Anything you feel 3.x did better than Pathfinder?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Aaron Bitman wrote:


* Damage Reduction. In 3.0, you just needed a sword +1. In 3.5 and PFRPG, you need to carry a golf bag of weapons, like a silver weapon for lycanthropes, cold iron weapons for fey, and who knows what else.

Overcoming DR

DR Type Weapon Enhancement
Bonus Equivalent
Cold iron / silver +3
Adamantine* +4
Alignment-based +5


DrDeth wrote:
ultimatepunch wrote:
SheepishEidolon wrote:
ultimatepunch wrote:
I don't like at will cantrips. Especially with Detect Magic and Light.
I find it good that a low level caster can do at least something magical all day. Detect Magic and Light are situationally powerful, but then look at what other party members can do at level 1..

It has zero to do with game balance. I almost exclusively run hex crawls and dungeons. Infinite light spells mostly eliminates the need to cary torches. Infinite Detect magic takes away interesting decisions from the players. I always run games where resource management matters.

A Everburning torch does the same thing.

You are correct. But it is easier to say there are no Everburning torches for sale than it is to change certain cantrips to first level spells.


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DrDeth wrote:
Aaron Bitman wrote:


* Damage Reduction. In 3.0, you just needed a sword +1. In 3.5 and PFRPG, you need to carry a golf bag of weapons, like a silver weapon for lycanthropes, cold iron weapons for fey, and who knows what else.

Overcoming DR

DR Type Weapon Enhancement
Bonus Equivalent
Cold iron / silver +3
Adamantine* +4
Alignment-based +5

Honestly, I dislike +Xs overcoming DR. It already does bonus damage and a bonus to hit, that rule just makes special materials completely redundant for anything else than arrows and makes DR useless at high levels.

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I am pretty happy with pathfinder but I did like the PrCs that existed in 3/3.5 the only beef being that some of them actually encouraged some useless multiclass combos to enter. Case in point my all time favourite PrC is the Fochlucan Lyrist which was at its core a Bard/Druid combo but it also insisted on evasion. So now instead of just 2 classes and 5 levels now is 3 classes and 7 levels. But the fact that some of the anoyances that I had with 3/3.5 are gone(crossclass skills) but at times I feel PF is just a tad complicated.

EtG


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I'll toss in another vote for missing 3.5's prestige classes, just because they offered so many different weird and unique options for players to mess around with. I get why Paizo decided to cut them down, given that 3.5 optimization tended to involve having three or four different prestige classes in various splashes and dips, but we do lose out on a lot of the fun craziness that all the 3.5 PrCs opened up. PF doesn't let me play a wizard who skinned a demon, and now wears his skin as a cloak to get demon powers, or a battlemage who's slowly transforming himself into a construct.

I'll also toss a half-vote to some of the classes and subsystems in 3.5 that didn't make the jump to Pathfinder. Only half a vote, since DSP seems to be hard at work converting most of them over, but alas it's not always easy to play with 3rd party material.


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Aaron Bitman wrote:


* Damage Reduction. In 3.0, you just needed a sword +1. In 3.5 and PFRPG, you need to carry a golf bag of weapons, like a silver weapon for lycanthropes, cold iron weapons for fey, and who knows what else.

I think both 3.0 and 3.5 versions of damage reduction were problematic. In 3.0, any material-based DR was overcome by a +1 weapon (like in AD&D) which makes them really weak forms of DR given the ubiquity of magic weapons. You almost might as well make everything DR #/+1 at that point. But worse was the issue of overcoming DR without the required + on your weapon. Making it a flat amount of damage ignored was a big step over AD&D's total invulnerability, but too many DR levels were set so high the effect might as well have been the same. If you don't have a +3 weapon, good luck doing 50+ hp of damage to that iron golem. It's probably about as invulnerable to you as it was in AD&D.

3.5 corrected that latter problem by setting the numbers much lower all around. Lacking the right weapon to get through DR is an annoyance, but it's not a virtually all or nothing prospect anymore. Trouble was, magic DR got so devalued there was relatively little point in investing in better than a +1 weapon - most people started going for the non-plus special feature enchantments like holy, bane, and elemental damage.

PF, as I see it, fairly nicely compromises between the two. Numbers are still fairly low and there are lots of types of DR, but there's a way for higher plus weapons to punch through other types of DR. And special material DRs aren't so devauled that every magic weapon punches through them, just significantly better ones.


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3.X had better changelings, better warlocks, and Aspect of Nature (druid variant).


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I loved 3.5 psionics.


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Goddity wrote:
I loved 3.5 psionics.

I love the Dreamscarred ones even more.


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In almost all regards I prefer Pathfinder, however I liked that 3.5 had PRCs such as pious templar which granted casting whole cloth.

I also preferred the combat maneuver feats in 3.5, when Greater and Improved trip was acounted for in just improved trip, for instance.

(Monks, for instance get improved trip as a bonus feat, but not greater trip.)


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Aaron Bitman wrote:
Lakesidefantasy wrote:
Also when the two books were combined we lost over 100 pages of content, most of it from the Dungeon Masters Guide...

Oh yeah, thanks for bringing that up. In addition to the things I already mentioned (like outdoor Spot DCs, monster PCs, etc) you know what else is conspicuously absent from the PFRPG Core Rulebook? A random treasure generator. Those of us who got started with PFRPG in 2009 had to wait for years until we finally got Ultimate Equipment.

I mean... I wouldn't complain about having to get another book. I had no problem just plunking down my $9.99 for the PDF. And if I had, I could simply have gotten it for free from the PRD. But I do think it left a visible gap in the core books.

The Game Mastery Guide had those before Ultimate Equipment. Also has alot of that content about ways to play around with rules.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Multiclassing.


necromental wrote:
Goddity wrote:
I loved 3.5 psionics.
I love the Dreamscarred ones even more.

I haven't looked at that. Should I?


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You know what I thought was a huge step backwards?
Monster building.

In 3.5, we had tables explaining how to directly adjust the CR if you added HD, or if you made a critter bigger or smaller, etc. Pathfinder instead gives a table of target values for combat stats and says "just fudge it."


Goddity wrote:
necromental wrote:
Goddity wrote:
I loved 3.5 psionics.
I love the Dreamscarred ones even more.
I haven't looked at that. Should I?

The revised version. One of my players asked about the possibility of psionics in my campaign (currently it is "unknown") and I said we could talk about it if we looked only at that one. IMO it's hard to get the flavor right for psionics and Dreamscarred came close enough.


True psionics were half great, despite being half sloppy.

Sovereign Court

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Kirth Gersen wrote:

You know what I thought was a huge step backwards?

Monster building.

In 3.5, we had tables explaining how to directly adjust the CR if you added HD, or if you made a critter bigger or smaller, etc. Pathfinder instead gives a table of target values for combat stats and says "just fudge it."

In theory I agree with you - but going by the 3.5 HD etc., some monsters you build were crazy OP for their CR, and others were push-overs.


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3.5e had more non-standard races like Dvati, Dragonborn (which were a lot more interesting in D&D before they made them so generic in 4e), Tibbits, Raptorans, Asherati, or Goliaths.

Also, Kobolds weren't as horrifically pathetic after Races of the Dragon.


I've heard a complaint before that thanks to feats being every uneven level in pathfinder, the game is much more open to minmaxing and powergaming than 3rd. Any thoughts?

Also, thank you for cleaning up, Sara!


Threeshades wrote:

I've heard a complaint before that thanks to feats being every uneven level in pathfinder, the game is much more open to minmaxing and powergaming than 3rd. Any thoughts?

I don't feel frequency of feats is a culprit as much as the capabilities of feats. In 2nd ed., we were creative because the game didn't cover a lot of non combat related actions. Now feats cover everything short of rolling to wipe yourself after you go number 2 on the woods and many feats are simply OP or can be combined in ways to make them OP with class features and spells.

There's such a thing as too many/too detailed rules.


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Threeshades wrote:

I've heard a complaint before that thanks to feats being every uneven level in pathfinder, the game is much more open to minmaxing and powergaming than 3rd. Any thoughts?

...

Oh, definitely. All the Polymorph, PrC hopping and Gate Chaining shenanigans in the world cannot compare to having Toughness, Power Attack and Weapon focus before level 6.


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Threeshades wrote:
I've heard a complaint before that thanks to feats being every uneven level in pathfinder, the game is much more open to minmaxing and powergaming than 3rd. Any thoughts?

At best, someone's operating under a huge nostalgia filter.

3.0 and 3.5 had plenty of powergaming going on, probably even worse than Pathfinder. All the different subsystems and splats tended to open up a bunch of weird combinations where you could create utterly broken characters with the right combination of Feats, ACFs, and Prestige classes. For all it's faults, I don't think you can make Pun-Pun in Pathfinder.


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Threeshades wrote:
I've heard a complaint before that thanks to feats being every uneven level in pathfinder, the game is much more open to minmaxing and powergaming than 3rd. Any thoughts?

There was a group of players at a nearby game shop who took it as a duty to try to find every broken combo, loose rule, or unintended side effect in 3.0. They came up with some pretty ridiculous stuff, including getting 9 attacks in a round at lv 1 (no, I didn't ask how -didn't want to know).

Like nature, powergamers find a way.


Milo v3 wrote:
Also, Kobolds weren't as horrifically pathetic after Races of the Dragon.

I love how pathetic Kobolds are. I know it goes against enabling players from building their favourite class- they feel like they NEED to be indirect, they need to be rogue snipers or trap makers; they basically need a big scary dragon to back them up. That's what makes me like Kobolds, they're so weak it's almost cute.


Jader7777 wrote:


I love how pathetic Kobolds are. I know it goes against enabling players from building their favourite class- they feel like they NEED to be indirect, they need to be rogue snipers or trap makers; they basically need a big scary dragon to back them up. That's what makes me like Kobolds, they're so weak it's almost cute.

The flavour from races of the dragon was too impressive to just be considered "cute". Also, they don't make good opponents to gnomes narrative-wise if they suck mechanically. They don't need to be optimised out the wazoo, they just shouldn't be pathetic.


I generally like PF better, but...

3.x had LOTS of PrCs that could be kinda fun

3.0 was luch less advanced on the path of magic nerfing that 3.5 and PF trod so gleefully and that I hate with all my heart.


Vutava wrote:
3.X had better changelings, better warlocks, and Aspect of Nature (druid variant).
Goddity wrote:
I loved 3.5 psionics.

Have to agree with that.

Dreamscarred psionics are cool too, but they are not official, and psi are often rejected out of hand by DM's even when they are, as third party product, they are essentially doomed.

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Honestly, nothing about the original 3.5e appealed to me over Pathfinder.


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I dont like how stealth combined hide and move silently. I also dont like how spot and listen were combined.

It makes for silly situations such as someone that is invisible in the same room you are in being more difficult to detect than someone on the other side of a wall or door with would block sight and at least muffle sound to some extent, while being invisible has no effect on sound.


I also like how 3.5 had more definitions in its glossary. PF uses the same ones, but I only know them because I played 3.5. Things were explained better, even if they were not perfect in many cases. I like the detail which Kirth alluded to about increasing monsters. There were times it didnt match up well so I would prefer 3.5 instruction along with PF's table.


wraithstrike wrote:

I dont like how stealth combined hide and move silently. I also dont like how spot and listen were combined.

It makes for silly situations such as someone that is invisible in the same room you are in being more difficult to detect than someone on the other side of a wall or door with would block sight and at least muffle sound to some extent, while being invisible has no effect on sound.

I think that's more an issue with the Invisibility spell and other odd corner cases than combining the skills. I always saw the split as a relatively needless division since nobody is going to put ranks into hide without also bumping up move silently.


Chengar Qordath wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:

I dont like how stealth combined hide and move silently. I also dont like how spot and listen were combined.

It makes for silly situations such as someone that is invisible in the same room you are in being more difficult to detect than someone on the other side of a wall or door with would block sight and at least muffle sound to some extent, while being invisible has no effect on sound.

I think that's more an issue with the Invisibility spell and other odd corner cases than combining the skills. I always saw the split as a relatively needless division since nobody is going to put ranks into hide without also bumping up move silently.

It is not really a corner case though. Someone being on the other side of a wall or door is a normal thing.

PS: Just to be clear I tend to see and use "corner case" as a strange combination of events that is rarely going to take place in a game.

PS2: I do agree that the division was needless. Maybe the hiding skills should have stayed split, and the "finding" skills could have still been combined. I wouldn't mind spot and search be one skill without listen.


wraithstrike wrote:
Chengar Qordath wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:

I dont like how stealth combined hide and move silently. I also dont like how spot and listen were combined.

It makes for silly situations such as someone that is invisible in the same room you are in being more difficult to detect than someone on the other side of a wall or door with would block sight and at least muffle sound to some extent, while being invisible has no effect on sound.

I think that's more an issue with the Invisibility spell and other odd corner cases than combining the skills. I always saw the split as a relatively needless division since nobody is going to put ranks into hide without also bumping up move silently.

It is not really a corner case though. Someone being on the other side of a wall or door is a normal thing.

PS: Just to be clear I tend to see and use "corner case" as a strange combination of events that is rarely going to take place in a game.

PS2: I do agree that the division was needless. Maybe the hiding skills should have stayed split, and the "finding" skills could have still been combined. I wouldn't mind spot and search be one skill without listen.

I agree that invisibility is not a corner case. But it's really not the fault of combining the skills that this happens.

I don't want to bring up 5e all the time, but in 5e invisibility just makes you impossibleto see and you are treated as heavily obscured for the purpose of hiding. In other words an invisible creature is just as well hidden as a creature behind a stage curtain.


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Eldred the Grey wrote:

I am pretty happy with pathfinder but I did like the PrCs that existed in 3/3.5 the only beef being that some of them actually encouraged some useless multiclass combos to enter. Case in point my all time favourite PrC is the Fochlucan Lyrist which was at its core a Bard/Druid combo but it also insisted on evasion. So now instead of just 2 classes and 5 levels now is 3 classes and 7 levels. But the fact that some of the anoyances that I had with 3/3.5 are gone(crossclass skills) but at times I feel PF is just a tad complicated.

EtG

To be fair, the Fochlucan Lyrist was more-or-less explicitly meant to hearken back to the 1e AD&D bard, which did require training as a thief (and a fighter, but that would be harder to smoothly put in as a PRC requirement without actually directly requiring fighter levels), with the druid thing coming in because the actual bard class was themed around adding in druidic abilities. Hence, a Bard/Rogue/Druid prestige class (in fact, the first college for them was Fochlucan). Actually starting out with the design goal of a bard-druid hybrid prestige class would probably have resulted in something somewhat different (possibly something better).


Milo v3 wrote:

3.5e had more non-standard races like Dvati, Dragonborn (which were a lot more interesting in D&D before they made them so generic in 4e), Tibbits, Raptorans, Asherati, or Goliaths.

Also, Kobolds weren't as horrifically pathetic after Races of the Dragon.

I miss Tibbits so badly. Tibbits are amazing.


wraithstrike wrote:

I dont like how stealth combined hide and move silently. I also dont like how spot and listen were combined.

It makes for silly situations such as someone that is invisible in the same room you are in being more difficult to detect than someone on the other side of a wall or door with would block sight and at least muffle sound to some extent, while being invisible has no effect on sound.

So don't add the invisibility modifier when it's not relevant, such as when there's no line of sight to the invisible character.


Bill Dunn wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:

I dont like how stealth combined hide and move silently. I also dont like how spot and listen were combined.

It makes for silly situations such as someone that is invisible in the same room you are in being more difficult to detect than someone on the other side of a wall or door with would block sight and at least muffle sound to some extent, while being invisible has no effect on sound.

So don't add the invisibility modifier when it's not relevant, such as when there's no line of sight to the invisible character.

that's not the issue. The issue is that a character that is invisible gets +20 stealth, when a character that is completely obscured from sight, and therefor just as good as invisible, does not.

Either both should have +20 to stealth or neither.


This is a bit petty but 3.5 had a better index.


Scythia wrote:
Aaron Bitman wrote:
...A random treasure generator. Those of us who got started with PFRPG in 2009 had to wait for years until we finally got Ultimate Equipment...
The Game Mastery Guide had those before Ultimate Equipment...

Oops. I stand corrected.

Well, anyway, the 3.0/3.5 treasure generator is far, far easier to use.

Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Kirth Gersen wrote:

You know what I thought was a huge step backwards?

Monster building.

In 3.5, we had tables explaining how to directly adjust the CR if you added HD, or if you made a critter bigger or smaller, etc. Pathfinder instead gives a table of target values for combat stats and says "just fudge it."

In theory I agree with you - but going by the 3.5 HD etc., some monsters you build were crazy OP for their CR, and others were push-overs.

+1. Somehow, no theory seems to work accurately. The real way to get a good handle on what a monster's CR should be is with playtesting.


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TriOmegaZero wrote:
Threeshades wrote:
I think the general consensus is that Pathfinder is largely a better system than 3.0 or 3.5 were. That is why we are all here after all.
I'm only here because 3.5 isn't printed anymore.

That, and in the process, that company didn't treat me very well.


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By far the biggest problem with Pathfinder is how much effort it takes for GMs to make NPCs. This was a problem in 3.x also, but Pathfinder makes it so much worse by adding fiddly bits to all of the character classes.

For example, in 3.5 you could make an NPC sorcerer just by choosing spells, feats, and equipment, most of which you would already know. You could do the whole thing from memory, and it was simple enough that you could make up a sorcerer off the top of your head during play if the PCs happen to encounter one. In Pathfinder, you also have to choose a bloodline and then record all of the associated bloodline spells, powers, and feats. This needs to be looked up every time, even if you always go with the arcane bloodline, and it involves a bunch of extra powers that you don't want to keep track of.

This happens with most character classes. Every barbarian needs rage powers, every rogue needs rogue talents, every wizard gets extra powers from their specialty school, etc. Smart GMs might just ignore these things, but you shouldn't have to consistently ignore the rules just to play the game.

I understand that having so many options makes things fun for players--or at least experienced players--but for a GM making all of these choices every time is a huge pain.


strumbleduck wrote:

By far the biggest problem with Pathfinder is how much effort it takes for GMs to make NPCs. This was a problem in 3.x also, but Pathfinder makes it so much worse by adding fiddly bits to all of the character classes.

For example, in 3.5 you could make an NPC sorcerer just by choosing spells, feats, and equipment, most of which you would already know. You could do the whole thing from memory, and it was simple enough that you could make up a sorcerer off the top of your head during play if the PCs happen to encounter one. In Pathfinder, you also have to choose a bloodline and then record all of the associated bloodline spells, powers, and feats. This needs to be looked up every time, even if you always go with the arcane bloodline, and it involves a bunch of extra powers that you don't want to keep track of.

This happens with most character classes. Every barbarian needs rage powers, every rogue needs rogue talents, every wizard gets extra powers from their specialty school, etc. Smart GMs might just ignore these things, but you shouldn't have to consistently ignore the rules just to play the game.

I understand that having so many options makes things fun for players--or at least experienced players--but for a GM making all of these choices every time is a huge pain.

I actually find gearing as the hardest part of NPC creation.


The Sideromancer wrote:
strumbleduck wrote:

By far the biggest problem with Pathfinder is how much effort it takes for GMs to make NPCs. This was a problem in 3.x also, but Pathfinder makes it so much worse by adding fiddly bits to all of the character classes.

For example, in 3.5 you could make an NPC sorcerer just by choosing spells, feats, and equipment, most of which you would already know. You could do the whole thing from memory, and it was simple enough that you could make up a sorcerer off the top of your head during play if the PCs happen to encounter one. In Pathfinder, you also have to choose a bloodline and then record all of the associated bloodline spells, powers, and feats. This needs to be looked up every time, even if you always go with the arcane bloodline, and it involves a bunch of extra powers that you don't want to keep track of.

This happens with most character classes. Every barbarian needs rage powers, every rogue needs rogue talents, every wizard gets extra powers from their specialty school, etc. Smart GMs might just ignore these things, but you shouldn't have to consistently ignore the rules just to play the game.

I understand that having so many options makes things fun for players--or at least experienced players--but for a GM making all of these choices every time is a huge pain.

I actually find gearing as the hardest part of NPC creation.

Gearing is a problem, too, which was present in 3.x as well. This isn't too hard to wing at low levels, but if you want to get it right you do have to look up NPC gear values, and at high levels things get absurdly complicated. Of course, 3.5 helped with this problem by having tables in the DM's Guide for gearing NPCs of each class by level, which disappeared in Pathfinder.


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But at least Pathfinder has the NPC Codex, which I found to be a great time-saver. 3.X doesn't have anything like that.

And I always did think that choosing gear was the most tedious part of creating an NPC, in any edition.


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Charon's Little Helper wrote:
In theory I agree with you - but going by the 3.5 HD etc., some monsters you build were crazy OP for their CR, and others were push-overs.

It was easy to build critters with insanely high melee capability for their CR -- but they'd be pushovers when it came to spells or missile fire, so I always felt the results were just about right. (As far as underpowered, that came up when you tried to make a Large wraith, but that's a pretty minor corner-case.)


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Threeshades wrote:
Bill Dunn wrote:


So don't add the invisibility modifier when it's not relevant, such as when there's no line of sight to the invisible character.

that's not the issue. The issue is that a character that is invisible gets +20 stealth, when a character that is completely obscured from sight, and therefor just as good as invisible, does not.

Either both should have +20 to stealth or neither.

That reasoning is based on a false equivalence - as well as other aspects of perception that are important to consider. There are already modifiers to perception checks for obstacles like closed doors and walls that would be more applicable than the invisibility modifier.

Then there's also the way visual stimuli affect how we interpret the world around us. What we see can substantially alter what the other senses think they're perceiving. That's one reason why I consider the invisibility modifier reasonable. Basically, the PC's in the same room with someone while his eyes tell him nothing's there, the rest of the senses will try to play along...

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