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Most of the powerful Combat Feats tend to require a Full or Standard action; for the most part, it prevents people (so far in my play experience, Fighters) from using a defensive and offensive ability the same round (IE, Dodge and Cleave.)

For the most part, this seems silly to me, so I'd generally agree, re: dropping them, OR making them good enough to be worth it.

So, I did a little converting from 3.5 to Pathfinder v3.

Figuring out conflated skills and class changes took much longer than dealing with the additional skill ranks on a Fighter.

In play, the low skill count has come into play several times; the Fighter has had to choose between being an athletic meathead, or being basically 'with it' but strangely milquetoast outside of combat; with 2+, there's no middle ground.

For the most part, I do things on a 'per book' basis. There's a definite bias towards WotC official material, but as long as the player is ok with letting me look over their hardcopy to look over, I don't usually have a problem going further afield.

Depending on the game, I may encourage or discourage certain books; for example, 'skill tricks' or whatever their called from Complete Scoundrel end up adversely affecting character competence, because of the assumed 'you need this trick to do this,' so I discourage players from getting them.

On the other hand, Book of Nine Swords has proven to be fairly balanced. The only problem I have is if someone wants to play a Fighter next to a Warblade; the Warblade is balanced against the Cleric and Wizard, AND gets more skills AND weapon familiarity, so I'd probably ask one of the players to consider switching.

Hummm...

1 more combat feats
2 Armor Training improving Max.DEX
3 Exotic Weapons with smaller penalty
4 good fort and will saves
5 4 skills per level

that would look good I think

One of the problems with the Fighter's current incarnation is that you see lots of people with levels of fighter; up to four, in fact. Fighter 1 is one of the best levels in the game, in fact!

While I like these changes, they don't solve the problem of the Fighter having little to make it attractive later in the game, but DO make it even more desirable to take a level or two in.

Sadly, this isn't the first board where I've seen something like this happen to Mr. Trollman. I've never interacted with him directly, but his approach to discussion and debate tends to abrade much of the goodwill his obvious facility with rule systems would garner.

We've been playing for a while now; the combat feats tend to discourage the fighter from trying anything but the most proven tactics, and he tends to fill up on interoperable stuff instead.

I don't think the benefits most of them give are really justified with 'only one per turn!' especially given the fact that many take standard or full actions to use.

Eh, while it's an interesting twist, I seriously think the feats are not exactly very usable atm.

Power attack is currently very low-utility for PCs (pretty much only a all-out focus on STR like fighter and barbarian will use it, paladins and rangers can't), while auto-hit monsters like giants/dragons (who miss only about 10% of the time even with the current power attack changes) lose very little.

I think I like the compromise in Neverwinter Nights, that the +/- be a flat 3. i.e. -3 attack for +3 damage(+6 for 2h)/ +3AC. The feats would nerfed from the 3.5 versions, but would still be highly useful.

I think that Power Attack gets hurt more at higher levels...while Combat Expertise got hurt across the board. Fighters who would otherwise take it with their ample feat selection no longer want to, and if they need it (usually for a third party feat) it feels like a punishment feat.

Where is this limit written at? I'm not seeing in the latest Alpha release.

Page 52:

"Combat feats represent various maneuvers and tricks that
characters can attempt to perform in combat. Although
these feats can be utilized any number of times per day,
you cannot utilize more than one combat feat in any
given round."

I think that combat feats really feel like an artificial break on players who like to tweak everything until they get monsterous characters. While I don't think that's a bad goal, I think the current list of combat feats has a lot of entries that really shouldn't be there, and a lot of them don't justify their status as 'this and nothing but this for one turn.'

I've also noticed that (at least in play up until level 5) it tends to either A) make players pick 'regular' feats to use in battle beyond one combat feat that they like and B) encourage players to fight the same way all the time. A little testing at levels where multiple attacks came into play shows that there's some switch up between multiple attacks/full round combat feats...but you can do that -anyway- with feats that count as full round actions.

In fact, I suggest that feats that are Full Round Actions are already so limited that making them combat feats makes them quite lackluster at higher levels, since they both A) can't be used in conjunction with full round actions and B) can't benefit from defensive Combat Feats.

I think that the current list needs to be reevaluated, and feats be weeded out/upgraded to make sure they're worth A) not using another Combat Feat with/in place of, and B) Not full round actions unless they have some unholy combination with a defensive combat feat.

would personally like to see the skill points more closely mirror the BAB to Hit Die comparison (with the exeception of the barbarian). Just as there are now three tiers in BAB and Hit Die, make it three tiers in skill points...4,6,8. That still keeps the rogue head and shoulders above the rest.

-Weylin Stormcrowe

Especially given the changes made to hit points, I really think this is a good idea.

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

The thing to remember is that PCs are not magic item shops. As with other items, they sell them for half price. This is done to represent that the merchant they are selling the item to has overhead, such as guards, taxes, and his own personal income. Although adventurers do not have such things (generally) this should be balanced by not allowing them to sell for full price. If they start doing this, they have gone from being an adventurer to a business. Removing the XP component does not change this fact.

Yes but what about the NPC spellcasters ? They are not PCs, they are much more numerous than PCs, and are the one that populate and make the economy of the world/regions the PCs cross. They have all their time to craft magic items after all, they are just waiting for the PCs ;)and to sell them in the shop next to their church or academy.

It's not a question of PCs, it's a question of world environnement balance. With your system, magic items are just a kind of super-quality items. Their is no more the feeling that those items are "special", "magic", "unusual".

I don't like this idea that you can by your magic items in a shop, in my campaign there is no such kind of shops (yes, even for potions and scrolls), and it is easy to explain to my players that those shops can't exist because of the XP cost of the magic items. "So you understand, those items are only crafted on command, spellcasters don't spend their XP at random."

I don't really matter that this "limiting componant" is XP or anything else (like crafting points you would gain a limited amount each level), but magic items should not be considered just super-quality items.

P.S.
To all the PRPG team :
Thanks for your work.

This is an issue that's been around since 3.0; D&D (and now Pathfinder) assume that magical items are both generally available...and generally available to be exchanged for a similar (if lesser) amount of magical gear.

Pathfinder isn't setting out to change that paradigm, so you have the assumption of (if not a magic 'shop') some manner of broker for magical items.

If you're worried about it on a worldbuilding level, just qualify that the cost isn't just for miscellaneous supplies, but SPECIFIC esoteric ones. So, for most magical items, a person can't just buy the supplies in any but the most cosmopolitan or magical cities; they have to go get the supplies, which may involve more real cost than the item is worth, ultimately.

I'm not advocating this as Pathfinder's default, but it's -very- easy to spin it in that direction if a GM so chooses.

I like the change as is.

Chidgey wrote:

True I didn't notice the unarmed bit but not every foe can wield weapons. What's a lion going to do to protect itself from its greatest foe the chair? What's a Dragon going to do?

Creatures using natural weapons are not considered unarmed. Otherwise they would provoke attacks of opportunity any time they'd attack with them. Caught of Guard might be useful from time to time, but it's not that powerful. As written it only works against enemies without natural attacks, but it might be useful when combined with Improved Disarm.

Which is a case of neat skill synergy, and not at all overpowered. Since, as was pointed out, the chair leg doesn't work at all on the lion, making it a suboptimal strategy at best.

In fact, I think that the feat could use a boost as written.

Back in pre-3rd edition D&D, half-orcs got a charisma penalty but no affect to intelligence. Half-orcs were supposed to have the strength of an orc with the intelligence of a human...but still get a raw deal because no one liked them because they were half-orcs.

(They also got a comparatively meager selection of classes and painful level limits.)

However, I still prefer the Pathfinder solution to the 3.x one, as the 3.x solution rather blasted the poor fellows.

Frank Trollman wrote:

So yeah, when we put the Cleric side by side against the Fighter we notice that the Cleric is much stronger than the Fighter. But we should be open to the idea that perhaps the problem is that the Fighter is too weak and not that the Cleric is too strong.

-Frank

Yes, this may be the case; but I'm in the camp of "things have een going upwards for too long, let's nerf something". While power creep ion PF Alpha i snt a real concern for me, it would be nice to see a trend away from "upward balancing".

The fact of the matter is that the power line was established with the very first wizardly spell list. It's either a question of nerfing all the casters, or making the Fighter more competitive. I think the latter is both A) less work and B) more rewarding for all involved.

I don't like the 19th level Fighter DR bonus being reduced from 10/- to 5/-; The former does a lot to making them the force they should be at 19th level (especially for a single classed fighter) while the latter is a rather meager measure that doesn't seem to do that much in tests.

Two things:

The first is that the ToB classes, while in some cases quirky, don't break the game. While they make the core fighter look sad (Warblade especially), they don't overpower the barbarians or casters of the game. In fact, I'd be curious how the Pathfinder Fighter fares next to them.

That being said: For playtest purposes, I think that characters using Pathfinder rules would be a bit more useful. While using classes from other products is certainly great for testing how well Pathfinder 'plays nice' with 3.5 products, they'll probably see less use than, say, a pure fighter or cleric.

Razor Sharp Chair Leg has produced only happiness in my players and potential players.

It sold one guy on Pathfinder, in fact.