Melvin McSnatch's page

My first read through Pathfinder was complicated by my experience with 3.x. I focused attention to what was different, and my knowledge of 3.x filled out the rest. I've recently gone back through the book, trying to give incredible focus to every detail. And I'd have to say after an extremely close read, the organization of the CRB is atrocious.

The rules are great once you piecemeal them together from the various sections, charts, and appendices; and in a few places use your imagination to fill in the blanks. For instance, the shield bash rules are in the equipment section, but not in the combat section. Two-weapon fighting is split into at least three sections scattered around the book: two-weapon fighting, off-hand penalties, and the action chart rather than in one place. I read about something earlier in the book only to find expanded rules a few pages later. It makes it hard to read in a linear fashion and even harder to reference. The GM guide is fantastically superior to the D&D products, but makes at least one reference to a chart that doesn't exist in the Paizo books, but does in the DM guide.

So am I for a second edition? You bet. I love these rules and I don't want them to change much, but they need to devote the same level of attention to revising the current rules as they would if they were designing a new product.

And I think they should consider splitting the player's material and the GM material. It seemed like a great value when I first started, but now I'm screaming for a smaller, more focused set of books. My binding is tearing out while having to gopher around this book.

Hey everyone,

Trying to figure out what other resources (books, modules) I could use to make a trap making rogue useful in an adventure setting.

Evil Finnish Chaos Beast is banned because I am rubber and you are glue.

DJ-Bogie is banned for looking at me funny.

Paizo has my business because:

...
10. No must have gimmicks. In other words, no setting changing and/or mechanic changing "super-events."

I just got out of an abusive relationship with a certain miniature war game company that changes the core of the game every six months to keep people buying their products. I have to say I am excited to become a Paizo customer.

Your PDF sales are brilliant. I'll pay for the hardcovers, but other players are perfectly happy paying for a $10 PDF. It's a great price point. I hope it helps you reach new customers so you never have to turn to gouging your existing ones.

Thanks!

I thought I would hijack this thread for a moment...

I'm about to bring my 3.x game to Pathfinder since I like a lot of the feat/archetype rules and I think my players will appreciate the customization without collecting 172 splat books, of which 6 pages will be useful. CM rules just close the sale. But I am concerned about a few rules making things way easier than 3.x.

Namely: # of channeling, unlimited orisons (to a lesser extent), misc. feats and class specific issues.

To be honest, I haven't gotten my Bestiary yet, so I've only poked around the SRD so far. Seems like everything is slightly higher HP and damage with lower attack. Does this balance things out? Is the risk of death still there?

Seriously, our Cleric can do 5 x channels a day plus cure spells. I like that there's a lot less resting involved, but in a single battle that's an insane amount of healing. I don't try to kill my players, but we actually enjoy the risk of death in our game.

Any thoughts on how the two systems compare in this manner?

I started with Star Wars RPG very, very young (4-5 years old, if you can believe it). A few years later I found my dad's AD&D books and "pretended" to play the game with various friends. In high school I tried to get serious about it. 3.0 had just been released, but games always fell apart.
About 6 months ago, I realized I had enough RPG players in the family to start a real group. We started with 3.0 since we all had the books, briefly moved to 3.5, and in two weeks, we're starting PF. There's some great stuff in the rules I'm looking forward to, and a few things I'm nervous about. We'll see how it goes.