Fair enough (I did pay cold, hard cash for the printed copy). I guess I don't really see what's missing out of it - granted there's no classes (or new paths) this time around, but that doesn't seem to have been ruled out as such, going forward.
I appreciate the perspective anyhow - as I said, I'm not trying to persuade anyone, just understand. It sounds to me like pathfinder is the best choice for you and I'm personally glad that the two systems are serving different markets in that way.
Fair enough Steve, it’s good to see we can debate without arguing.
For me, it’s just disappointing, after the release of a new system. It really was play-tested well and feels like everything 4E should have been. But if they are not bothering to support it, why should I?
I was happy with the initial concept of ‘one adventure plus a player’s book every 6 months’. Now we’re seeing cancelled books and staff cutbacks, six months into the new edition. What would I want to see? The ‘Elemental’ concept should be huge from a player’s perspective, with new classes and archetypes. There’s a massive wealth of legacy content from the previous editions. That we’re seeing nothing is just incredibly frustrating, and I don’t want to support that attitude. I supported 4E, even if it wasn’t always to my tastes. At least they were trying.
Listening to that WotC bean-counter giving his marketing spiel just made my blood boil. I may not agree with James Jacobs or whoever, but at least they are gamers who care about games and understand the concepts.
Pathfinder will require a LOT more effort on our behalf to make it what we want (I’m going to do what I can to adopt some kind of ‘advantage/disadvantage’ rule, as well as try reduced magic and some attempt a kind of ‘bounded accuracy’) but the sheer wealth of product (probably too much stuff, but that’s another story) makes it feel healthy.
I think they're targetting the bloat-fatigued rather than the option-hungry. (Although that article does anticipate more options down the track - it's just not their focus).
I see the lack of upcoming splatbooks as a strength.
That just seems ironic considering you have several monthly subscriptions to Pathfinder. Presemably you want at least some of their monthly content then? Would you really be happy if Paizo didn't release new content outside the Core book?
Why can't D&D players want new content? Why can't we play psions or celestial mages or whatever?
Why is there no middle ground between a deluge of new stuff every month, and absolutely nothing new being released?
Everyone who argues that a total lack of content is such a good thing seems to be ignoring the Paizo model. And as far as I can see, they seem to be doing quite well.
I simply cannot see how a revamped D&D having nothing new for the RPG for the first year can be considered a 'strength'.
I understand those who feel Pathfinder has too much 'bloat'.
But as I see it, there's a huge TON of content, and you can use what you want - I think few GMs are going to use _everything_.
But D&D is sticking by its choice not to offer ANY new classes, archetypes, etc.
I originally was okay with the concept of two adventures per year with each coupled with a player's book with 5th edition versions of races, classes, archetypes, etc. That way, we would eventually see Eberron, Psionics, etc.
Now that's been completely tossed aside, and I find it bizarre.
Thanks for all the replies. Sorry I've not responded but I had to go into hospital at short notice and only just came out.
Anyway, it's interesting that there are so many replies and they are so varied; some think 'sure, you can role-play if you like' and others stress it's a combat-heavy stats-driven optimizing game and you'll be disappointed if you don't play it that way.
So it's quite possible that you can play it how you want at either extreme, or maybe somewhere in the middle.
We got Ultimate Campaign and that seems interesting.
Whether we take the plunge will probably depend on what's in 'Unchained', but there's plenty of food for thought here and I'm grateful for your advice. Thank you, pathfinder people!
Okay, I had the chance to read through the PDF of Serpent Skull that some nice person bought me.
I'll be honest; I did so out of politeness to a kind deed, and my expectations weren't so much low as non-existent. From what I'd read, and what several of my group suggested, I expected the kind of soulless dungeon hack that even Gary Gygax might be ashamed to put his name to.
So to my extreme surprise, I enjoyed it a great deal.
Spoiler:
The 'drugged and shipwrecked' part made me cringe, but I sort of see why they had to do that, and the rest of it improves immeasurably. The outdoor setting certainly helped and made it sandboxy. The atmosphere was excellent and very evocative throughout.
To my surprise, there were plenty of role-playing opportunities and wacky characters to interact with. The mephit and the tengu really stuck out; I found myself imagining what accents I could use in portraying them, what music I could have playing in the background of a game.
The other shipwrecked NPCs were a great touch; the players absolutely love all that stuff, trying to befriend people and work on improving their morale. Loved the bit where the dead pirate could only be defeated by using his lover's locket. Feels so very classic for a horror story.
I liked the 'end boss' being smart and having contingency plans, rather than just sitting around to get slaughtered. Nice that she could engage the PCs in some banter before fighting too. The whole encounter seemed to be a taste of things to come. The whole thing had a pulp/horror feel, and felt like the Big End Boss for the whole AP was likely to be something like Lovecraft's Yig. The players would love that.
So overall, I was very impressed. Now, it could just be that this one was especially good by the standards of others. But I actually decided I would love to run this, and I'm absolutely positive my players would love to play it. 'Serpent's Skull' seems to have a bit of a bad rep around here too, but this first instalment was excellent, I thought.
Again, this might be well above average in role-playing/exploration terms, but I'm a bit baffled that my players would think PF is such a dull grind with solid adventures like this one. This will certainly be 'Exhibit A' in my attempt to sway them. I can actually point to things in the text and say 'look, some of this is already here, do you trust me to do the rest?'
So thanks again for whomever sent me this - it was certainly an inspired choice.
"Okay, the fight's over, you search the bodies and find 20 +1 items."
"Okay, stick 'em in the Bag of Holding and we'll sell them back at town.'
In other words, extraneous low-level magic items that exist only to be sold to shops. My players seriously think it undervalues the concept of magic. They want something other than 'Diablo' or similar games where trash loot is commonplace.
Yes, thank you. That was what I was trying to say.
Aside from a few monsters needing magic weapons to hit them, AD&D didn't require certain levels of items at certain levels. It certainly wasn't baked into the maths, whatever they were.
They even had magic-poor campaigns like Lankhmar or the Conan/Red Sonja adventures. Caramon in Dragonlance was a 6th level fighter without any magic items.
To be honest, the whole 'looting' thing seems pretty rare outside of D&D and videogames. In most games, a magic item is for life, not just for a given level.
Hopefully the Pathfinder Unearthed Arcana rules will give us some variant options here.
Hi, after enjoying playing the new D&D edition for about 6 months, my group have expressed dissatisfaction with the way WotC will be developing the game going forward. While we are happy with the rules, it seems like D&D will mostly be represented by minis, boardgames and the MMO rather than the tabletop game. So we are looking for an alternative. Most of us have played 3.5, didn’t like 4E, and some of us have played Pathfinder about 3 years ago with various degrees of success. The one thing PF clearly has going for it is support from Paizo and plenty of monthly material. However, some of the players have reservations, so as GM I am coming here to voice a few concerns, tap into the experience of PFs many players and see if the game would be right for us, as opposed to 13th Age or something.
I’m not really looking to get into ‘edition wars’ or anything – just trying to get a handle on the state of play of PF three years after I last played it, and see it’s a fit for what we are looking for.
There seem to be two main sticking points, as we are all happy with the quality of production, art, supplements, etc. PF looks very healthy and well-supported, which is ideal. I played 3rd edition for years so I’m familiar with the pros and cons of d20 in general.
The problems are these: wealth-by-level, and the adventure paths. I’ll try and cover them separately as they really are two different things.
Here, I want to ask about the ‘Christmas Tree Syndrome’. One of the things that turned many of us off 3rd edition was the laundry-lists of magic items, because they had the combat bonuses required to function at given levels. This felt like everyone just ended up with the same items with little variation, and nobody went for something cool and offbeat because it was essential to get the ‘Big Six’. Also, players disliked having to trade in their items every few levels, which seemed like a videogame rather than the kind of stories found in books or films, where you just don’t see that happening. Also, one of the things we liked about 5E was that you could start a character with a powerful heirloom which he might keep for his career, or you could go for a Conan-style game where high level characters didn’t have magic items at all.
So I guess I wanted to ask – is there any OFFICIAL cure for this?
In all the various books and rules out there, is there any kind of alternate system that removes magic items from the equation, or some sort of ‘Unearthed Arcana’ book that offers alternate rules? If the need for items is baked into the rules, is there any way to reverse-engineer this? I recall 4E had something like that with their Dark Sun version.
I dimly recall there was some kind of ‘vow of poverty’ feat that offered bonuses instead of magic items, which might work for the Conan or Grey Mouser types?
Or the old ‘Weapons of Legacy’ 3.5 rules that allowed your items to ‘level up‘ with you so they weren’t constantly being replaced like some JRPG.
Are there any such options available at present? Is this something they may change with Pathfinder 2?
