What does Pathfinder need to fix?

[WotC's Nightmare]

I'm opening this thread to discuss what problematic parts of 3.5 Pathfinder should fix.

In my opinion these are the most glaring problems:
1) Long, fiendishly complex battles at levels 12 +. Everyone at high levels has too many attacks, too many stacking bonuses to calculate, and too many spells and spell-like abilities to look through, read, and adjudicate. We all know high-level combat ends up taking only 4 or 5 rounds but can end up being 3 or 4 hours in real time. I'm not sure how to handle this, but fewer ititerative attacks, simpler, more intuitive spells, and mosnter with fewer special abilities may help.

2) The fifteen minute workday. After everyone's essential per day abilities (especially the cleric's healing spells) are used up you pretty much have to stop for the day. This is especially bad at low levels where one combat can leave you depleted of essential resources. The new turning rules plus the domain and school powers seem to be a good way to alleviate this problem.

3) Huge disparity between power, flexibility, and usefullness between classes at high levels. We all know that after 6th level, the martial classes (especially the fighter) become less and less useful compared to the casters. The new fighter and rogue look like they will be more balanced with the casters. Let's hope it's enough.

4) Over reliance on magic items, multiclassing, and prestige classes. The new races and classes seem to have been powered up. Let's hope it's enough not to need bucketloads of magic items and 2 prcs to be effedctive at high level.

5) Level adjustment sucks as a way for PC's to play monsters. This one isn't a huge deal, but it would be nice to play a drow or a tiefling without falling behind everyone else in the party. The new races are more powerful, so maybe you can get rid of LA for some of the more common humanoid "PC" races by stripping away some of the more powerful racial abilities.

[John Robey]

I've touched on these elsewhere, but my big bugaboos are:

* Skill synergies, non-retroactive skill points from Int raises, and other "hidden" complications during character creation make statting up higher-level threats a nuisance. An ideal system should simply add up all the columns and be done.

* Buffs/debuffs and lots of variable modifiers make too dang much math at the table. Why do we need four levels of cover? Just make cover a flat +4 AC and be done with it. Between the bardsong, the cleric's bless, the magician's Bull's Strength, rage bonuses creating cascading changes all across the character sheet, and whatever else is going on, any given attack has two handfuls of modifiers to figure in for a single frickin' die roll, and so on. As much of this stuff needs to be purged as possible.

* Character level, not class level! Why does a 15th level fighter/wizard suck? Because their magic missile is based on their class level and not their character level, and thus only does 1d4+1 against the balor, but their BAB is gimped so they can't hit it with a sword, either. Basing effects on character level means they'll scale up with the challenge. This also ties in with the first item -- if things are based on class level, when you're building an NPC, that's another thing to look out for. ("Wait, he's a third level cleric, so his heal does X, but a 4th level sorcerer, so his burning hands does Y..." vs. "He's 7th level, so his spells all cast as 7th level spells.")

There are other things I would like to see done, but then we'd be getting into the realm of stuff that is probably more of a change that can be done with a new edition -- e.g., minimizing dependence on gear. (Honestly, I'd like to see a "new edition" that seriously fixed the system but wasn't the Gamepiece Effect Feast of 4E. However, I'm not holding my breath.)

-The Gneech

[Jacob Driscoll]

#1: THE MATH -- The gap between "effective" and "useless" grows huge at the higher levels, making play very binary -- either you can always hit except on a 1, or you can never hit except on a 20. There needs to be a greater "middle ground" between Excellent and Pathetic for skills, saves, attack bonuses, ACs, anything that uses the 1-20 continuum.

#2: A MILLION LITTLE BONII -- Synergies, bonus types, buffs, oh my! I don't want to add up 10 little +1's. I'd rather add up 1 +10.

#3: THE CHRISTMAS TREE -- There should be alternate ways of handling power advancement; the tether to magic items is too strong. It might still be there, but I shouldn't need 6 different magic items to contribute.

#4: THE FIFTEEN MINUTE ADVENTURING DAY -- Characters need staying power, in the form of HP, and in the form of being able to re-use things other than X/day. There needs to be a continuum between "all the time" and "only twice today!" Per-encounter isn't ideal, but things with a recharge time, or features that allow you to use minor powers when you still have per day uses of the major powers left, are all steps in the right direction.

#5: ATTACKS OF OPPORTUNITY -- These need to be streamlined, and need to stop being the downside of every combat maneuver that you don't have a feat for. Extra dice rolls bog down the play of the game a lot. There's better mechanics out there.

#6: RACES BECOMING OBSOLETE -- At higher levels, the races become almost indistinguishable from each other. +2's go away the moment you get stat-buff items, and little skill bonii are overshadowed by ranks and magic. Races should have an effect on every level. Things like racial substitution levels are pretty good ideas.

#7: 4 PCs vs. 1 BBEG -- The CR system throws one creature against four, which leads to "dogpiles" on the one creature. Encounters should be able to handle more creatures, or at least give BBEG's something to do besides "sit there and be wailed upon" by PC's.

#8: LA -- Level Adjustments don't work well. Get a new monster PC system, pronto!

[Dario Nardi]

WotC's Nightmare wrote:

In my opinion these are the most glaring problems:
1) Long, fiendishly complex battles at levels 12 +. Everyone at high levels has too many attacks, too many stacking bonuses to calculate, and too many spells and spell-like abilities to look through, read, and adjudicate. We all know high-level combat ends up taking only 4 or 5 rounds but can end up being 3 or 4 hours in real time. I'm not sure how to handle this, but fewer iterative attacks, simpler, more intuitive spells, and monster with fewer special abilities may help.

I'm dealing with this now. 14th level characters -- combat is the nightmare, and half the players could care less about tactics, etc.

In addition to the points you mention, I believe this is a major cause:

Hit points of monsters rise much faster than damage output of martial classes. A 1st-level barbarian can fell a 2 HD monster in 1 hit. A 14-th level barbarian (as written, without munchkin add-ons) cannot take out a 15 HD creature in 1 hit.

This links to the weak warrior classes. Unless we're thinking of changing monster HP (uh, no), then I suggest we change warrior damage output. How about this simple rule:
All classes with best BAB add their level to their weapon damage. So that 14th level barbarian now does the usual damage +14, which equalizes him with respect to spellcasters and also ends combat a lot faster.

Easy new rule, and problem solved. :-) (Hopefully without creating other major problems!)