neroden's page

I like 4E. I like how it consolidated 3.5's numerous subsystems into one consistent system for all classes, and I like its elegant simplicity.

I also like Pathfinder. I like how it added new options to otherwise bland classes like the fighter and the sorcerer. I also like how it is backwards-compatible with my 3.5 books.

What I don't like is the general notion in these boards that you have to choose between one or the other, but not both. They are not mutually exclusive. Preaching against 4E or Pathfinder does not make you more of a loyal fan to either game.

I think it's really a matter of taste.

The considered opinion I've seen is that if you like intensively complex, well-balanced, high-powered, long sessions of miniatures wargaming, and extremely freeform diceless roleplaying outside combat, you'll love 4e. If that rather odd combination rubs you the wrong way (for any number of possible reasons), you won't like it. It happens to be quite intolerable for me, but if you love it, more power to you.

Pathfinder satisfies a different group of people -- largely the group who were satisfied by 3e -- people who want a large toolkit with lots and lots of options, on top of a fairly standardized rulesystem for dicerolling everything, particularly outside of combat. That happens to suit me, but rubs some people the wrong way!

It's quite easy to like both, though I suspect those who do are getting different kicks out of the two. 4e has been described by those who love it and those who hate it as an "excellent tabletop minatures combat game". Nobody would ever describe Pathfinder that way.

Hey there!

So, I'm looking at skills. In 3.5 OGL there are 46 skills (counting each knowledge skill separately). In Pathfinder there are 35. Pathfinder introduced one new skill, being Fly, so they've done away with 12 skills, or 25% of what there was. So, everyone's skill points stretch 25% more than they did before.

I don't have a problem with some skill merging, such as Perspective and Stealth, because it will make the game run more smoothly. I could even be persuaded to see Open Lock folded into Disable Device. However, I don't see a need to get rid of Concentration, Gather Information, Tumble, and Speak Language, all of which were valuable skills worth buying in 3.5, yet leave Disguise or Escape Artist, which I never saw in my personal campaign. Spellcraft and Appraise already saw extensive use, and I don't think they need to be the subject of merging.

Agreed. For another example, Use Rope saw extensive use in every campaign I was ever in, but is being eliminated (not even merged), while Sleight of Hand, which has never been used once, is being kept....

The skill rearrangements are frankly sloppy. From a role-playing or immersive point of view, merging Swim with anything is just wrong (some people know how to swim, others don't....) -- it's like merging Fly. Likewise, Climb can't be reasonably merged with anything else. Jump could probably be eliminated or replaced with a feat, because in reality the difference between people's jumping distances is remarkably small (compared to their climbing abilities), and it's more a matter of athletic practice than 'learning how to jump'. I use Concentration even without spellcasters to determine whether people are able to pay attention when distracted -- it should give a synergy bonus to Perception checks made to notice things in distracting situations.

So I only found out about this recently. But apparently they're only going to be listening to comments about one chapter at a time, and I don't know if I'll make it back at exactly the right time (ick). I'm guessing a fair number of people agree with me on this, and I hope my thoughts can get thrown in when the time comes (Skills and Equipment are both relevant)

So I don't mind that Use Rope, as a particular skill, is gone. What I DO mind is that it's now wildly unclear what skill checks to ask for for various rope tricks.

Therefore, I suggest that each of the standard rope options listed in the PHB be included as a possible action with a DC and an skill. Perhaps list them under the Rope listing in equipment!

I don't even care very much exactly which skill is used for, but it's GOT to be crystal clear what you roll to:
(1) Tie a firm knot
(2) Tie someone up securely (yes, some people should be better at this than others. The current rule is not OK; this needs to be an opposed check against Escape Artist).
(3) Tie someone up while they're struggling
(3) Tie a special knot (slip knot, noose, lariat etc.)
(4) Tie knots one-handed
(5) Splice ropes
(6) Swing a lariat
(7) Secure a loose grappling hook (not the same as throwing it)

It feels to me like the knot-tying should be Sleight of Hand, with a firm knot being 10 (doable untrained) and a special knot being 15 (not doable untrained), and one-handed being +5 or even +10 DC (tying knots one-handed is a b~&~#); and Escape Artist should be versus your knot tying result +10, mostly as in the SRD. Sleight of Hand is DEX-based, it's an underused skill (used FAR FAR less than Use Rope -- in the campaigns I've been in, Use Rope is very popular and used constantly, and we've never had a single Sleight of Hand check), tying ropes is harder to do in armor so the armor check penalty is appropriate, and Sleight of Hand is specifically about doing things with your hands and fingers, unlike all the other Dex-based skills. (And if you can tie knots with your mouth and toes, my hat is off to you.) As for the splicing, that should probably be a craft skill. And the lariat should probably simply be listed as an exotic weapon (so attack rolls would be used); and the grappling hook could be either Sleight of Hand or an attack roll.

But it would be tolerable for any of it to be pretty much any of the skills. The key, crucial thing is that we need to be able to take ranks in *something* which improves our ability to do whichever of the above rope tricks we're particularly interested in! They should *not* be guaranteed successes or straight ability checks, because that's just stupid (if you've ever actually tried any of these in RL, you'll know that they really do require practice and training).

[edited]

Well, I follow the philosophy that *all creatures should be written as playable character races first*, and their 'adversary' aspects should be secondary. The only creatures which should have strictly 'adversary' stats are the brainless ones like green slime. I have PCs fighting NPC humans (not in monster manual, folks!) much of the time, and I end up treating most of my monsters as NPCs too, who may sometimes join the characters, etc. etc.

So no getting rid of my ECL ratings!

The 'monster class' design is pretty effective if you want to use them in lower level play. In general monsters with high ECLs should really be introduced in higher level play, though, which is kind of obvious.

If anything, the problem I have is that of determining Challenge Ratings for NPCs in combat. Level isn't nearly accurate enough to make the encounters work. Some 10th level characters are a level 12 challenge, others are a level 8 challenge. (The biggest issue is stats variation, but there are other issues too, such as equipment: rough guidelines on how much CR is added or subtracted by better/worse stats and more/less combat equipment would be amazingly useful.)

The following should be the design philosophy keys:
(1) Accept that if players are playing 'weird' races, they *aren't* going to be balanced against each other. Often they will be super-weak in some types of encounters and super-strong in others. This is no different than the fact that wizards are much weaker against some foes and much stronger against others. It's just going to be impossible to maintain perfect balance at all levels all the time.

(2) So, add tips regarding such issues to the rulebooks, specifically the advice to the DM! "At low levels, this race's racial levels give him a strong advantage in type A encounters due to XXX, so avoid those if you want balance; but at high levels they become worth less than regular class levels because of YYY, except in type B encounters, so use those." In 2nd edition everyone was unbalanced; we dealt with it.

What you really need to do is to put in the tips to the DM so that the DM can *personally* balance the characters by customizing encounters. Every monster race, with ECL, is fairly balanced provided the DM makes a special effort to include encounters which make the monster race's special abiilties useful. (For instance, having flight as an extraordinary or natural ability can be kept valuable after the party gets it as a spell-like or supernatural power, by intermittently dropping dead magic fields on the party -- that's the sort of reason dead magic is in the book!)

On the "DM tips" side, again, there is a lot in the SRD which exists specifically so that the DM can 'personally' address balance issues as they arise in the campaign (rust monster, anyone?).

But oddly the DM tips in the old editions never actually point you to these methods of 'hand-balancing'. Putting in some more explicit tips for the inexperienced GM on how to change future encounters using existing SRD tools, in order to rebalance the effective power of a party, would eliminate a lot of the complaints about 'unbalanced' everything, including ECLs.

But it's still worth addressing the mechanical problems if possible, and I have some serious ideas about this.

The other irritation of ECLs is that they screw up the experience point progression; if a level gives you powers which kind of 'expire', it ends up being sort of worthless later on. This could be addressed by eliminating the 'double duty' of the ECL. It has 'double duty' because it reflects two things: (1) It determines the effective character level for purposes of determining encounter difficulty and hence XP; (2) it determines the effective character level for the costs of levelling up. For an ECL power which 'expires' in usefulness, you really want the ECL for purpose 1 to slowly vanish, the way added template powers in challenge ratings work (adding flight to a lvl 1 character adds a lot to their ECL for this purpose; adding it to a level 15 character does almost nothing.) For purpose 2, this doesn't work because players don't like losing XP -- but that doesn't matter due to the way the system works. The player can keep the exact same XP, hit dice, and class levels, and simply have the ECL drop.

Suppose, for instance, that when a flying character hits ECL 6, his "level" for purposes of determining appropriate CRs and XP drops, but his XP and status otherwise stay the same. He'll get more XP than the rest of the party, and this will make up for the "handicap" of having those "now-mostly-useless" levels. In essence, he'll start catching up, without the accounting being particularly complicated.

In fact, this sort of 'effective character level for purposes of dealing with challenges' idea has a lot of possible applications, including dealing with characters with vastly overpowered or underpowered stats. After all, the DM is in fact allowed to assign XP as he chooses.