Thomas Hatfield's page

I love the idea of the Arcanist's Circle, good job.

Also, where can I find more of these kinds of schools?

I just got done running a very high magic campaign where the Ultimate Equipment book was available just about anywhere and it really threw things off. Aside from the Pathfinder economy being all kinds of crazy, and the "a wizard did it" tax is in play, you need to find a balance. I honestly like the random rolls option and did it for my players in RotR. You may want to expand it a little and say there is one armor, weapon, etc available and roll for those instead of completely random.

There's also the idea of "legacy items" where as players level up, their weapons naturally get better by doing some kind of ritual (read here disho from 3.5 samurai).

However you do it, magic items need to be controlled and limited.

In my campaign I have set up a failure condition and there is a second part I plan on running in a more modern era where the players will have to deal with their choices. I always like games where failure doesn't just mean everyone died, roll new characters. I think failure should always be there, one nation in my world lost 3 cities because the PC's chased a red herring. I've actually found myself disliking some of my friend's campaigns because I don't feel like there is a true sense of danger or possible failure.

Though to go back to the original point, I agree with some of the posters saying unless there's an Act II, ending with failure seems to be rather pointless and probably quite upsetting to the players.

I know it's been touched on before. I know you all have a lot of irons in the fire. However, after seeing the Pathfinder RPG in all its glory, I'm begging you to do a Pathfinder-treatment of D20 Modern.

I have total faith that you could do the same improvements and treatments for the modern, pulp, and sci-fi genres.

I know there is a lot of 3rd-party stuff out there and that their are alternatives like True20 (which I like but I still like D20 Modern more) and Modern20 (which I cherry-pick for rules but it changed too much IMO), but there's something about D20 Modern that just clicks for me.

Even though fantasy RPGing is my genre of choice, I find myself evaluating characters in fiction, video games, TV, and movies through the lens of D20 Modern base classes. (She's a Fast/Charismatic, he's a Strong/Fast, he's a Dedicated/Tough, etc.)

I realize it'd be smaller print runs and serves a smaller audience than fantasy, but damn I'd love to have it.

Paizo fans, tell me you wouldn't want the following (apologies for poorly-riffing the Pathfinder meme):

"Explorer: The Role-playing game of Modern adventure" (Pulp, Modern)
-- Genre sourcebooks include:
Sci-fi. C'mon sci-fi treatments from Paizo? Do I even need to say more? Especially with Planet Stories inspriation?
Pulp. You already tap this source of gaming goodness with Pathfinder, so you're capabilities are already proven here. You could even do a pulp-era version of the Pathfinder Society.
Horror You sprinkle this in to great effect now. Logue & Pett unleashed?!? Failed sanity checks abound!

I realize you've probably already kicked this around and have an idea or two or perhaps that door's already closed. However, a Pathfinder fan can dream and after seeing the great job done with the Pathfinder RPG, I know the D20 Modern/Future OGL torch would be in good hands with Paizo as well.

So I'm going to do a shameless self bump here but I too have been frustrated with it and have been working on something myself. I'd like your guy's feedback on it if you don't mind.

https://sites.google.com/site/tommyscampaign/house-rules/modern-reboot

Thomas Hatfield wrote:

I would really like to know what happened in the Paizo labs that made you guys completely change everything about the class.

Lots of negative feedback that the class was both overpowered and boring. At least, that seems to be why.

So I built one based on the new rules, and it's not so bad. I really like the spell casting mechanic, and it has a lot of great flavor. I won't be playing it for a while as my group wants to finish my campaign sooner but when I start playing him again, I'll report back.

I played the hunter on a one-shot adventure and it was interesting, though I felt like I was just playing an archetype of ranger than a different class.

Ok I built an Arcanist a couple weeks ago, now I come back to make some changes and everything has gone crazy!

Honestly, what was done made the Arcanist look like a weak Magus instead of a true blend between Sorcerer and Wizard. I think the new point system is garbage, no one is going to want to destroy magic items in order to build up points to create weaker spell effects.

Also, why can't I take some of the exploits more than once? Say like Item Creation and Metamagic?

The first build was awesome, this new set up makes the character over complicated and a weak build over all. I can see how the exploits could give you some more flexibility, but the eating magic items is going to upset the party and drive an arcanist out in my opinion.

Why not take the best of both Sorcerer and Wizard? They have level dependent abilities, why not say pick one from each class and you get them at a slower rate, but never get the 20th level perk from Sorcerer?

I would really like to know what happened in the Paizo labs that made you guys completely change everything about the class.

I have a transformer prime that I use for all my gaming stuff.