| Jason Graybill |
So, I was one of those folks hanging on every word put out for 4E. Nothing said made me worried, and I was intensely excited for the system.
After having played it for the last several months, I've come to my final conclusions: While I find the game to be enjoyable to play and to DM, and I absolutely love the way monsters are designed and the way encounters are put together, I sorely dislike the new power system and the "cut backs" on the player's side.
I came here thinking Pathfinder could be my answer, but I'm immediately seeing that many of the problems that 4E actually fixed are not being addressed in Pathfinder. Here are some of the things which I feel could be addressed:
Unified Attack/AC/Save Progression: The flaw with 3E's BAB and Save progressions is that the difference between classes grows wider as the levels are added on. In the high level 3E games I ran, I ran into many situations where an AC that was meant to challenge the party's Warriors was too difficult for the party's Adventurers (rogues and other 3/4ths BAB classes) to actually hit. Saving Throws were even worse. 4E's unified progression allows the classes to have differences that remain applicable, but most importantly within the same range throughout the game. And AC simply needs to scale, it allows for far fewer magic items and allows magic to feel special rather than necessary (in high level 3E games, if a character doesn't properly distribute their AC enhancing items through armor, shields, rings, necklaces, and other bonuses, they're in trouble).
Condenced Skills: I'm shocked by the skills the Pathfinder designers chose to combine and the ones they didn't. Both Tumble and Jump were often taken when separate, but the designers chose to combine them (and jumping relies far more on strength than coordination), yet Swim and Climb weren't combined? Climb is nearly a worthless skill since flight entirely removes the need for it. The others are really fine, this one's just one that bugs me; Hulk is known for his jumping for a reason.
I haven't gotten to look through the entire combat chapter, or read through all of the classes, but what I'm so far not seeing changes that I feel need to be made. I understand the Pathfinder team not wanting to take queues from 4E, but good ideas are good ideas.