Keryth's page

Hey y'all:

My biggest beef with 3.5 is high level play also. I ran my Shackled City campaign until 16th level and it actually had me in tears at one point I was so frustrated. I've told Jason that this is one of my top priorities (the other was fixing mechanics and spells that were simply broken) for the Pathfinder RPG. Since we are still a year away from the release of the final rulebook, I really think that we can attack this problem as a community. Just because we haven't solved it yet doesn't mean that the Pathfinder RPG can't before we send it to the press next year. This exact problem is one of the main reasons why we went with the open playtest...I want to get the largest number of brains working on these problems. Jason was under a very crazy time crunch to get the Beta out by GenCon, and that didn't allow a lot of creative time to tackle the toughest problems. But now we have time going forward. I would encourage all of you to help us tackle this problem. Otherwise I will only be playing campaigns to about 12th level or so before starting a new one. And that would be really, really sad to me. :/

-Lisa

Well, as someone who runs ALOT of high level adventures, I'm gonna chime in with my suggestions here:

1) Creature/Monster writeups should include a brief explaination fo any spells/spell like ablities they have (dmg, save, etc) This would speed up prep time immensely. Won;t help when sending a horde of orcs, but for those dragons and demons and beholders and such, would be a great help

2)A book of pre-generated Monsters and NPC's existed way back in 1st ed. AD&D called the Rogue's Gallery. Something similar, with pre-made states, magic items, and treasure for the more commonly used monsters would be great. (And heck, it was fun seeing Mordenkainen's stats as a PC :) )

3) The Epic Handbook came out in 3.0 and was pure Limburger. 3.5 actually dropped it for the lame 2-3 pages in the DMG. I think the Epic Book needs to be redone for Pathfinder, and THIS is where you canchange/modify the system. Would also mean the 'broken system' only exists for 3-4 levels then

As for Pathfinder in general, fantastic job. My gorups already changed it's in progress campaign to Pathfinder with each release. Keep up the fantastic work!

OK, please, stop with the whole Fighters soak damage and rogues are damage dealers things. Cuz this is NOT the case. Yes, fighters get the most HPs and best armor, they also tend to have high STR's to go with it and plenty of feats for dealing damage.

As for Sneak Attack, simple change to it makes it where it is still useful but not overpowered- limit it to the FIRST attack the rogue makes. At lower levels, this is the rogues only attack, and when he gets multiple attacks, he only gets the SA damage on his first attack. Its useful, but does not turn the rigue into the main damage dealer, which is NOT the job of a rogue.

As for the buff to Sneak Attack, well, they should keep it, but be more specific. My group has limited the types of undead that you get SA against- Mummies, Vampires, Zombies yes, liches, wraiths, skeletons, spectres, no. And I think constructs should keep thier immunity to sneak atack

There's an easier solution. Put a limit on prestige classes one character can take, say one per character, and enforce the XP penalty for difference in levels beyond 2 for anything beyond 2 classes (meaning favored class +1 is fine but beyond that is a penalty unless they are each one level apart - ex F3/M2/CL1 is fine and no penalty but F5/MU4/CL1 evokes a penalty to XP until the CLeric level is brought up to at least lvl 3)

KaeYoss wrote:

Call me cold-hearted, but their PR-department needs to be fired. I'm sure 4e could have been promoted without antagonising lots of people. I'm sure that cost them more than a few customers.

I don't want to side track this whole conversation... personally the problems didn't stem from marketing. Marketing did a decent job. Marketing is the guys who put together "Rawr, I'm a monster". Love it or hate it it's a very effective little movie/ advert.

Marketing didn't miss deadlines, marketing didn't flip flop on the whole GSL/ OGL issue for over 18 months, marketing didn't put silly one size fits all pricing on the DDi, nor did marketing put together a bunch of tools for the DDi that are as appealing as a goblin roomate. The extended 'preview' of DDI and the death of Dragon magazine and Dungeon magazine cannot be laid at the feat of the marketing department. Eliminating 2 core races and multiple core classes was not a call by marketing either.

In general, there were a lot of screw ups... but contrast to the rest of the mess, marketing did awesome.

-- Dennis

Actually, I consider the entire marketing campaign for 4e a failure. Never before has a company gone out of its way to alienat its core customer base like WOTC has. The whole "rawr I'm a monster' thing was not a great bit of marketing, it was an insulting bit of marketing. It alienated their core customer group in a vain attemptt o grab the customers of another company. What WOTC did was emulate Coca-Cola back in the 80s, when they decided that they needed to replace their formula and gave us New Coke. Like Coke with New Coke, WOTC has decided tot ell all of us we were not having fun in our games and that 3e was horrible and that th solution is 4e.

All I know is my group and myself are thanking Paizo for not doing this and for keeping the fun alive by giving us Pathfinder rather than 4e

I don't think it can be legally enforced, though - To say that a party can't use an "Open Source" that is public domain, AFTER you are no longer under contractual obligation to them?

WotC might try to enforce that, but I'd like to see it stand up in court.

Actually, it would most likely hold up in court quite well. It is outlined in the GSL and the company signed that agreement. It's like signing ann NDA when you get hired at a job. It is in place, even after you move on to another company. The GSL is the same deal.

1st off, i gotta say, I HATE the word grognard as much as I do Newb :)

2nd, great story

3rd, my LGS is actually buying very little of 4e. They're not too enthusiastic about it, and it seems most of their customers aren;t either (myself included)

Well, my take on it is this. The 4e/3e debate is ragins, and will continue to do so for some time. Why? Because of the marketing strategy that WOTC took of trying to convince people that 3.0/3.5 was so flawed and broken that they had to trash the whole system in favor of 4.0 to bring back the fun.

My problem with this strategy is, if 3.0/3.5 was so unfun, then why have we been playing it all this time? There's plenty of other systems out there.

As for banning the debate, I think thats bad. There is nothing wrong with people defending what they believe in, and in fact, it should be encouraged that people do.

¿Has anyone made a high-level playtest?

Well, I don;t know if you'd call it a playtest, as much as a rules change, but the current campaign I'm in switched from 3.5 to PF back round lvl 16. GM fully intends on taking us beyond 20, which has happened, and we are now using PF with the Epic Rules Handbook. So far, has proven interesting.

Matthew Morris wrote:

Nothing bogs down a game faster than "I'm going to cast a spell! now which book is it in?"

Either PHB or Spell Compendium. Or you don't have that spell. ^^

I go one step further. Either look it up while the others are going, know what it does when your initative is up, or, too bad, You took the spell, you should know what it does.

I've seen many people create cheat sheets or even spell cards.

As for SW SAGA, I like it. It's different enough from D&D to be different, it's balanced, and fun.

4E, is none of those, except different from D&D. I am far happier with Pathfinder, and that is the route my group is taking.

The removal of XP costs seems to be a dangerous slippery slope for me. I don't usually like characters creating magic items anyway, and this seems to open the door for all kinds of abuse. Having PCs crank out wands of useful spells seems like it'd be a particular nightmare.

Well, as somneone who was just playing a mage who had the crafting feats and crafted heavily for himself and the party, the XP costs SUCKED. And what did it do, really? It didn;t stop me form making my Staff of Power, or the +5 Brilliant Gratsword for the fighter, it just meant I ended up being a level behind the rets of the party. XP costs for things outside of WISH, really don't make sense. XP represents oyur character's knowledge and what they have learned over the course of their adventuring career. So, with an XP cost, making magic items takes memories and experiences away form the character?

Remember, all those shiny magic items your bad guys have and your PCs find were made by a mage at some point. Time, expense, and effort to make them makes sense. XP costs do not. I like the new system and say KEEP IT

OK, I may have missed something. Anyhow, I was looking over the Apha 2 rules and noticed the magic item creation rules mention nothing of an XP cost for magic item creation. I'm pretty sure 3.5 had one, so, I'm wodering, is it gone in PF? Do PC's only pay a GP cost now when making magic items?

Thomas Mack 727 wrote:

I dont think anything I have seen works well.

The thing I liked about the rank based system was that you could suck at things.

Think about it. A lot of DMs give their players a single rank in Profession or Knowledge (local) for background reasons. A 20th level Wizard who grew up on a farm (Profession (farmer) +1) is still going to suck at farming. According to the new system a 20th level farmer is almost as good at farming as they are with Spellcraft or Knowledge skills. It doesnt really make sense to me. :P

I have to say that I agree with this. Which is why I don't like the new system. I've always had characters who started off with one or two ranks in some skills reflecting what they had done in their younger years. And I've always preferred to have a wide variety of skills that the character is reasonably skilled in rather than being maxed out in a smaller number. So I might want to have my Rogue with a rank or two in profession sailor but as he then spends his career adventuring in cities and dungeons he gets to improve his climbing skills but doesn't become a better sailor.

Yes, the new system makes things simpler but at the cost of the flexibility that is the virtue of the skill point system.

Could you explain how the new system affects this? Your rogue can still have a rank or two in profession sailor. Nothing says he cannot. And he can continue to improve his climbing skill (and get the +3 bonus to boot) while levelling up. I fail to see the problem?

The True Scriptures

The Old Testament
The first "Complete" series (Warrior, Divine, Arcane, Adventurer) -
good additions, needed some more p-classes etc.
Tome of Battle: the Book of Nine Swords - just too much fun to leave out. If it and SW:Saga were really guiding 4e more than mini gaming and DDI were, I might have gone ot it instead.

False Prophets - ultra cheeeeeeeze
Expanded Psionics Handbook - like magic, but better!
Draconomicon, Dragon Magic - fetishist fodder
Weapons of Legacy - actually more gimped than powerful.
Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Magic - no
Drow of the Underdark- spare me
All Eberron Sourcebooks- besides power, not appropriate for a diff campaign world
All Forgotten Realms Sourcebooks - the place where all the worst (aka
best) builds on the Wizards CharOp boards derive their power...

I find it interesting that you consider Tome of Battle a necessity but consider the Forgotten Realms sourcebooks total Cheese. I'd have to argue. I've used Tome of BAttle many times. Yes, it is nice, but it is more Cheddar than most FR sources. If for no other reason than TOB is CORE Classes not Prestige Classes. Any cheese, outside of perhaps individual spells, that you find in FR sources, is in PRESTIGE classes, something the TOB classes don;t need.

Personally, my group is of the opinion that anything outside of the core books (DMG, PHB, MMI and now PFRPG) is at GM's discretion. We've used classes and such from everything ranging from Tome of Battle to Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Drgaonlance, Arcana Unearthed, and others. It all depends on what you want and if you can keep it balanaced

Aren't ALL wizards now specialists under PF? I mean, if oyu don;t choose a school, you become a universalist, right?

I still think Talent trees are the way to go versus the expanded abilities being given to the lcasses in PF or, even worse, the ridiculous stuff WOTC is putting out for 4e.

Ok, I'm going to ask this in all seriousness now:

Do we really HAVE to have Bards?

I mean, I understand the whole genre and the inpirational stuff and all that, but even in the most ridiculous circumstances what kind of dolt is going to sit in the middle of battle playing music to inspire and uplift everyone.

Ever see the movie, "The Longest Day"? It's about the invasion of Normandy and at one point of the movie, it shows the Scottish troops invading, complete with bagpipes, and when they're marching inland, the piper is there again, so, I'd say, yes, I can easily see musicians in battle.

The Romns used to have buccinators (horn players)in every legion. They were used to trasnmit orders accross the battlefield, as well as provide the men with inspirational music when marching and in battle.

One of the things I do not like about 4e, and which has made me interested in Pathfinder, is the dropping of things from D&D. I say keep the bard as core. If you do not like it, then don;t use it.

One of the reasons I brought this up is the fact that even with the mods added by Pathfinder, the core classes are still a bit underwhelming when compared to those from Tome of Battle and tome of Magic, not to mention ohter D20 supplements. Talent trees would put the Core Classes on more evn footing I think, and would only need to be available for the Core Classes.

OK, SW: SAGE did it, and the horrible 4e is probably doing it, and D20 Modern did it too. How about adding Talent trees to each class? Perhaps even rather than the exta abilities per level and specialist schools? Just a thought, but it would add more versatility to each class and make it easier, in my opinion, to balance everything. Preference wise, something along the lines of way SW:SAGA did would be fine for me.

I thought it was a typo and my group has been operating with it being Int for mages. Cha is the one for Sorcerers, unless that is changing.

Personally, I say Int, not Cha. Cha makes no sense for a MAGE.

My player's generally do not like the idea of paying with XP for creating magical items or casting powerful spells. It is a riduculous rule. Why would someone "loose" experience by doing such things...If you would simulate a "personal sacrifice" as stated in the rules, there would more "realistic" ways...So here is my proposal:

XP-COSTS
Instead of paying XP for using item creation feats or casting a spell with XP-components, the character pays 5 gp per XP he normally has to spend.

this rule is derived from the fact, that if you buy a spellcaster's service, you pay 5 gp per XP.

Uhm, no offense, but, are you crazy? Without the XP xost there, making those with the crafting feats consider the cost, crafting would be crazy. The only alternative would be to require obscure and hard to find materials for EVRY magic item to be created, and then your campaign degenerates into a quest to get the mats for the Staff of power rather than your original idea. You NEED the XP cost to keep the munchkinism of crafting under control.

Evil Genius wrote:

Thinking it over, I feel that it's a pretty good system.. if playing with a battle mat. What about all the people who don't play with a mat? I think it'd be helpful if there was a sidebar or something that describes what should be done about ranged cover if playing without a battle mat.

Good point. Without a mat I'd so something like 3.0 did where they estimated cover %. Something like: 25% is +1, 50% is +2, 75% is +4, 90% is +6.

A sidebar explaining something like this would be good.

I think it would be far easier for all concerned to just stick with the % of cover. Let the DM decide how much cover a target has and roll with it from there.

Keep Iterative Attacks.

What is with the posts to get rid of Iterative attacks and change the magic system? You might as well go 4e if you're gonna do that. The thing that has attractied me to Pathfinder is the fact that ti is still 3.5 with some updates. Changing magic and Iterative attacks makes Pathfinder in-compatable with 3.5.

Just my 2 cents here, but, I think making it more of an opposed check might work. Along the lines of damage in Mutants and Masterminds/True 20. Grappler and grapleree make checks with their respective CMB 's and the Grappler's degree of success determines the effect. Simple and to the point.

I just looked through the notes (gonna DL the full version 1.1 when I get home) and didn;t see it changed there.

Currently you have to memorize the spells that you have to cast and then loose the spell at casting. The whole action of keeping track of spells is a little bother for some players and DMs. For both keeping track of how many spells that were cast and at higher levels it all adds up, especially for wizards and clerics where every spell is to be jotted down.

Why must we trash the existing magic system? What is the problem with the system as it stands for memorizing and casting spells?

Well, one of the reasons I've become interested in the Pathfinder RPG is the fact that its goal is to fix the 3.5 problems without going to the extreme of throwing everything out the window that 4e is doing. And so far, I'm impressed. One thing though. The whole calculation for cover vs missle weapons, with counting the number of blocked bars and referencing the table seems overly complicated. Honestly, I do not see a reason for missle and melee cover to have two different calculations. I say, keep cover the way it is in the SRD. Simple and easy.