Brom Blackforge's page

I can't agree with everything in the petition. I certainly don't expect WotC to convert the older materials to every other edition.

But I'll admit that I would like to see some of the older stuff made available again. I think they're already trying this out, to some extent. You could say that the special 1E core rulebooks are a special case, to benefit the Gygax memorial, but I understand that they're also reprinting the 3.5 core rulebooks now (which seems directly aimed at luring back Pathfinder players), and they recently did a survey asking what other 3.5 material we'd like to see back in print.

The publishing world is different now than it was when TSR failed. If TSR had had the option of releasing materials in PDF format, maybe they wouldn't have gone under. I'd still like to have printed materials, but a PDF would be better than nothing - and better than paying an arm and a leg for used, hard-to-find materials on the second-hand market (which, on my budget, works out to the same as nothing anyway).

Good to know that there's still gaming to be found in prison.

Not necessarily. This reminded me of a news story I saw a while back. One prison, at least, decided to ban D&D. Not a very well-reasoned decision (they said it could lead to gang behavior and fantasies of escape). And, ironically, it happened in Wisconsin, where D&D was born.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/us/27dungeons.html

The website is still blank, but it's still there. I don't know if that means anything.

I always enjoyed reading the new Zogonia and Mt. Zogon strips. I had kind of forgotten how much I missed them until I looked at "Slice of Death" the other day and remembered.

Oh, and if you use (or Quote from another poster) the word 'smurf' (or certain variants) in a post, you are randomly alloted a picture of one. The PostMonster even invented a special picture for Kobold Cleaver for when he uses one of the 's' words.

I hadn't noticed that - guess I haven't spent enough time here (or haven't hit any of the conversations in which those little blue things have been mentioned). How did that get started?

mwbeeler wrote:

Elaine Cunningham wrote:

I've been avoiding message boards for several years now.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

No doubt. The problem with lessons is that you seldom learn them until you're knee-deep in whatever they're teaching you to avoid.

Ain't that the truth!

Tony Moseley's "Zogonia" and "Mt. Zogon" comics were always one of the highlights of an issue of "Dragon" and "Dungeon" magazines, and I enjoyed perusing Tony's website, zogonia.com. Now, for a long time, the website has been blank, and I've been wondering if it's going to stay that way. That would be a shame. Does anyone know what's up? I haven't gotten the book, "Slice of Death," so I don't know if that gives any indication. If it's something personal, it would be none of my business and that's fine. Just curious.

The stuff Paizo is doing with the system is no more radical than what appeared in any of the complete books.

Actually, from the posts I've seen from Erik Mona, my understanding was that the Alpha was intentionally pushing the envelope, and that the Beta will rein things in. I am still hopeful that the final version of Pathfinder won't be so different from 3.5 as to feel like a completely different game.

This is my thought on the direction of Pathfinder: I would prefer to see it hew as closely to 3.5 as possible. And I would like to see its innovations be as modular as possible, meaning that it would be possible to pick and choose which to implement; if they're all interrelated and interdependent, then using some but not others could end up being unbalancing or just simply impossible, and that's likely to make me skip the whole thing entirely.

I doubt that I'll ever play a straight Pathfinder game. More likely, I might take ideas that I like and houserule them into a 3.5 game. I'll probably take ideas from 4E and houserule those in, too. (Some of those ideas will be the same, like compressing some of the skills - Perception instead of Spot, Search and Listen - but I'm not sure I'll necessarily adopt Pathfinder's skill set in its entirety.) So the farther Pathfinder strays from 3.5, the less useful it will be to me.

P3 (the Pathfinder RPG) and 3.5 D&D will be backwards compatible if their relationship is covalent. P3 characters should be able to function pretty much “as is” in a 3.5 adventure; 3.5 characters should be able to function pretty much “as is” in a P3 adventure. Similarly, P3 monsters should be able to be used pretty much “as is” with 3.5 characters, and 3.5 monsters should be pretty much able to be used “as is” with P3 characters. The same relationship should hold for magic spells, feats, skills etc. Note the use of the phrasing “pretty much.”

I'm going to nitpick a bit and say that you shouldn't need the "pretty much" in there. You should be able to pick up a 3.5 adventure and run it in your PRPG game without changing anything. Your players' PRPG PCs should be able to rub shoulders with the 3.5 NPCs without any tinkering necessary. THAT would be backwards compatible.

I may be putting myself in the minority here, but I don't feel like there is any need for big changes to 3.5. I don't really want to see things totally reworked. And I'd like to find that PRPG characters are roughly equivalent to 3.5 characters; I'd hate to see PRPG as just another notch on the power creep scale.

Maybe Paizo wants to have sufficient changes to justify players plunking down their hard-earned cash for the finished product. I can understand that. But I see a fine line between enough changes and too many - because if using PRPG requires extensive adaptation and tinkering to use my 3.5 material, then I'll just skip it and keep playing 3.5.

When the possibility of Paizo releasing an updated 3.5 with some rules tweaks - a "3.75" edition - my assumption was that they would change as little as possible.

Then, when it was formally announced, with backwards compatibility as one of the stated goals, my assumption about changing as little as possible felt confirmed.

Then I saw the Alpha 1 document and some of the proposals on the boards. Now I'm wondering: maybe my assumption was wrong. Is this just an attempt to fix some bugs with a few rules tweaks, or is this an attempt to build a new game using the same mechanics?

The more things change, the less this is going to feel like "3.75" D&D and the more this is going to seem like something in the vein of Arcana Unearthed/Arcana Evolved and Iron Heroes: a different game using the same mechanics.

So how extensive is the rules revision going to be? How extensive should it be?

It seemed to me that the goal of backwards compatibility would be best served by tweaking what needs fixing, but otherwise changing as little as possible. But maybe truly fixing 3.5 means undertaking a more extensive revision. And if so, then what becomes of backwards compatibility?

To me, the idea of chaining is a great one. However, being limited to only using one combat feat in a round is VERY restrictive, particularly to fighters (who will likely be the ones taking the lion's share of combat feats).

I think getting rid of that clause is a very common desire in the posts I have read so far. I would have to agree with previous posters that it would be something I would immediately house rule out of existence in my games.

Now on the subject of chains, they are a great idea, but need some work. Perhaps make them work as bonuses? So that if you follow a chain, it provides bonuses on the action, but you don't HAVE to chain to use the feat. For example, lets take Rapid Shot and Manyshot, just for ease. As is, they are not too bad, but requiring you to have used Rapid Shot on the previous round to use Manyshot makes it a bit weaker than the current version of the feat. Perhaps changing chains to give a bonus if used after the first part of the chain would work better, so that in Manyshot's case, if you used Rapid Shot on the previous round, you get a bonus of some kind on Manyshot. Perhaps a +hit, or +damage. That makes it so that you are not required to do the chain, but there is a good reason to do so.

Changing some of the combat feats to work on "an attack" as opposed to per round, could be useful too, particularly for warriors. Imagine a warrior with multiple attacks using a full round action to set up a chain, such that the first attack uses one feat in the chain, the second attack uses another, and the 3rd attack is a "finisher". A bit video gamey perhaps, but it can also represent a fighting style or the kinds of fights you can see in some movies.

Overall, a great idea, but one that needs a bit of work yet!

The idea of making feats usable at any point, but giving an additional bonus if performed in sequence would be better than the proposed rules in the Alpha 1 document - but I'm still not sure it's worth doing.

Interesting thoughts everybody.

I have a question for the crowd. Is it the actual chaining that is a problem? -OR- Is it that some of the more common used familiar feats got put in a chain? -OR- Is it that you can only use one combat feat per round?

Or I guess, is it a combination of problems. If we removed one of the above, does the concept work better?

Let me know... I will share my specific thoughts later.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

I think the chaining is a problem and I also think it's a problem that you can only use one combat feat per round. Of these, it's a toss-up as to which is the bigger problem; maybe the one-combat-feat-per-round limitation.

Personally, I think that the number of changes from 3.5 to the Pathfinder rules should be kept to a minimum. (That serves the goal of backwards compatibility; also, I'm not interested in straying too far from the rules I already know.) So far, I don't see anything in the Pathfinder rules that would convince me to adopt them in their entirety; more likely, I'd take a few things that I like (Perception instead of Spot, Search and Listen, for instance) and houserule them into 3.5, but otherwise run 3.5 straight from the books.

I'm torn on these.

I like the idea of one feat building on another through the combat. Rather than just attacking round after round, you get possibilities for some "combos". Seems like it would add some excitement to the combat to see if you can pull off the later feats.

But...they don't really build on each other - you just have to pass time.
"Hey everybody, fight defensively for the first two rounds while I wait for my Devastating Chop to power up!". The Overhand Chop should have to HIT before you can use Backswing. And the Backswing has to HIT before you get to Devastating Chop. Then you have some excitement hoping that you can get off your combo (wonder if I'll be flamed for that choice of words?).

I agree with the OP on Dodge/Mobility. Those shouldn't be tied together. What, I have to hop around a bit at the back of the group before charging into the battle? And Precise and Point should be used together - or they should be made more powerful if you can only use one or the other.

Maybe someone has already made this comment (I haven't read the whole thread yet; I'm commenting as I go).

Anyway, I can understand the interest in trying to set up combinations, but I agree that it's a bad idea to require players to script out their combat moves two or three rounds in advance. I'm not about to do that - frankly, it's enough to keep me from adopting the Pathfinder rules.

I don't think that every feat chain needs to be built into a combat combo. (Dodge and Mobility are an example of this.) If there is a strong desire to build combos in, then they should resolve in a single round - I'm thinking here of something like the 3.5 version of Cleave (as opposed to the Pathfinder version): you kill a opponent and the feat is triggered, giving you another attack at the same attack bonus. But stringing it out over more than one round is a mistake, and so is linking together different feats just because they're in the same feat tree.

My first thoughts when I saw thie thread were a bit different than what the OP intended. The OP talked about simplicity in design, and that's a fine goal. But with this game, particularly given the goal of backwards-compatibility with 3.5, there's another aspect of simplicity to consider: the fewer changes the better. In other words, the simpler it is to switch from straight 3.5 to the Pathfinder rules, the better.

Of additional relevance to the Paizo & 4.0 debate may be that in the chatroom last night James Jacobs seemed to me to be saying that Paizo wouldn't want to publish anything that wasn't D & D; if I understood him correctly, it appears to me to conclusively rule out any possible intentions upon Paizo's part of their developing their own game system in the immediate future.

I wouldn't necessarily say that. 3.5 D&D is still D&D. They're just not going to switch systems entirely.

Well, looks like now we know when WotC will let third parties get their hands on the rules - though "give" would be the wrong word to describe the transfer.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20080108a

What does this mean for Paizo? Do we know yet?

To my mind, Sean K Reynolds explained it best in his "Donut Cores and Forgotten Rums" essay.

For those who prefer instant gratification over the satisfaction of finding things themselves....

http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/forgottenrumsstory.html

: )

One thing to keep in mind is that we at Paizo know what we want for Golarion. In cases where the rules don't support what we want, we change them. For example:

The runelords of Thassilon have a magic system based on 7 schools of magic. 3.5 D&D has 8 schools of magic. Our solution there was to lump the school of divination into the universal school, not to invent some silly 8th sin. The rules bend and change according to the needs of the story and the world.

If and when we switch to 4th edition (still haven't seen the rules and OGL for it, so we still can't make that decision yet), there are GOING to be rules that don't fit Golarion. Dragonborn for one. The loss of the traditional schools of magic for one. Gnomes will remain a strong PC choice in Golarion. Succubi will still be demons. Etc., etc.

My goal is to ensure that if you're a person IN GAME, you won't notice the edition switch at all.

But how will that work? It's more than just the loss of the traditional schools of magic - it's the loss of low-level Vancian spellcasting. That change is harder to undo or gloss over than the changed height of elves and halflings (for instance). While it is not the only one, that seems like the single biggest impediment to a seamless transition.

I agree that the profanity - even bleeped - was unnecessary. I don't have a problem with it if it serves a purpose, but in this case, it just came out of nowhere and for no reason. The joke was already over at that point. They could have skipped the "F*** this" without losing anything.

The way I see it, there will still be people playing 3.5 after 4E comes out. I know that my group isn't in any hurry to convert, and from what I've read, there will be plenty of players and DMs who either refuse to convert or will take their time about it. That means there will be a market for 3.5 materials after 4E comes out.

I wasn't thrilled to hear about 4E, and I'm still not feeling all warm and fuzzy about it. When it comes out, I'll take a look at it and decide then. I'd think that Paizo could pretty much do the same. For now, keep producing 3.5 materials under the OGL. That means you'll still be selling 3.5 materials when 4E launches. And your sales during that period should give you some idea of what kind of post-4E market there will be for 3.5-compatible materials.

But you don't need me to give you business advice. You just want to know what I'll do personally. To tell the truth, I'm not entirely sure. I haven't decided about converting to 4E yet. But even if I stick with 3.5, I've got enough stuff to last me for a while (including the last few years of the print versions of Dungeon and Dragon). I've got a couple of GameMastery modules and the first issue of Pathfinder, but I'm not a subscriber at this point. But even with all the stuff I've got already, I'm always on the lookout for other stuff that I think is cool or that I think I can use in my campaigns. So yes, I'd be open to buying 3.5-compatible materials after 4E is released, at least on an occasional basis.