So, last Saturday, I played Pathfinder for the first time. I had not played D&D or a D20 game in years, really.

It was like UFC 1. Apparently they streamlined the grappling rules to the point of usability, so imagine my surprise when a couple of zombies grappled my character and I consequently lost the ability to attack them with a greataxe. I thought it was really cool because of how you now have a real incentive to carry a backup dagger, whereas in old school you didn't really need a sidearm.

I also appreciate the swarm rules. I don't remember any equivalents from years ago. Basically you can't melee a swarm of insects but they automatically damage you. They make you puke, too. Hilarious and challenging. I like.

Seems like a good system so far.

See, my AD&D characters ALWAYS carried daggers because when this happened, we didn't use rules for grappling, we just said you don't have room to use X weapon and moved on. Same when you are in a 10x10 tunnel in a dungeon and tote around halberds. I guess that's always been my gripe with D20. I don't want a tactical simulation game, I'll play Squad Leader for that or something. I have heard Pathfinder is an improvement over the WOTC D20 system though.

We don't play D&D terribly often. When we do, we prefer Pathfinder to 3.5, but...it still has some balance issues, yeah.

Reminds me of the Most Interesting Man in the World.

I've played a little Pathfinder, and I find that I do really like it over d20. Just at the class level, it gives a little more to work with, a little more variance, and not like te crap 4th edt D&D does, which focuses on combat, from what I saw of it anway. It looks like it plays like a Pen & Paper video game. On the upside though I've heard that they'v got 5th edition coming out.

Pathfinder though has a TON of connected adventure modules out too though. And that's rare, and I like that. The only other modules I've seen that I like are the ones by Green Ronin.

Provided you don't allow the complete import of 3.5 material into your pathfinder, the power levels of all classes are much closer together. Meaning the Wizard will benefit more from making the fighter a god in combat rather than making himself a god.

Does pathfinder still rely on a d20 for attacks?

There's something about systems which don't balance out randomness that I can't stand.

The dice mechanic remains pretty much the same, for better or worst. Pathfinder is more cleaning up rules and balancing things better.

You should look at the system they used for Earthdawn. Very interesting and fun dice mechanic.

=/ I appreciate you offering up a suggestion, but pursuing a dead universe seems counterproductive.

It's actually in a 3rd edition now, but that's fine. Back to topic though, Pathfinder is very much alive. I haven't had time to read into it's metaplot/setting any however, so I can't say much on that. The setting is why I like SR/ED. The rules in Pathfinder are a nice improvement over 3.5. And like I said, they also have a numer of published modules, although those are of more interest to some than others.

That isn't really different to how it worked in 3.5 (well, the Grapple rules certainly are very different).

Grappling was rather effective in 3.5 as well.

Bye
Thanee

The adventure paths are probably the best part about pathfinder - all well written and each is a different style to the others - they are also very easy to run so one of our less experienced players with no GM exp ran one without trouble.

ED isn't dead, yet anyway. The current publisher is about to put now new books later this year, supposedly there are some legal entanglements that is preventing new material from coming out just right now.

However, they will be 'manga' sized layouts, to facilitate use on tablets. Not sure how I feel about that yet.

If you want to know about Earthdawn, ask Grinder.
And even though it's as much my fault, try and keep the thread on Pathfinder please . It is a great game afer all.

It fixed most of what was broken with 3.5. There are actual reasons to stay a pure base class now.

Agreed. 3.5 seemed built to promote the idea of prestige classes. The Cleric for example had almost no incentive to stay. Pathfinder made he classes interesting again, and gave continuing benefits into the higher levels. Sorcerers, for example, were another one with almost no incentive to stay in the core class. Pathfinder fixed them up much nicer. The same with wizards, as well as adding some more interesting core classes.

Unfortunately I haven't had the oppurtunity to play a Pathfinder game for any long amount or time or GM it. I like the rules for variable advancement speeds, because 3.5 seemed to fast for my taste. In 1st and 2nd edition, it seemed like a huge thing to have a character at level 12+. In 3rd that seemed more like the expectation, especially with a lot of the prestige classes requirements. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some higher levels games, and the earlier editions didn't really do a lot for levels after ten to twelve besides adding more numbers to your sheet. It just seeed to take less to get there. I'd like the chance to do a few longer games with it to see how the changes in the experience system work out.

The truly amusing part to me is that 3rd edition as a whole (and I'm assuming PF follows this to a degree) is that the game balanced around characters being level 4 - 12. 1 - 3 you still have the possible 1 to 2 hit death, and post 12 you have tons of save or die type stuff to contend with unless you start abusing character builds. Although I must say, even in the longest running campaign I ever had, we only got to level 13, and that took over a year with 1 game every weekend.

I did like that there were more creatures ranked for handling characters of higher levels. It is a system where even higher levels can be taken down pretty quickly. The down side is that it's still a system that, once you achieve those levels, you're well beyond "lesser mortals". Ridiculous amount of HP making a 200'+ falls merely dangerous instead of a death sentence.
Of course, Pathfinder isn't ny better on that one, from what I recall.
I personally like Earthdawn for reasons specifically like that. I love the exploding dice, and the very real chance at one or two hit kills and combat being potentially very lethal. It can be a little unpredictable, but that's what makes it fun. I did feel bad about a TPK I ran on a new group once though. My dice were hot, there's weren't. We hit the reset button when they got wiped out in the first fight and said something along the lines of "Well... wasn't that interesting." On the plus side though, they played a lot smarter after that.

Sound tactics can generally negate poor dice rolls. Unless we're talking 20's and 1's.

Con has a bigger roll in preventing the low level 1 hit death and help with stabilizing (you now need to pass a DC10 con check to become stable).

"If your hit point total is negative, but not equal to or
greater than your Constitution score, you are unconscious
and dying.
When your negative hit point total is equal to your
Constitution, you’re dead"

So if you aren't a sickly ranga you are alot more likely to survive low levels.

3rd edition wasn't playtested above 8th level, IIRC.

When paizo gets around to writing for "Mythic levels" (don't read epic levels it will involve all high level play) they will do another one of their open playtests.

In some ways the "living" campaigns can serve somewhat as playtest venues. You just need a way of gathering data from players and GMs.

I know WotC did some data gathering from their Living City and Living Greyhawk campaigns, and definately from the current Living Forgotten Realms campaign. I would not be overly surprised if Paizo keeps an eye on feedback from the Pathfinder Society games, given that many Paizo employees used to be involved with the WotC campaigns.



-k

I've heard some nice things about Pathfinder, but my understanding is, if you didn't like D&D 3/3.5, you probably won't like Pathfinder either. It's basically D&D 3.75.

I've also heard some good things about D&D 5. I have some friends on the playtesting list. My understanding (this now being hearsay twice over) is that D&D 5 tries to pull in more of the older stuff from 1 and 2 that people enjoyed, and tries to move away from so much focus on combat. Considering how much I dislike D&D's combat system in general, that sounds like great news for me. D&D 5 may fall into my 'don't think too hard and just have fun' game category (whereas the 3.5 mechanics and unnecessary mountain of rules and special exceptions made it into a 'close your eyes and think of Amn' experience).

Part of me feels like 4E was a rehashing of 1E (namely the focus on combat and dungeon delving). Remember, you originally got XP for killing monsters and for finding gold. It really was a hack and slash originally when you think about it. So, part of me hopes that 5E is more like AD&D... minus THAC0. God I hated that ass backward system.

I've read AD&D numerous times and I still don't understand THAC0. It's probably the single reason I never played it...

Haha. THACO was never *that* bad, it's just annoying to have to do the math, use the lookup table, and/or roll 'backwards'. It's much nicer if the players are always trying to roll high, or low. There was some trouble related to this principle in the earlier (pre-3rd?) versions of Eclipse Phase.

Eh... the 'Living' stuff bores me to tears with 4e. It's all senseless combat, which puts the focus on 4e's horrible combat system.

I played TSR/WotC/RPGA Living games from back when they started at game conventions to shortly after 4E appeared.

I had a blast in 1E & 2E (Living City started just before 2nd Edition appeared), and 3E was still pretty fun. 3.5 for various reasons started seeing many of the campaigns focus more on combat, but it was not so bad that it didn't hold my attention.

I gave 4E LFR campaign a serious shot. Really. Off and on, I played a few characters for over a year. I can honestly say the campaign eventually bored me to tears. It was so much more like just playing a board game rather than a roleplaying game.

It wasn't just the rule system, though. The LFR campaign managers didn't seem to realize the strength of a Living campaign is continuity. You have a character that, unlike standard convention one-shot games, you keep and grow and evolve. As such it's important to afford the character opportunities to integrate with the world, for the player to become emotionally invested in the setting and have a sense of belonging.

Previous campaigns generally centered around a particular locale, and attempted with varying success to flesh out that place as a living breathing society. They had local organizations to join, local institutions that became familiar, and more or less served to provide a feeling of "home".

Instead, in LFR, you more or less had the character randomly appearing in locations around the world, solving some problem, and then wandering off again. There was little sense that you were a part of the setting, instead being the perpetual outsider. You quickly saw a huge number of players and characters both that really didn't care about the people they encountered, going through the motions merely to collect loot and experience points.

I also thought that destroying the existing world setting was a stupid plotline decision.

I got one wizard to level 16 I think and just quit. It wasn't bad, necessarily, it just wasn't particularly engaging.

I still play other living campaigns, just not anything offered by WotC.



-k

THAC0 isn't hard. If you couldn't grasp it, you probably weren't going to enjoy 1st edition anyway, it was pretty cryptic in places. I think they left it in as a nerd check quite frankly.

1st edition's attack system was a table, never really explained. Find your class level, find the beastie's AC, there, now you know what you need to hit. THAC0 was at least based on something that was explained. It was "To Hit Armor Class 0" - THAC0. Sutract their Armor Class from your THAC0 score. And yeah, it still seemed very much a geek thing. I remember an exchange my wife had with a friend of hers years ago.
Wife:" You named your dog THAC0? You're such a geek."
Friend: "But you know what it means." *knowing look*
Wife: "Damn."


I was going to have a chance to playtest 5th edition. A friend of mine was getting a packet for it, I have no idea how. But now work has me out of country for a while, so that's going to be a little more difficult. Never tried D&D via skype.

1st edition had afeel to it that I somehow can't explain. It just felt different. There's certainly some nostalgia to it, but maybe it was the type of creatures you were prone to encounter, or random rolls for disease. I'm not sure. Green Ronin did a great job with Rappan Athuk trying to get that feel, IMO. Still haven't finished that damn dungeon. About 1/3rd through if anyone's played it.

I do agree that Pathfinder is more a D&D 3.75. If you hated the whole system, you probably wont like Pathfinder. If you liked the system but hated the holes, you'll probably love it. A lot easier than learn something from scratch that's for sure.

LOL, that's like Knight Rider!

Thank you sir for that flash back.

Oh, I know what it means and I'm sure if I spent any amount of time with it, it would be fairly trivial to grasp. I like to joke about THAC0. There's not much purpose to memorizing or learning things you aren't using. More so the problem was a lack of players. I lived in a rural town and the "card and RPG" hobby shop was literally off the access road used for semis to get to a grocery store and it didn't last forever. I really didn't have the opportunity to play PnP RPGs until college.

Yeah unfortunately I've seen a lot of those hobby shops come and go as well. It's probably even harder these days although I still try to buy from my Friendly Neighborhood Game Store. It's hard though when they sell Street Legends for $45, and when we went to pick it up, even my 12 year old daughter said it would be cheaper to just buy it off Amazon. Just sad.

BUT they do at least have a great Pathfinder selection. That's another great thing that I've seen from they're so far, they've got a ton of material out there.