no user-side answer to this. You will need to contact Obsidian support (support@obsidian.net). Let them know your current username and PFID, and as much as you might remember about your previous username/PFID, and they should be able to restore the content to your active account

Are the dice themselves rigged? No. We've been over that topic several times since the app first came out a year go. It has a pretty solid and industry-standard RNG running the show. Is the probability stat rigged? Well, that's a different question. That feature is relatively new, and I'm not sure that the community has taken the opportunity to chase it down and verify that it is behaving properly. You could always go to somewhere like anydice.com and see what it thinks about a roll's chances. If you input something like: output 2d6+2d8+3 >= 11 It will show that: 2d6 + 2d8 + a bonus of 3 has about a 97% chance of beating an 11 check. Still, it is possible that the dice stat may be overestimating chances a little. Without investigating further, it does sometimes seem like the results don't quite follow a standard bell curve.

Referencing back to another recent thread: [Lost purchases, gold and chests since installing on my new phone] You are going to need to contact Obsidian support (support@obsidian.net). They should be able to assist remerging Google Play accounts that split off for some reason. Let them know your current username and PFID, and as much as you might remember about your previous username/PFID, and they should be able to restore the content to your active account

Since the beginning of this year, there have been several reports where something funny happens with google play and it generates a new PFID for the user. I primarily use iOS, so I can't speculate why that seems to be occasionally happening. It should also be accompanied with a change to the username in the top left of the main menu (i.e. User #1234 becomes User #2456, etc...). The support team has been able to merge accounts or copy content from one PFID to the other. Email support@obsidian.net with your current username and PFID, and as much as you remember about your previous username/PFID, and they should be able to restore the content to your active account. [Lost All Purchases] [Sudden profile change wiped all of the progress] If you don't hear back from anyone for a while, post back here, or PM 'MrBishop' or 'Aarik D' and someone should be able to help escalate the issue.

Whether you've merged accounts or not, the little "wifi" logo should go green whenever you are online. Verify that you're logged into iOS game center. Playing normally or merging accounts both rely on a working Game Center login. The Game Center app has been gone for a long while now, so what you need to do is open the Settings app, and scroll down about a third of the way. Just above Twitter and Facebook should be Game Center. Make sure you are signed in with your Apple ID. If if shows that you already are signed in, try tapping on your Apple ID, sign out, then log back in again. After that, restart Pathfinder. You should get a "Successfully logged in" popup, the icon should go green, and merging and general play should be back to normal. Good luck!

Seelah has been brought up a few times in this thread, but it bears repeating that she can do a lot of good if you're often running out of time. Maybe she's not the best monster-smasher or part-time cleric, but drop her in a boon-heavy location and it wouldn't be unreasonable to clear half the cards in a single turn. The different characters have different their skills, and Seelah's talent happens to be crashing her way through location decks. She isn't just in the fight to beat the villain, she's also crusading against the Blessing Deck itself. [Seelah is far and away the best all-around character thusfar] [Paizo Blog: Chad's Best Character Ever: Seelah]

Awwww yea! Gif-tastic!

Pretty much nowhere. The only CCG aspect that Pathfinder Adventures has is the treasure cards. Gotta' collect them all!... though, buying the steam editions with complete card sets really makes that a moot point now. That being said.... there is a digital Pathfinder CCG on the horizon: Pathfinder Duels. Expected release is actually sometime this month. [Pathfinder RPG to be Made into Pathfinder Duels Digital CCG] [Pathfinder Duels is a New CCG in Development] It isn't at all related to the Pathfinder ACG, but seems to share in the core concept of card-based adventures through the Pathfinder universe. Details are otherwise pretty sparse for a product that should be hitting the app store in a couple weeks.

That's been the one of the really awesome things about the dev streams they've been doing. Stepping back to talk about the people that made the game, rather than just the game itself, really adds a lot of context into how things were made and why. And honestly, I'd rather hear the voice actors banter about goofy thing like proposing a Verse/Ebb road-trip game than watch someone just demo things on twitch. It's a lot of fun to see the developers just be themselves.

I agree. I guess that was my (poorly worded) point earlier about "initiating" a challenge action. If the end result doesn't match the action you took when playing a card (the green Bury/Discard/Recharge/etc.. buttons), then it may not count towards the challenge. Like at the Farm House, the fact that you are choosing to Discard an Ally first is what the challenge manager seems to see. It doesn't pick up the fact that a secondary power redirects the card toward the bury pile. Whatever logic is occurring behind-the-scenes, the game seems to validate card challenge actions as they are played, and awards credit after the turn sequence if nothing "un-plays" or redirects the card.

Nice job figuring it out, guys!

Just in case it gets lost in the noise, Azarel and Jenceslav found that The Blessing of Thassalonian Virtues behaves the same way if you are trying to use it's power to automatically close a location. [Blessing of Thassalonian Virtues]

It was an awesome stream! Big thanks to the team and voice actors for swinging by and answering all our silly questions!

I'm pretty sure that's what is going on. I haven't verified all the Daily Challenges, but it seems to have a two-part test: - Did the player initiate an eligible challenge action? (play a blessing/ally, bury a card, etc..) - Did that challenge action conclude without further modification by other powers? Another example is the "Play x Blessings" daily challenge. If Kyra plays a Blessing of Sarenrae, but chooses to recharge it when offered, it doesn't seem to count, even if seems like it should.