Do you like this game (Pathfinder)?

[The 8th Dwarf]

I play Pathfinder because my group does... It's my preferred version of D&D.

I would prefer to be playing RoleMaster, GURPS, or Shadowrun.

I am participating in the free Beta play test for RoleMaster. Because ICE has nowhere near one tenth the resources of Paizo, its a very small community and a very slow process.

[Steve Geddes]

The 8th Dwarf wrote:

I am participating in the free Beta play test for RoleMaster. Because ICE has nowhere near one tenth the resources of Paizo, its a very small community and a very slow process.

How is it looking?

[Just a Guess]

The 8th Dwarf wrote:

I would prefer to be playing RoleMaster, GURPS, or Shadowrun.

I stopped playing Shadowrun 3 because of the caster/martial imbalance.

At first I "only" stated that I am not going to play it unless it is a purely mundane party. Now the GM doesn't want to play it without me and the other players don't want to play the weak side. Result: We don't play it anymore.

[The 8th Dwarf]

Steve Geddes wrote:

The 8th Dwarf wrote:

I am participating in the free Beta play test for RoleMaster. Because ICE has nowhere near one tenth the resources of Paizo, its a very small community and a very slow process.

How is it looking?

Some very radical changes, mostly good. Once you grasp what they have done with Creature Law it's probably the best part. Creature Law is not set out very well yet. Treasure Law is also cool the Alchemist profession is very interesting.

The major problem is they are trying to simplify it and keep the classic feel and it's a very hard balancing act.

[Steve Geddes]

I'll keep an eye out. I've played more rolemaster than anything else in my life. I look forward to the next iteration. :)

[Aubrey the Malformed]

Paizo has critical mass behind it and has cultivated its brand assiduously. It is probably one of the best, if not THE best, supported system in terms of additional content, in particular adventures. So while there may be problems with the system it has lots of people playing it and lots of stuff for them to play.

[Icyshadow]

I dislike Pathfinder, but like parts of it.

Games I prefer over PF are mainly D&D 3.5e and GURPS.

[Orfamay Quest]

I think Paizo delivered a substantial improvement over 3.5, has built a very good brand based on their product, and has developed a deserved reputation for high-quality product. I also think their product quality has dropped markedly over the past few years.

My gaming group opted, some years ago, to use the d20/PF system exclusively because it was just too tedious to learn a new system (Exalted! Eclipse Phase! Bunnies and Burrows!) every time an adventure ended and we wanted to try something different. If we were to revisit that decision today, I'd want to resurvey the landscape and see if there were any real competitors for scope and quality.

My bet is that there still isn't.

That said,.... PF is not my favorite game, and it becomes less so with every passing splat-book.

[Cussune]

"Welcome to Golarion!"
"I like games!"
"Welcome to Golarion!"
"I like games!"
"Welcome to Golarion!"
"I like games!"
"Welcome to Golarion!"
"I like games!"

In othermore words, I enjoy gaming. I like learning rules for games even when troublesome *aims stinkeye towards Arkham Horror*, I like options and splatbooks, and I like roleplaying. I lean towards fantasy, but enjoy horror and sci-fi as well. I like the game world, I know the rules, and while I like Eberron more as a setting the available content for Golarion makes it a richer world, and with more support. That isn't even touching 3rd party support, which I barely scratch the surface of in my gaming. I'm not someone who gets paralyzed by options so "bloat" and all doesn't bother me, it means more people have more chances to find what they like.

Pathfinder has the advantages of building on rules that have been out there for a long time and have percolated through the minds of most of my available player base, so it's faster and more widespread, making it easier to get games started, especially since a good portion of my player base has aged out of the whole "let's use our brains learning entire new systems". Some older players lean towards 2nd/1st Ed., which I'd play if a game started up, but 3.5/Pathfinder is essentially the baseline.

If someone can't stand the game, that's their problem, but finding others willing to play/learn an alternate system (or houserules) is the bigger problem. I have a number of games that I'll likely never to be able to play because of my player pool's lack of time and interest in other systems and settings *aims sadeye towards Eberron and the Leverage RPG*, and that's still fine. Because in the end, I am gaming - with friends. The path matters less than the company, for me.

[HeHateMe]

I personally enjoy the game, but that's because I enjoy rules heavy systems, tactical combat and tons of options. PF has all of that in spades.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

No.

I don't hate it: I'm willing to play it and consider running it. But there are parts of the system I don't really want to engage with and as a whole the thing is intimidating in how much there is to keep track of. Aside from use of a certain 3rd-party magic system I can get what I want from another d20 game that's probably about as complex but somehow just isn't as intimidating.

The devs have an agenda contrary to my own only because they're trying to serve a community the tastes of which I do not share.

[137ben]

Icyshadow wrote:

I dislike Pathfinder, but like parts of it.

Games I prefer over PF are mainly D&D 3.5e and GURPS.

Pretty much this.

I became interested in Pathfinder due to gaps in kingdom building/organization rules in 3.5, and my dissatisfaction with the 3.5 mass combat rules. Since Ultimate Campaign, I've periodically checked to see if any of Paizo's offerings interest me. So far, none have, but they might eventually.

I also like getting new subsystems, so I regularly buy the Interjection Games classes. Those are technically classified as both Pathfinder and 3.5, though they are obviously written with Pathfinder in mind (with racial FCBs and occasional references to CMB/CMD).

But for the most part, 3.5 and GURPS fulfill my gaming needs. Or, when I'm in the mood for a simpler game, STARS or Mythic Roleplaying work.

[James Langley]

I liked Pathfinder just fine.
Until I tried 5th edition.

[Duke Baron]

Pathfinder was the first real RPG I ever played. In the many years since I have not yet found a good replacement for me. I know the system backwards, forwards, and side-to-side and tinker with it constantly. So a mixture of nostalgia, mechanics and friends keep me playing.

[Jiggy]

I used to like Pathfinder, back in the day. Then I actually started to get more than a newbie-level grasp of how it worked, and it rapidly started to lose its luster.

It's a combination of personal taste (things like not being a fan of gear-based character progression), mechanical issues (things like skills being codified down to individual actions, forcing time-consuming tasks to require a multitude of checks, only one of which need be low to make the whole endeavor fail), and community issues (things like cheating, lying, and harassment—both at the table and away from it—from those who are held up as being pillars of the community).

And of course the taste issues, mechanical issues and community issues tend to play off each other: for example, when pondering a character concept that would be fun to roleplay, I have to stop and check whether the mechanics can support it (and they often can't, or can but only with a lot of hoop-jumping), and if they can, I have to then ask myself whether that implementation will be likely to trigger any of my local PFS GMs' prejudices and get me accused, berated, cheated against, etc.

The list of problems in my years playing Pathfinder could fill pages and pages. Eventually, I just gave up. I like roleplaying in the fantasy genre, but having to constantly dodge belligerent elitism just to be able to use a rather mediocre and cumbersome system that only supports certain character concepts just wasn't worth the effort. Trying to play Pathfinder eventually gave me more stress than fun.

Once I finish the last Pathfinder PbP I'm in, I'm done.

[Subparhiggins]

I like this game. It brought me back into RP, and the setting and stories keep me interested in a way no other table top games story I've played every has.

I like the inclusivity, I like the internal logic to everything. I like that fluff and that way the world works is all readily available, and that I dont have to read 50+ novels that started being published before I was born to understand basic things about Golarion.

[TOZ]

I feel like this thread is a digital version of that note passed in class with yes and no check blocks.

[Ryuko]

Jiggy wrote:

I used to like Pathfinder, back in the day. Then I actually started to get more than a newbie-level grasp of how it worked, and it rapidly started to lose its luster.

It's a combination of personal taste (things like not being a fan of gear-based character progression), mechanical issues (things like skills being codified down to individual actions, forcing time-consuming tasks to require a multitude of checks, only one of which need be low to make the whole endeavor fail), and community issues (things like cheating, lying, and harassment—both at the table and away from it—from those who are held up as being pillars of the community).

And of course the taste issues, mechanical issues and community issues tend to play off each other: for example, when pondering a character concept that would be fun to roleplay, I have to stop and check whether the mechanics can support it (and they often can't, or can but only with a lot of hoop-jumping), and if they can, I have to then ask myself whether that implementation will be likely to trigger any of my local PFS GMs' prejudices and get me accused, berated, cheated against, etc.

The list of problems in my years playing Pathfinder could fill pages and pages. Eventually, I just gave up. I like roleplaying in the fantasy genre, but having to constantly dodge belligerent elitism just to be able to use a rather mediocre and cumbersome system that only supports certain character concepts just wasn't worth the effort. Trying to play Pathfinder eventually gave me more stress than fun.

Once I finish the last Pathfinder PbP I'm in, I'm done.

Pretty much this, and as TOZ said above, i play it because it's popular, not because it's good. I've been getting very into fate core lately, maybe I can get a good group together soon.

Sorry to see you go Jiggy, your posts were always enjoyable, well thought out and worth reading.

[memorax]

I have mixed feelings.

I like:

The large amount of options. Arctypes, feats etc. the more the better IMO.
PF scratches my tog gaming itch at the moment. I tried many RPGs yet for the time being I'm going to only play PF.

The art in the books is very evocative though I wish they would hire more artists.

3pp even if some will never be allowed at my table.

I like Golarion for the most part. So
Much variety in the world.

What I dislike:

A unwillingness on the Devs part to find the proper middle ground when it comes to new material. Either it's too strong. Not worth taking. Or was a decent option to take at first then became nerfed after. I don't see why we can't have both effective crunch and flavour.

Some of the fans who are both unable and unwilling to accept that some fans simply don't agree with some design decisions. I can both like and be critical of a rpg company. As long as one is respectful about it. I believe in telling people what they need to hear not what they want to hear. This is after all a forum to discuss topics. Not a echo chamber where I and others have to say only positive stuff about Piazo.

high leave play can slow the game down yet IMO that was a problem with earlier editions.

I don't like how much of a say PFS had in the errata process.

[Marc Radle]

I actually love the Pathfinder RPG. I plan to give D&D 5E a try at some point and I might even like it ...

But, I Pathfinder will remain my preferred system.

[Nicos]

Wow, sorry to hear that Jiggy, but although I agree on the complains about the mechanics it seems to me that the majority of your issues are with your experiences in PFS. NO matter what systems are you playing, if you play with people you don't like you will not enjoy the experience.

[Dustin Ashe]

More and more, I like to just get to the roleplaying. Choosing among 40 classes and hundreds of feats, not to mention waiting for my players to calculate what exactly their attack rolls are and how much damage they dealt started to wear me down. I prefer a simpler game now, though I'll continue to use Pathfinder rules until my Jade Regent campaign wraps and then I'll probably continue to buy Paizo flip-mats and pawns, and also run converted PF APs afterwards.

[Chris Lambertz]

Removed a few posts. Do not use "retarded" on our site in place of when you mean to say "stupid" or similar. Some passive aggressive commentary on other users in other threads were removed as well.

[Bandw2]

do i like pathfinder itself? not really, i enjoy the underlining mechanics, but most of my material that i enjoy is 3pp or from their alternative rules.

[Jiggy]

Nicos wrote:

Wow, sorry to hear that Jiggy, but although I agree on the complains about the mechanics it seems to me that the majority of your issues are with your experiences in PFS. NO matter what systems are you playing, if you play with people you don't like you will not enjoy the experience.

There's plenty to the system itself that I don't personally care for: wealth as a second XP track (aka gear dependency), different levels of "fantasy-ness" allowed for different character options, some elements of the math (mainly skill ranks and save progressions), inconsistency in how well multiclassing works, the use of skill checks on a per-action basis, excessively costly specializations, etc. The list goes on.

You're right that no system is fun if the people you're playing with are jerks. However, when I gave up on Pathfinder/PFS, I started trying out PbP. If the community had been the only issue, those PbP games I joined would all be Pathfinder. They're not. ;)

[Cerberus Seven]

Ryuko wrote:

Jiggy wrote:

I used to like Pathfinder, back in the day. Then I actually started to get more than a newbie-level grasp of how it worked, and it rapidly started to lose its luster.

It's a combination of personal taste (things like not being a fan of gear-based character progression), mechanical issues (things like skills being codified down to individual actions, forcing time-consuming tasks to require a multitude of checks, only one of which need be low to make the whole endeavor fail), and community issues (things like cheating, lying, and harassment—both at the table and away from it—from those who are held up as being pillars of the community).

And of course the taste issues, mechanical issues and community issues tend to play off each other: for example, when pondering a character concept that would be fun to roleplay, I have to stop and check whether the mechanics can support it (and they often can't, or can but only with a lot of hoop-jumping), and if they can, I have to then ask myself whether that implementation will be likely to trigger any of my local PFS GMs' prejudices and get me accused, berated, cheated against, etc.

The list of problems in my years playing Pathfinder could fill pages and pages. Eventually, I just gave up. I like roleplaying in the fantasy genre, but having to constantly dodge belligerent elitism just to be able to use a rather mediocre and cumbersome system that only supports certain character concepts just wasn't worth the effort. Trying to play Pathfinder eventually gave me more stress than fun.

Once I finish the last Pathfinder PbP I'm in, I'm done.

Pretty much this, and as TOZ said above, i play it because it's popular, not because it's good. I've been getting very into fate core lately, maybe I can get a good group together soon.

Sorry to see you go Jiggy, your posts were always enjoyable, well thought out and worth reading.

We're playing the Dresden Files RPG now on the weekends, which is based on the Fate system, and it's a blast. Simple, different, fun, and the narrative/role-playing element ties directly into the mechanics in a way I didn't think, after so many years with d20 systems, it was possible to do. Much props to that system, if anyone hasn't checked it out yet.

[Lemmy]

I love the foundation of Pathfinder. It wasn't perfect but it was a vast improvement over 3.5. And product quality was amazing.

- - -

I despise the route Paizo has followed in the more recent years... Where anything slightly outside the norm is hammered down. If it doesn't fit the designer's idea of fantasy, it's not allowed. If it's slightly better than a "classic" option, it's not allowed. It falls outside a very specifc, arbitrary and rigid parameter of what a certain class should do, it's not allowed.

And worst of all... If an option in the new book they are trying to sell is not as good as the option in the old book they already sold... The old option is nerfed.

There are only a handful of concepts that are allowed and supported by the rules (specially on the non-caste side), and the design team hasn't shown any interest in changing that.

Product quality has also been falling... Culminating in the awful mess that was the ACG, but not being limited to it. Their errata "quality" has always been particularly shameful, and it got even worse lately.

- - -

So... I like Pathfinder, but I hate Paizo's current business policy and design philosophy. And those have been slowly but steadily decreasing my enjoyment of the game.

[zylphryx]

I enjoy PF. There are a good number of issues with the system, as there are with any system, but overall I have a good time playing the game.

That said, the ever increasing rule set is getting rather cumbersome. While this is not an issue for home games (where most folks I play with look at the rules as a set of guidelines ... with the occasional quick rules debate), it is certainly becoming an issue for PFS, at least from my point of view. The errata which result in requiring character rebuilds, the ever growing list of PC classes and archetypes, and the ever expanding FAQs are making it more burdensome to run PFS for folks who GM.

Does this mean I will stop playing? Nope. When I play or GM I enjoy myself, primarily due to the folks I play with. Occasionally I will end up at a table with a lackluster GM or a jerk who has his or her PC act like a jerk "because it's what my character would do", but those instances are thankfully few and far between. Couple that with the fact that the folks I play the home games with are also willing to pick up a game of Shadowrun, Star Wars, WoD, etc etc etc and if there is an increase in a burnout level it can be countered easily.

At least that is where it stands now. Ask again in a year or two and we'll see how the weigh of the rules looks at that point.

[DrDeth]

Well, I still like AD&D. But as far as variations on D20 goes, PF is far and away the best. It's also better than any other current D&D variant.

[Lyra Amary]

I enjoy Pathfinder a lot, though at times I have issues with certain parts of the system that I find needlessly complex. I GM most of the time, and some of my players have told me that at times doing character building work feels more like homework than fun, and a lot of the time, I'd agree.

Regardless, I enjoy the variety of options the system offers, and I'm experienced enough with the game to be able to quickly sift through the options that are mechanically bad or needlessly complicated.

I am also probably in the minority in the fact that I like most of the recent errata.

[Snorb]

My relationship with Pathfinder, and indeed the d20 System these days, is like a relationship with an old girlfriend.

You're happy to see she's doing well, and you have a lot of good memories, but at the same time, she's become something you fell out of love with, and you also know that there's a reason you two split up.

(For what it's worth, I do prefer D&D Fifth over Pathfinder; that said, I'd love for the group I play with to give Fantasy AGE a try, too!)

[Blackwaltzomega]

I like Pathfinder. I admittedly don't have much experience with other systems, but once I head butted my way through the dense, intimidating fog of rules, I found it a comfortable system that's got fun character generation that goes a lot quicker than anything else I've tried so far, although admittedly I imagine rules-light games would be even faster.

I don't like that the rules sometimes seem very arbitrary about what you're allowed do do effectively, or that the designers' values appear to be very different than mine.

I get the job of GMing most of the time, and I'm not a fan of how often the rules feel like they're insufficient in restraining some shenanigans, like a number of otherwise quite dangerous monsters being completely unable to react to unconventional magical tactics and therefore don't provide a challenge worthy of the EXP they provide for beating them, while at other times they come down like a ton of bricks on relatively harmless things, like my players wanting to do a colossus climb to get into a better position against enormous monsters or being able to use more off-the-wall fighting styles without paying a number of feat taxes to still be worse than if they just picked up a two-hander or a bow and slugged away.

My most recent frustration with this was when one of my players wanted their new character to be able to use a sword and a pistol in combat together but wasn't playing a class with firearm proficiency. As it's a low-level campaign, I needed to fabricate a trait so the player could even afford a gun, let alone use it without a penalty, and they still need to work with a weapon cord to even reload the thing without losing their melee weapon. People used swords and pistols together in real life all the time, but somehow facilitating this fighting style was more clunky and awkward than someone that wanted to be able to spray enemies with fire and acid by waving his hands.

I'm not going to go off on a huge martial/cater tangent, we've had enough of those already, but something I don't like about the game is that magic is easy, consistent, and safe, but operating on a very different standard than the feats every class gets. Magic gets stronger all by itself; feats don't. If you're a magical class, you get magic, no questions asked. Feats often have unnecessary prerequisites and arcane chains needed to achieve fairly mundane results like being able to use two swords without eating an enormous penalty or do a spin attack.

That's my only real gripe with the system; the rules are too light in places I feel they should be more helpful in allowing the GM to restrict shenanigans so that it's easier to react to your players refusing to walk blindly down the path ahead and react to whatever's there as they find it, or to take on that boss fight you were up all night planning head-on, while at other times they are unnecessarily harsh on people wanting a more creative fighting style than the boilerplate standard. I'd like the game more if I felt like my job as GM wasn't knowing which rules to take behind the shed and shoot and which ones to feed steroids to so they're actually any help at all in keeping the adventure exciting.

[Squirrel_Dude]

I don't hate Pathfinder.

I think I'm just bored by it. The deluge of repetitive design of classes (EVERY full caster is 1/2 BAB, EVERY 2/3 caster is 3/4 BAB), typified in the ACG forced me into playing other games just for the sake of playing something different.

For a game that's so mechanically intensive, the uninspired rules design is really troublesome.

[Brother Fen]

I love it.

We have a blast at our table and never seem to have the problems that I see mentioned on this board ad nauseum.

[Codanous]

This is a tough discussion, I've been following this thread and the one it spawned from and I've reading all these posts trying to understand how I feel about this game.

I like it at times, I think I hate PFS but it is one of the best environments available for me to play many different characters and that isn't an opportunity available when playing Adventure Paths or long home-campaigns.

I however think that at the same time PFS has ruined me from playing one character too long in a row without being able to change. I know this isn't a thread about if I like PFS or not but to me PFS is the game that I play and I am not sure I like it anymore as an extension of this game. These recent errata's have caused headaches for several of my characters and its almost enough to say I'm done with PFS in general.

Regarding Pathfinder as a system, it feels boring. I wish my home-game group would be more willing to experiment with 3pp material because the ACG, the Occult stuff and even this new Vigilante are either boring or unimaginative or with the Vigilante just flat out overshadowed by existing classes.

[Berinor]

I like Pathfinder. It's a fun engine, although when numbers (of actions and in math) get larger, it slows down a fair amount. As a GM does well enough at coming up with big-picture plots, but doesn't do well at coming up with reasonable intermediate problems/conflicts, the amount and quality of setting material and adventures are great. When there are things I don't like (or forget when running), it's much easier to modify something that's already there than to come up with something out of whole cloth.

Lemmy wrote:

If it doesn't fit the designer's idea of fantasy, it's not allowed.

Ok, so this is the real reason I posted here. On most of your other objections, I either see your point and disagree on the criticality of it or have a different opinion. On this point, though, I can't figure out where it's coming from. There have recently been a number of non-standard fantasy things supported (guns, technology guide, occult adventures, etc.) and for further diversions, 3PP does the trick when outside of PFS where campaign cohesion enforces the standard fantasy more than the design team.

So, if you're willing, would you expand on what you mean by this?

[Vorduvai]

Brother Fen wrote:

I love it.

We have a blast at our table and never seem to have the problems that I see mentioned on this board ad nauseum.

Yep! Ditto.

[ShinHakkaider]

I like Pathfinder still.

I like the wealth of options even though they can be a little paralyzing at times.

I like that the world is defined mostly through the adventures and not huge gazetteers that feel like history and geography homework.

And I dont play in nor will I ever play in PFS so I dont care as much about RAW as much as I do RAI or what actually works for my particular group. Yes we defer to the rules but if we find that a tweak to a cumbersome rule makes things better for everyone we go with that.

I like the amount of support for the game.

That being said I'm probably going to stop both of my subscriptions (AP and RPG) because JESUS it's been seven years and almost 100 issues of AP's.
After Hell's Rebels, unless the AP after Hell's Vengeance (not a fan of evil PC's so this may be my jumping off point...) sounds interesting I'm done.

[sr-ix]

I'm torn.

I like the APs and most of the content books, but I feel like a lot of first party material is quantity over quality.

The tendency of certain parts of the online community to focus so heavily on creating and playing optimized characters weighs heavy and bleeds into real life play.

The vast breadth of the system (the skills and feats and sheer amount of stuff to keep track of and know or at least be aware of) is daunting.

I am not particularly tied at all to Golarian lore or flavor, but I love the "dungeon-punk" art style and feeling of the world, classes, races.

I both love and hate the vast number of classes. It's really great to be able to keep very specific and non-traditional class options. However to pull this off, they often feel like a mish-mashed grab-bag of class features rather than an organic, "real" being.

All this kind of is made worse by my growing distaste for playing to the rules rather than the story. If I wanted a game that was governed by rules, I'd play a video game.

I'm tired of living the trope of stopping the flow of the narrative to track down a particular rule or obscure exception to a rule (made all the worse by the vast quantity of material that is not internally consistent, either by design or mistake).

I have a bunch of books that I now only use as inspiration for material for the other games I play.

[Felyndiira]

First of all, I do like Pathfinder. 3.5 was my first foray into the Tabletop RPG world, and it was very fun learning about all of its little niches. It was fun learning about the weird stuff people come up with, whether it's the Twice-Betrayer, silly things like the Peasant Railgun, harmless shenanigans like the Sandwich Psion, or an Allip beating the Tarrasque.

I'm an ardent believer in the Snowbluff Principle - in that I really don't care about how "balanced" the system is as long as the rules are fun and there are people playing it. In fact, I recognize that Pathfinder is as imbalanced as 3.5 is; that doesn't mean I can't have fun in a party of new people by playing a wizard, and that's enough for me.

Pathfinder isn't the only system I like, of course. Just recently, I discovered Eclipse Phase, and the sheer otherworldly thinking required for that system is amazing. I would have loved to play more games in EP with all sorts of character philosophies only possible in a trans-human society, but it's rare to find a group that even plays EP in the first place...let alone actually explore the setting right down to its deepest, most horrible elements.

I love Exalted as well. If you ever thought Pathfinder is unbalanced, Eclipsed 2.0 was like a cluster**** of bad design choices. You discover this first hand when you spend a huge amount of your power on this really awesome finishing move, and the enemy just perfect defends it all without a scratch; that's not even mentioning all the silliness that is Sidereal Martial Arts or Ebon Lightning Prana. Nonetheless, it had one of the best settings I've seen in an RPG. The characters in the world were mostly terrible people, but all of them understandably so. And the questions about what you would do with so much power fits right up my alley. Once again, it's rare to find a group that plays Exalted, and now with 3.0, I basically have to learn another system in order to play with the few that might.

I loved Golden Sun Stories and how unique it is, though finding anyone willing to play that is like finding a needle in a haystack. I loved Mage, but anyone who plays World of Darkness tend to drift toward Vampires instead. There are plenty of other systems that I'm willing to try, as well, but there's very few that are as prominent as Pathfinder or D&D 5e.

Ultimately, the system doesn't actually matter. The thing I look for the most is the ability to express a character - complete with his philosophy on life - to the other players. I do derive quite a bit of enjoyment with optimizing a character in Pathfinder and seeing the results play out on the mat, but I can also work with attrition warfare back in the days of Exalted 2.0, or the highly lethal combat in the old World of Darkness. Looking at it in that regard, Pathfinder also happens to be one of the most popular systems out there, so it's another plus to the system.

[Lakesidefantasy]

I want to play Dungeons and Dragons, that's why I started playing Pathfinder.

I've been running a Pathfinder adventure path since 2012. It's an early adventure path written for Dungeons and Dragons and I've been converting it to Pathfinder as we go along. When I'm done with that I doubt I will ever run anything with Pathfinder rules again. I will instead convert Pathfinder adventure paths and modules to Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition rules.

I like Paizo, I think their adventure writing is some of the best, but their rules writing is not their strength. I appreciate that they continued developing the 40 year old Dungeons and Dragons rules when others abandoned it. They forced Wizards of the Coast to come back to their senses. Basically, Paizo and Pathfinder got me through the dark ages of Dungeons and Dragons.

For me, the game is too rules focused, has been since 3rd edition. I think Dungeon Master fiat is important and needs more support. I never liked the dependence on miniatures and a grid.

Now, I'm not saying that 2nd edition was better than 3rd. Many great improvements were made, and Pathfinder improved upon 3rd. But, in my opinion the rules beast has become far too cumbersome, to the point that my group ignores most of them in the course of having fun.

[ElterAgo]

Hmm… Not entirely sure how to answer this. Certainly not perfect, but as an entire package, for me it seems to be the best available.

It has some negatives:
Very complex which can be off-putting for new player entry.
Some of the more vitriolic members of the community can be real downers.
I have never been a fan of the Vancian casting system.
The perceived gear dependency and obsolescence are a bit annoying to my Grognard self.

It has some positives:
Easiest by far to find a group to game with. I spent months trying to find people to play a few other RPG systems and eventually gave up.
Some of the more upbeat members of the community are amazingly helpful.
Very complex which I personally like in a game system.
The options on what I can do are absolutely amazing. In PbP, PFS, and home games I have 14 characters that are completely different and I thoroughly enjoy. Most other game system seem to have 1 or 2 build possibilities that seem interesting to me.
While I’m not a fan of the perceived gear dependency and vancian casting, it works well enough to play the game in a reasonable time frame. Make progress and have fun. Most of the other systems that seemed like ‘better’ systems tend to grind the game to a complete halt due to the complexities of the combat system.

So basically it works reasonably well and has a player base large enough to find a group. Net positive and I will keep playing. If I could find something else that met those 2 basic requirements, I might give it a try.

[Randarak]

Yes. I enjoy it. Its my favorite activity.

[gnomersy]

Do I like pathfinder?

An interesting question particularly because it forces me to divide Pathfinder specifically from the simple act of spending time with my friends and I do rather like them.

We've started playing 5th Ed. mostly because of rules bloat and a desire to cut down on the numerical aspect of the game for simplicity and speed. On the one hand I personally like number crunching it's something I can do to improve my character while we aren't playing but my friends aren't as keen on it so that's an aspect that I like about PF.

Another thing I like is that there's a lot more build variety in PF than 5th but there was more of that in 3.5 and I liked that game as well. I do feel like the more recent content has been less interesting to me than some of the older content was but I like the fact that it is there.

What I vehemently dislike is when the dev team "fixes" something by smashing it with a hammer and gluing it together into a new shape entirely like say the Scarred Witch Doctor change because it completely throws any ideas I had before about a character out the window. I don't dislike errata that fixes mistakes but errata-ing to patch the game and re balance things is annoying. It's annoying in video games and it's worse in tabletop games where you have to actively hunt down the rules and apply them correctly instead of having a computer handle it all on the back end. Occasionally this kind of thing has to be done but more often than not I'd rather they didn't.

Martial caster balance wise we haven't really had a huge issue but at the same time I'm the most "powergamer" like of my friends and I tend to play something other than a caster usually.

[Skeld]

I like Pathfinder RPG and I enjoy playing the game.

I love the Pathfinder campaign setting.

I've had the same (more or less) home group for 15 years (having started with 2e and transitioned to 3e when it came out). I don't play PFS because I generally don't enjoy playing with people I don't know and dealing with their baggage.

My group (having a casual playstyle) and I (being a GM that plays fast and loose with the rules) haven't really encountered any of the problems bandied about on these boards. When we do, they've appeared as mildly inconvenient rather than game-breaking. No one's enjoyment has been killed as a result.

-Skeld