David Walter's page

Well, as the exact opposite of the OP, let me say this:

I was guardedly interested in 4e, and upon reading it, a bit more interested. However after a few games of it...I am back to 3e and WFRP and eagerly looking forward to Pathfinder. Honestly, I hope they change a lot more from 3.X. 4e does have some nice ideas, all extrapolated from various 3.X things, and I would not be at all sad to see those enter the Pathfinder world.

So far, while some of the changes being tried do make me go "Bwah?", none are bad changes. And I can always ignore them, just like I do with parts of 3.X I don't like! I am hoping that Pathfinder is a HUGE success and that some more 3PP decide to jump on board with supplements.
My only sadness is that we have to wait a whole other year to see it! :)

The problem with such a total revamp of the spellcasting system is that it veers TOO far away from backwards compatibility, and keeping that is a stated design goal of the Pathfinder RPG.
The Vancian system has problems, but it also has the advantage of being understood, and easy to prep for with NPCS.

A change I could totally get behind, that would still be backwards compatible, would be something like the system in Arcana Evolved, in which casters "know" EVERY spell of a certain level, save for the rarer/harder to cast ones, that only certain classes get access to. You have a number of spells you can prepare (usually twice the number you can cast in a day), then you can cast ANY of those spells freely, up to your casting limit each day. That one worked pretty well for me, especially with the common/uncommon split (based on how well known/powerful the spells were. Some classes only got access to the uncommon spells, some got access to both). Though I never did like the implementation of Exotic spells, but that is a different kettle of fish. :)

Anyways, something like that is probably what should be more looked into, rather than a complete revamp, due to the backwards compatibility issue. Much easier to convert old adventures that still use spells/day as opposed to having to completely rewrite any NPC that uses spells.

Excellent! Really looking forward to release 2, hopefully I will have the folks in my group that are interested in testing things out able to actually agree on a night to play to start "actual" testing soon too! Darn real life obligations! :)

Agreed, the concept of Energy Drains is good, and the current rules of -1 on all rolls/negative level works really well for simulating weakness due to loss of life force.

However, losing a level permanently is just...wrong. Nothing about a "level" to me says life force. Not sure what to replace it with as permanent loss, and some undead at the least SHOULD have a permanent effect from their powers if your save is failed.
What that should be though, is something I have wrestled with since 2e. Our groups have run the gamut from the rules as is, which most folks hated, to stat loss, permanently taking the -1 on all rolls (that was a TON of work to keep straight though), and the current house rule we use, which is the permanent loss of 1 HD (not CON, just the HP). Since HD represent a mix of things, but abstractly are supposed to represent vitality and health to a greater or lesser degree, it made sense, and has worked pretty well so far. And is pretty darn scary without completely nerfing/annoying the PCs.

The thing I am seeing there is that the rogue needs to have its starting number of skills dropped. 8+Int bonus made sense when skill points were used, and the skill list was bigger. But with a more condensed list and max ranks of class skills in play, rogues should have a smaller starting pool. Perhaps 5 or 6 +Int bonus, still a decent amount, but not quite as overwhelming.

Heck, I would be happy to see all classes falling between 3 and 5 starting skills (+Int bonus), which would reduce the "take one level of rogue and multiclass" problem a bit.

Personally the lack of skill points is a huge plus, it makes character and NPC creation MUCH faster. And most players in games I have seen don't dabble in skills, they take the same few skills and max them out each time. The dabblers never stay dabblers either, as they quickly find that they are not as effective as they could be, and within a few levels, have started maxing a set number of skills.

One thing I do think should happen is that some classes should get more starting skills and some should get less. I think upping most classes to a minimum of 3+Int bonus starting skills is good, dropping the maximum (rogue I am looking at you) to 5 or 6 + Int bonus would stop some of the "take one level of rogue for skills and multiclass" syndrome.

Save or Die effects really kinda need to go. In my games, almost all such spells were changed to doing a flat 20 points of damage per caster level, half on a save (making them nasty, but not always instantly fatal).

Teleport is one of those spells that is a very archetypal wizard spell, but can cause a ton of GM headaches. Certain spells, like this one, should be ones that are ritual spells. They take a while to cast, have ingredients, and other flaws. Perhaps for a teleport, you have to have visited your destination and arcanely "marked" it. So you can teleport to that location, but you have to get there the old fashioned way first.
For combat ports and short distance stuff you still have dimension door.

Wish/Limited Wish: They should be in the game, but honestly, no mage type short of an epic caster should be able to cast one. They should be the rare things of legend. Or perhaps make Limited Wish the 9th level spell and a full Wish epic only.

The detect spells...oh boy, where to start! :) I love the concept of them, but they do need some tweaking to avoid messing up adventures. Things like detect undead are fine. That is, to me, what detect spells should be good at! Detect Evil or Detect Good...another kettle of fish. Not sure how to really change them, but they are a bit too absolute. Perhaps they should only work on extremes of alignment, or perhaps they should be gutted and tossed out. Detect Lies is another one. Zone of Truth is fine, because of how it works, but detect lies can blow apart a mystery a bit too easily.

Charms and the like, to me, are fine as is. Again, it is a pretty archetypal wizard/witch ability in fiction and something that casters in game should be able to do.

Stat Adjustment spells: I always used the 3.0 versions of these. The time limits imposed on 3.5 were a pain to keep track of, it was just easier (and more effective) in play to simply let my casters have the old 1 hour/level duration.

Anything dealing with level loss. Not just a spell pet peeve, but it applies to other things as well. I loved the idea of negative levels as a mechanic, but actual level loss was something that just never made sense to me. The mechanic itself was a good one for simulating a person having part of their life force taken away, but actually losing a level? Not so much. Some way to deal with "level loss" abilities would be awesome. Keep the negative levels effects for short term, but something else in the long term (like stat loss or perhaps permanent HP loss to signify loss of life energy) rather than actually losing a level.

Raise Dead et al.... These were ones that I just houseruled in my game. The rational being that Fate (or the god(s) of Death, etc) decides only certain people (the PCs, some NPCs) are special enough to deserve a second chance. And Fate is a fickle witch to boot. So each PC can only be rezzed 0-3 times, ever. And the player never got to know exactly how many times that was or were left. In practice it made them a bit more cautious in their fights.
Changing the spell, I don't think is needed, except perhaps to make it a more difficult cast (ala Arcana Evolved, where it takes a week of casting each day for it to work), more expensive, or some other reason to be rarer. As far as every Butcher, Baker, and Candlestickmaker getting rezzed when they die, that is usally up to the GM to come up with in setting reasons it does or does not happen. The spell itself should be available (though not necessarily easy), just perhaps not to everyone for one reason or another.

I actually like the new turn rules quite a bit, though they probably do need some tweaking.

The healing portion is great, nothing wrong with more healing, especially healing that does not eat up spell slots. Anything to keep the party from wanting to blow all their big spells and rest after 15 minutes is good to me.

The rebuke portion might need some work though. It will be hard for evil clerics to rebuke with living allies near them, though this can just be a flaw of serving a nasty, evil deity. :)
However, it might need some toning. As someone mentioned, the evil priest with his orc bodyguards kills the poor schmoes when he tries to rebuke. Not such a good plan. Perhaps fitting in (on both sides) a number of targets immune to the effects equal to the priest's Wis bonus or something would work well. That way evil priests don't kill their allies, and good priests can exclude some living foes in the area if needed.

Rebuking itself seems a tad strong. Some limit on the controlled undead has to exist, for rebukes. If you want servitor undead, use a spell to make em, but rebuked undead should only be your servants for a limited time (and then immune to the enslavement part for 1 day). Long enough to turn the tide of a combat, but then you still need to deal with the undead eventually.

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!

In our last game, our GM did ([normal roll + CON modifier]+max of die type) at first level. Meaning that if you had a d8 hit die, you started with a normal roll of d8+CON bonus+8. It made the characters a bit hardier at first level, but did not make things too crazy and evened out quickly. I will likely use something similar in my next game, since it worked out pretty well.

I can actually see a plant "bleeding". A huge, thorny, vine covered abomination that leaks sap and water, shriveling a bit and slowing as it loses liquid...

Elementals or golems on the other hand I can definitely not see bleeding. Definitely needs some slight clarification here though, though I applaud the increased effectiveness of sneak attacks!

I love psionics as well, but won't be upset if they are not in the base rules (as I can understand you can only get so much into a rule book before page bloat makes it prohibitively expensive to publish!).

One thing I would like to see psionics wise is something other than the 3.X "spell point" system of using them. I did not mind it too much, but after a certain point it did get a bit crazy tracking them. Much as I hate to admit it, the 4e system of at will/per encounter/per day things might work really really well for psionics. Dunno though.

Either way, I would love to see some psionic support, even 3rd party. Soulknives are just too much fun to play. :)

I agree, to some extent. FIGHTERS need some kind of iterative attack. It was everyone else having them that really slowed things down. And even fighters tended to have a few too many, especially when you added in two weapon fighting and all the feats that could modify it and other combat feats that gave an extra attack. I do think that fighters definitely need to keep some kind of iterative attack, and they also need a base way of doing enough damage to "keep up" with casters to some degree (and without relying on over the top amounts of magical items too). They don't have to do as MUCH damage in one blow as a caster can in one spell, but they should do similar amounts, so that over the course of a combat it evens out (since they don't run out of sword swings).

Well, most can already do that to some degree, under the new Pathfinder stuff. A lot of the schools give some kind of at will damage dealing spell. Which is awesome, it gets rid of the whole "I am out of spells, time to whip out the old crossbow" effect wizards had.

Excellent! It was something I have been considering myself, but my last few games I have been the player, not the GM. And had been planning a modern horror game using the BtVS game from Eden Studios until I saw this announcement from Paizo which got me all fired up about DnD again! :)

I will have to dig out my copy of SWSE and crib some notes down about using that with DnD and dust off my 3.X books I think and see about getting some kind of online game going again. Skype + AIM chatroom dice rollers I think!

Give me an excuse to do "Tales of the Freeport Watch" and test out some of this new stuff we are seeing!

They don't strike me as too much of a problem, as is. Might require some tweaking, but I would have to try it out in play (yay playtesting :) ), but most of the folks I know who play rogues would not take those options, except perhaps for spells that would make them better at being a rogue (like detect traps type things or skill boost spells).

For us, it depended on the players. In one of our games I was playing a psion/sorcerer (with a smattering of rogue since he was originally going for a certain prestige class that never panned out), and when it came round to me I always had my spell ready, took about the same time it took the fighter types. One of our players was playing a magister (from Arcana Evolved, basically a wizard with some magic staff abilities), and they would take...quite a while...each round to decide on a spell.

Part of that I blame on the GM allowing too many splat books in play, part of it was how the magister functioned (they know ALL spells of a given level and type and just have a number of slots to cast each day, no preparation), and part of it was the player. Some people react to having lots of choices faster than others.

Cutting magic down won't really change that (they could have only 5 spells to choose from and would still dither to some degree), it tends to be a "training" thing. As the campaign went on, they became better about having what they wanted to do ready when their turn came around.

One thing I found that REALLY helped for wizards (less so for sorcerers) was to make up little 3x5 cards or a spell "cheat sheet" with their spells known and then they could have a "deck" of memorized spells. It saved them the time of looking things up, which was the usual culprit of slow choices for the casters.

I also noticed that they were slower with their spells when we used minis as opposed to when we did not, as they would keep checking ranges and AoE areas and compare them to the battlemat.

Overall though I think it boils down to both player and GM prep. As a player, know your spells (and if you can make a cheat sheet to cut down on "research" time that is good), and while everyone else is acting, think about what spell you want to cast. Something someone does might change it, but in general, if I planned to explode something's mind or make it vomit lava, nothing except it dying tended to change that. :)

For the GM, same thing goes. Have either a cheat sheet, know your spells, or bookmark the spells in the PHB (little sticky notes are your friend!).

Reading some other posts, I was wondering how many folks might think this is a good idea? In SWSE at least, it gave something of a death spiral, even with a hit point system, and having a consolidated way of tracking conditions really sped things up. Not sure how easy it would be to port over to 3.X, but it might be worth it.

Spells don't bother me as much because you can not cast more than one in a round (well, in general. You can sometimes get 2 off, but it tends to be pretty rare). And iterative attacks are not HORRID, they just tend to eat up time, and honestly take away some of the fighter's uniqueness (to me at least). Fighters having iterative attacks good. Sorcerers....not so much! :)

It should be interesting to see what the Paizo folks come up with (if anything) for this!

Edit: Just reread your post above comparing the 7th level characters. And I can see where your dislike of "too many spells" comes from, it is something I have battled as well. More that after a point, spell damage completely overshadows melee damage. Perhaps something like casters do normal melee damage. Rogues, rangers, paladins, monks, etc to melee damage +1/2 level, and fighters (and maybe barbarians) do melee damage + level. At least until the mid to upper teens that would keep fighters on an even keel with spell casters. Sure the caster might have a nice burst damage effect, but the fighter will be consistently doing similar damage with each blow and never runs out of blows! Might need some tweaking, but it would make fighters dangerous again, even without magical items (another thing that would be good. Too many magical items in the game make it feel like they are no longer special!).

The battlemat (and grid based combat in general) is what has pretty much un-sold me on 4e. In the years we have been playing 3.X, when the battlemats came into play, combat massively bogged down as the players started to try to manuever just so, work out exact ranges for fireball burst placement, and the like. It got to the point where I bought a 1 minute egg timer and set it up on each PCs action and if they did not act before the sand ran out, the character dithered about and lost their round.

After that we ditched the battlemats and things sped up again. When it came to burst placement, if someone was in melee with a target of the burst, and the caster stated they were trying to make sure they were on an outer edge (and it was possible), the ally in melee still had to make a save, counting the foe they were fighting as at least 50% cover (or more depending on size). It made the wizards and sorcerers a bit more leery about tossing explosions into a melee, which is kinda how it should be, to me. :)

A few comments from what I've observed at a glance, but haven't acutally playtested yet.

Fighter: I like the idea of the armour specialization, but I think I feel it leaves out the swashbuckling character who doesn't wear armour. I would make it available as a defensive bonus for a character that doesn't want armour, and I'd also consider making some feats to help such a character as well. What about a defensive parry type bonus that helps improve a fighter's defensive abilities, but doesn't focus on armour, and more assumes that the fighter has improved at dodging and parrying blows.

In my game I had also made some house rules for a parry that were as follows. A character using his full attack action may chose to delay one or more of his attacks to be used later in the round as an immediate action for parrying. When the opponents attack roll hits, the PC and opponent make opposing attack rolls and if the defender wins he parries and attack does no damage. I think this rule needs some work, but I'd like to see some options for parrying worked into the game that go beyond the defensive fighting rules.

Rogue: I like a lot of the changes to rogue. If feels like a better class now. I think the "bleeding wound" ability is too powerful for a regular talent and should be an advanced talent. I also think that "stand up" is a lame name, and should be maybe "kip up", which I think is the martial arts term for that move. The death attack the rogue gets at 20th level seems a bit useless. Anything a 20th level PC will be fighting will likely be able to make a DC 20-30 Fort save on anything but a natural 1, so this ability will be frustrating, as it will rarely work. If it was something more along the lines of- 3 times per day when a rogue makes a sneak attack the rogue can add an additional 50 damage to his attack (in addition to the 10d6) then it would be useful.

Us dms will also have to do some work on the monsters to help them keep up with these new powered up PCs.

I'm sure I'll have more comments as I...

Something I wanted to note about the fighter, is that they can choose to have Light Armor as a specialty, which a GM could say also applies to an unarmored state. Toss in a combat feat or two regarding parrying or dodging while unarmored and you are set. Though, most of the swashbuckler types I have seen in game tend to wear light armor, rather than none at all, which works out kinda well.

I am another vote for at least modifying, if not getting rid of, iterative attacks. Personally, I think something like the SWSE method where level or a portion thereof adds into damage would be great, maybe a combat feat (that can not be taken more than once) to allow an extra attack, and then something for fighters to get an extra attack or two on top of that would be about perfect.

It would keep fighters "on top" in terms of melee damage, give other classes the ability to get one more attack via a feat if they want it, and the damage from your level would make sure that damage scales a little bit at least. As it stands now, the iterative attacks in 3.X get a bit cumbersome after a certain point. Anything that speeds up combat, and makes it seem more active, is a plus to me.