Kip Shades's page

Squirrel_Dude wrote:

Rhedyn wrote:

Kudaku wrote:

Whenever I open up a Dreamscarred book I'm bombarded with rules options that trigger my imagination and make me excited to put together cool new character concepts. I've been juggling dozens of ideas, including things that are ridiculously ineffective in Pathfinder - twin spear wielder, for example.

Whenever I open a Paizo book I resign myself to digging through the dregs of the feat chapter for the few genuinely interesting options. I really feel things like Anticipate Dodge, Open Up and Slow Faller make up 80% of the new material that's released, and I'm really not happy with that.

Pathfinder was made to address the issue of power creep in the previous 3.5 game. No one bothered to think about the consequences of power seep. All new material is balanced around being as strong or weaker than existing options. This has lead to new material being weaker and weaker. Which only highlights martial v caster problem. Sure tons weak spells aren't great but for casters they are just more options, more possible silver bullets. Their power goes up with each released book. For martials, a glut of trap options are presented to them. Spont feats could be an answer, but the quality of feats have degraded as such that they basically do nothing.

A small point of contention here. Weak options are not the same as trap options. A weak option, especially if it's weak because it's situationally useful is fine as long as the rules are clear about what it does. Trap feats are things like the original prone shooter which don't offer any benefit, or when feats can through certain synergies actually make your character worse.

The issue is the perceived prevalence for the former, not the existence of the latter.

An option does not have to actively make you worse to be a trap option. If I presented you the option to take the 3.5 wizard class or the PF wizard class, the 3.5 wizard class would be a trap option since it just has less/worse features...

Pretty much, yeah.

Honestly, that's the reason why I mainly stick to Path of War for martials. It's more mechanically interesting and provides more options in combat than standard PF martials. Hell, I'm pretty sure with some changes (Sutff like Iron Heroes-style skill packages, for instance), you could build a new d20 variant using their material.

As a side note, the whole "Playing like an MMO" argument for imbalance being conducive to good roleplay is kinda backwards, since in the current state of things, if you want to roleplay certain concepts, you end up crippling yourself, creating a huge discrepancy between fluff and mechanics.

As for the "Playing on hard mode" argument that's been brough up, again, that's a false premise, since "Hard mode" should mean "It's going to take all of your strength and wits, but you can pull it off" not "You're going to be forced to sit back and watch 90% of the time". In a balanced system, choosing the "hard mode" option should mean that you'll have to think more strategically than the other players, but you'll be just as capable of participating. Meanwhile, in Pathfinder, taking the "hard mode" option means you're useless most of the time. That's not hard mode. That's watching a live stream that occasionally has audience participation.

Additional communication is certainly good... But I think the core issue has proven to be words going in one ear and out the other unimpeded when communication was being done in the first place.

One big advantage of playtests is the ability to throw a piece of meat into a forum, and freely collect the results from hundreds of rabid data-eating beasts mangling their way through every little orifice of the mechanics being tested.

Often, not only are the problems singled out, but all the work showing how this was proven accompanies it, as do various fixes and suggestions. All that's left is to pick your favorite out of the reasonable ones and that's it, you're done!

But if, instead of using all that data, you ignore it like the average beancounter two floors up wants us to do with OSHA, you end up with nothing fixed. nothing repaired.

All that time, all that work, all that arguing and math and brainstorming... all of it just burned off in the wind.....

Actually, one thing that I've been wondering: With all of the advice for nerfs and buffs for the playtest versions being ignored (and Paizo seemingly doing the opposite in many cases, providing nerfs where buffs are needed and vice versa), why hasn't anyone taken matters into their own hands and put together alternate versions of these classes (at least the ACG and OA stuff) based on the feedback given in the playtests?

Honestly, it could be rather interesting to see how it would turn out. Perhaps an alternate Kineticist based on the playtest feedback? (Hell, if I did such a thing, I'd probably rub it in Paizo's face that I can do their job better than they can.)