I like the idea of a 3.75 but I'm not sure how much emphasis on backwards compatibility is actually reasonable. No less than Erik Mona has cited huge stat blocks for high-level monsters as a major problem with 3E and 3.5E, so I would think (especially as a publisher whose business revolves, to a significant degree, around adventures) that fixing this would be a high priority. But whether that goal can coexist with backwards compatibility is unclear at best.
Similarly, the difficulty of running high-level games and the extreme slowness with which they proceed is another area that is especially relevant to an adventure publisher and yet, seems to go unaddressed in the changes released so far. I think this was given as a reason for keeping adventure paths down to 15 levels or so from here on in. While I don't think shorter adventure paths are in any way a bad thing, it occurs to me that fixing these problems would be in your own best interests, increasing the variety of products you can support reasonably, while at the same time fixing a widely-held pet peeve.
You might not want to go here but I think magic item dependency is another area that could use a level of change that may not comport with your goal of backwards compatibility.
In short, I think you may end up wanting to de-emphasize backwards compatibility on pain of producing something that doesn't fix enough of 3.5's widely-admitted problems to be worth the relearning.
Or maybe I'm not quite clear on what exactly is meant by backwards compatibility here. Has this actually been defined at any length anywhere? If not, spelling out exactly what you mean by that is something you should do sooner rather than later.
Backwards compatibility means to me, two things:
Anybody who plays Pathfinder can use any adventure written for 3.5 with minimal revision.
Anybody who plays 3.5 can use any adventure written for Pathfinder with minimal revision.
"Minimal revision" is obviously a matter of interpretation. But if Pathfinder changes too much it becomes an alternate 4th edition -- which is a bad idea -- and not a tweaked 3rd edition -- which is a good one.
Changing the way monsters are presented? Not a problem. WotC already did that during 3rd edition.
Changing magic item dependency? Problem. People who use 3.5 adventures will find that the Pathfinder adventures don't give out enough wealth. People who use Pathfinder will find the 3.5 adventures give out too much.
|
I like the idea of a 3.75 but I'm not sure how much emphasis on backwards compatibility is actually reasonable. No less than Erik Mona has cited huge stat blocks for high-level monsters as a major problem with 3E and 3.5E, so I would think (especially as a publisher whose business revolves, to a significant degree, around adventures) that fixing this would be a high priority. But whether that goal can coexist with backwards compatibility is unclear at best.
Similarly, the difficulty of running high-level games and the extreme slowness with which they proceed is another area that is especially relevant to an adventure publisher and yet, seems to go unaddressed in the changes released so far. I think this was given as a reason for keeping adventure paths down to 15 levels or so from here on in. While I don't think shorter adventure paths are in any way a bad thing, it occurs to me that fixing these problems would be in your own best interests, increasing the variety of products you can support reasonably, while at the same time fixing a widely-held pet peeve.
You might not want to go here but I think magic item dependency is another area that could use a level of change that may not comport with your goal of backwards compatibility.
In short, I think you may end up wanting to de-emphasize backwards compatibility on pain of producing something that doesn't fix enough of 3.5's widely-admitted problems to be worth the relearning.
Or maybe I'm not quite clear on what exactly is meant by backwards compatibility here. Has this actually been defined at any length anywhere? If not, spelling out exactly what you mean by that is something you should do sooner rather than later.
Hehe! Apparently you just beat me by a few minutes with this thread, Jeff. ;-)
Bringing this thread back to topic:
I think by now everyone (including me) pretty much made clear what their interpretation is.
What we need now, is Paizo's take on the topic, though. And Jeff is correct: There are more open topics with 3.5 which were addressed on these boards in the past (also by Paizo staff) and we don't have any idea how many of them will be eventually addressed in Alpha 1 - ...
Dear Paizo staff, please shed some light!
Thanks!
Guenther
|
|
By the way as a 'shameless act of self promotion': The other thread with somewhat more detailed requests lies here. ;-)