I like PrCs. I like lots of them. Frankly, they are fun to shop for and look around or even use in a DM setting
But most importantly, they to me do over bloat rules. You don't need them or even have to use them. You can easily ignore them if you want or keep them to a bare minimum if thats what you want
I've also heard that Hero Lab is supposed to be supporting Pathfinder as well. I know I'm looking forward to it :)
I WANT SOFTWARE!PCGen currently has the Pathfinder BETA rules in it and everything is free.
The "final" rule set will be in there, some time after August 13th, and it will be free also.
-- david
Papa.DRB
PCGen Yahoo-Groups moderator and sometimes LST coder.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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There's a distinction I'd like to make between "things I'd like to see in the Pathfinder RPG" versus "things I'd like to see crop up in Golarion" versus "game crunch I'd like to see in PFS organized play".
Take prestige classes, or odd races, for example.
I'm happy to see alternate classes, non-core base classes, and prestige classes, in terms of how they interface with Paizo's rules system. I'm happy to see races of humans with glowing sigils looping around their heads, or naturally psionic ant-folk, or intelligent flying squirrels shaped like gorillas. Again, to see how they work.
I don't have to allow any of them into my campaign. And if I find a race or a couple of prestige classes that do fit into my campaign, or which I would be interested in playing, that would make a $20 book worth the cost, beyond the delight of reading about them.
But to allow them into an organized play environment, when I do indeed need to incorporate them at my table, is a different question.
One thing: I'm a big fan of "behind the curtain" design essays. So, if you have a book with some odd races, prestige classes, or other elaborate packets of game crunch, I'd like to see an essay in the front of the book, explaining the writer's perspective about what makes a good design.
I'd like to see a new epic system first. On the prestige class side I would prefer fewer classes rather than more.
I've also heard that Hero Lab is supposed to be supporting Pathfinder as well. I know I'm looking forward to it :)
Correct. We're pushing to get the PFRPG data files completed in time for release at GenCon to coincide with the official release of PFRPG. We purchased advance copies of PFRPG from Paizo, so we'll be supporting the final rules and *not* the Beta rules in Hero Lab.
All of the standard features provided for other game systems will be included for PFRPG, such as the Tactical Console for managing encounters and the integrated Editor for easily adding custom content. The data files are looking really good at this point, and we've got another week left to work on them before GenCon. Everyone is invited to stop by our booth to see Hero Lab and the PFRPG files in action for themselves.
We're all worried about rules bloat. What is your opinion of new classes and races?Are you as tired of prestige classes as I am?
Discuss.
As bad as some of them are, I'm a fan of having new races and classes introduced from time to time. I'm also a huge fan of prestige classes, as they let you really tweak your character concepts. However, I think the prerequisites for prestige classes should be much, much more flexible, so that you don't have to worry about specific builds or whatever to qualify for a PrC--roleplaying or campaign-based requirements would be much better.
I really, really loved what WotC started doing with their later books, when their PrCs would include "in the world," "in the game," and most especially "adaptation" sections, which helped identify the roles the class could help you fill, tips on how to play it, and most importantly, a handful of tips on how to work it into your own personal campaign. Heck, I loved these sections even when I hated the classes.
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I'd love to see Paizo rework WOTC's Complete line. I really enjoyed the optional base classes, such as the Scout, Beguiler, Knight, etc., and would love to see them updated for Pathfinder. To this list, I'd like to add the classes from the Tome of Magic: Binder, Shadowcaster and Truenamer.
I'm definitely up for subscribing to such a line of books.
I'm not too worried about rules bloat, so long as additional rules are clearly optional.
I'm not interested in additional races.
I enjoy prestige classes that fill historical/fantasy niches that aren't addressed by base classes.
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However, monster books I can't get enough of.
I agree. That being said, the 3.5 MM 3 and 4 were getting ridiculous in terms of recycled and redundant content. For example....Fire snakes and things of that nature. A fire template would do just fine for me.
Someone mentioned a "optional rules" book like Unearthed Arcana. I'm all about that. I still use that book all of the time just to add some new flavor into my games.
A book like the Spell compendium would be great. A vast (and revised...SC spells were sometimes very broken) tome of spells for all spell-casting classes...bring it!!
I like the idea of 1 book per class and race (ala 2nd Ed D&D) but like many other people have alluded to....these would have to be well written, useful for any player trying to discover new pathways for each class. IMO...plenty of crunch, almost no fluff. Paizo is so good at fluff anyways, it's almost like it wouldn't be needed for something like this. In these books would be great optional/extra rage powers, sorcerer bloodlines, rogue talents, etc to really give a lot of options for each individual class.
Epic Level handbook would be cool but I wouldn't go crazy over it. Unless you can find a way to have epic level D&D as fun as lower level D&D. IMO, it just gets WAAY too focused on the rules for me (and many of my players) to enjoy it.
Psionics...definitely. My request around Psionics would be to try to recreate psionics as a separate entity rather than the "other magic". That's what I liked about it so much in 2nd ED. Even if it was unbalanced, it had a lot of flavor.
PrCs...fewer but well designed.
Someone suggested a supporting cast book. Hell Yeah!! A very important edition IMO. I would love to see that after the first bestiary.
The photocopy-able stat-blocks for all summon monster/natures ally options? I love that idea. Thanks Jreyst!
that's what I got so far! Thanks for asking our opinions!
I suppose what I'm saying is please don't bloat things too much with new character option books.
To me, that was one of the greatest things about previous editions - the smorgasbord of options.
I want those options with Pathfinder - sure, my shelves contain a TON of stuff from WotC and other d20/OGL publishers right now that will be compatible (mostly) with Pathfinder - but I want more.
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In July we officially kick off the Pathfinder RPG with the release of the Pathfinder Bestiary. The massive Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook follows in August, but beyond that we have not yet announced additional rules support for the game.
That support IS coming, and we're in the process of finalizing what form it will take.
The current plan is to release between 2-3 hardcover rulebooks per year, including additional Pathfinder Bestiaries.
What form would you like these books to take? Would you be interested in subscribing to such a line, provided the books cost somewhere around $35 a pop?
What titles/ideas would you like to see us explore?
We're all worried about rules bloat. What is your opinion of new classes and races?
Are you as tired of prestige classes as I am?
Discuss.
its probably been said before but I liked the Heroes of Horror and Heroes of Battle books. So how about books on themes like that
Also, I would like to see a Giants Revisited book and more in that line. They are brillant
What titles/ideas would you like to see us explore?
I would love to see an AP sized adventure (80-90 pages) for a 2 party group that is designed to serve as a mini campaign covering 2-4 levels or so.
Its getting more and more difficult to get 4 or more players around the table and it seems like an idea like this would be perfect for a lot of GMs out there. You could do one and if it sells well increase them to 2 a year or more.
More Asmodeus.
Hmm... strangely appropriate for post number 666 on the thread.
What titles/ideas would you like to see us explore?I would love to see an AP sized adventure (80-90 pages) for a 2 party group that is designed to serve as a mini campaign covering 2-4 levels or so.
Its getting more and more difficult to get 4 or more players around the table and it seems like an idea like this would be perfect for a lot of GMs out there. You could do one and if it sells well increase them to 2 a year or more.
This would be cool. Maybe not an AP but a few modules. I'm buying the One on One Adventures for me + wife.
I want my warlock back. I know you cannot do a warlock as in the last game, but you could make one close to it. It's one thing to say you can Paizofy the old one but no two people will agree on what this means. And making my tiefling warlock using the new rules comes up short. a Tiefling sorcerer with demon bloodline is just not the same.
SO give me a book that has my warlock and I'll buy it.
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I want my warlock back. I know you cannot do a warlock as in the last game, but you could make one close to it. It's one thing to say you can Paizofy the old one but no two people will agree on what this means. And making my tiefling warlock using the new rules comes up short. a Tiefling sorcerer with demon bloodline is just not the same.
SO give me a book that has my warlock and I'll buy it.
Closest you're going to get is Adamant's Tome of Secrets. It's a new version of the class, mostly focusing on the various school abilities of the Wizard replacing the invocations of the Complete Arcane version.
Actually, one of my favorite things WotC did was their compendiums; Spell Compendium and Magic Item Compendium are enormously useful books, even if you don't like everything that comes out of them. Even if I own a dozen of the splatbooks and three dozen of the magazine articles that the spells or items are drawn from, having them all together in one comprehensive volume saves me hours of searching through that material. The 30th anniversary Dragon Magazine Compendium is one of my favorite books as well.
I like Magic Item Compendium because it has a lot of good material and they limited the duplicate stuff to some of the better gear. Spell Compendium was a horrible product. They just quickly threw together a bunch of existing spells and didn't make any efforts at quality control. It could have easily been a 96 page soft cover and been improved in process.
Pathfinder suffers, IMO, from having a lot of wonderful information scattered throughout the dozens of adventure path issues, modules, etc., that many of us poorer gamers might not have the ability to get our hands on. In that vein (being a ridiculous monster junkie), it would make my year to see a 'Rise of the Runelords Monster Compendium', putting all the great beasties from the AP into one paperback volume (or even a PDF!), updated to PRPG rules, or a 'Deific Compendium' where all the many articles on the gods were gathered into one volume. It would even be cool to see a hardback compendium for each adventure path, combining the complete path and all of its support material into one neatly sorted tome. While I recognize the latter idea might not be cost-effective, I can't be the only one who thinks having a collection of monsters that I don't have to flip through a half-dozen books to find would be awesome.
I love that Paizo keeps their crunchy bits mixed in with the fluffy bits. Spells and feats that relate to Chelliax are in the Chelliax Companion, so a player who wants to make an Andoran character can look in one book and get a good feel for the sort of feats/ spells she can use. Overall it makes for more role playing focus in the character building process. I tend towards power gaming myself and it makes me think about character development more. If I have to dig through the Chellaxian Companion to find a particular spell then perhaps that's not the best spell for my Qadiran Wizard to take.
I LOVE a lot of the monster's I've seen in the backs of the Legacy of Fire AP and Curse of the Crimson Throne, but it took my group more than a year to get through Runelords and I just don't have the money to drop 120 bucks on an adventure path I'll probably never run just for the monsters within. However, I *might* be able to justify dropping 20-30 bucks on a stand-alone collection of those monsters. It seems like it would be relatively easy to put together, would sell well, and would make fans like me happy; what's not to love? :)
Some of the AP monsters are going to appear in the Bestiary, some will be in Bestiary II. Monsters fit nicely into sets for easy GM reference.
Closest you're going to get is Adamant's Tome of Secrets. It's a new version of the class, mostly focusing on the various school abilities of the Wizard replacing the invocations of the Complete Arcane version.I want my warlock back. I know you cannot do a warlock as in the last game, but you could make one close to it. It's one thing to say you can Paizofy the old one but no two people will agree on what this means. And making my tiefling warlock using the new rules comes up short. a Tiefling sorcerer with demon bloodline is just not the same.
SO give me a book that has my warlock and I'll buy it.
I have that pdf and while I think they are on the right track with it, it is far from anything like the original where I can fly, teleport and stuff like that.
From another Thread:
For what its worth, wizards haven't "memorized" and "forgotten" spells since 3.0 came out. Wizards spend an hour or so starting to cast several spells, so that they have a "mantle" of unfinished spells around them, and then do the last few bits of the spell in combat to get it to go off.
I've liked this new explanation since I first read it.
I love the explanation myself. Loving this system is largely about managing your own pre-conceptions about magic. At some point, I realized that a spell isn't a skill but a discrete formula. Preparation isn't study but ritual that establishes a spell within you like a loaded weapon, and casting components are the trigger.
I've been building upon the internal logic of magic in my own campaign, but I would love to see a whole Sourcebook on the Metaphysics of Magic in Golarion. For example, I'm pretty damn sure that people in the game world are aware of the existence of 9 spell levels. So... what explanations have they cooked up?
In fact, I'm going right back to the request thread with this.
I want a .
First, I think Grimoire is the perfect word for it. Simple, and traditional, not unlike "Bestiary".
The Pathfinder Grimoire should contain spells, but it should be about magic, both arcane and divine.
The purpose of this book is a celebration of Pathfinder's take on Vancian magic (since PRPG is sort of a lifeboat for said system). It should endeavor to explain the spells, the role of the planes in magic, why and how components exist, where dragons and draconic fit in, lists of verbal components for roleplay, expanded magic crafting rules. It should explain the metaphysics of Pathfinder magic in such a way as to make those who hate Vancian magic slaver in anticipation of playing a mage. A proud, Vancian mage, laden with eldritch rituals and steeped in the game's decades old, quirky, bookish, and wholly irreplaceable magic system.
It needn't be a book that increases the power of spellcasters at all, nor a toolkit for building mages, although a small amount of that is inevitable. Of course, spell-eating monsters, special threats to mages, and GM advice can be included to counterbalance the power dump.
Might make a good counterbalance to a Pathfinder Armory for the martial types, if anything like that should ever be released.
Sure, it could be a Chronicles release instead. But given that Pathfinder RPG is now virtually the sole caretaker of the vancian tradition in RPG magic, I think a nice crunchy rulebook release is attainable.
Oh yeah, the Grimoire should have some pre-gen spellbooks by theme.
The Grimoire should be all arcane magic and related matters. There needs to be a separate book for more divinity, mythology, and matters clerical, that has an appropriate name.
I don't know it it's the right place to ask that but:
I would like Adventure Paths with a slower XP progression than actually, and the possibility of playing two adventure paths with the same PCs (which means AP for say levels 01-10 and for levels 11-20).
I'm becoming boring to create new characters at each AP. It would be cool to play our characters longer.
BTW, I don't really care for crunch books anymore, I had too much with WotC....
The Grimoire should be all arcane magic and related matters. There needs to be a separate book for more divinity, mythology, and matters clerical, that has an appropriate name.
I always figured that Divine and Arcane spells must be unified under the general philosophy of magic. They both have 9 levels, for instance. A Spell level is an observable phenomenon in the game world, it can't be purely a coincidence that there's some symmetry.
In my own game, it is explained that arcane magic is the magic of a mortal soul, divine magic that of the gods. Other than the source and strength of the magic, they are very similar (requiring components, tapping into planes, etc). Divine magic has less emphasis on manipulating material components (i.e. stuff on the material plane that tethers the other planes to our own) because the gods hold the power of raw creation.
More generally, I think people are tired of "the big book of this narrow subset" and are more inclined to buy a rulebook that is both broad and deep. Dividing it up into arcane and divine magic just means we've got to look in two more books, rather than a single "Magic Book".
Your opinion may differ, but I won't be really satisfied until I have a book that defines both arcane and divine magic in a language an 8 year old can understand. This book needs to give us the terminology and philosophy that player characters would use to describe the magic they use every day. As it stands, that is a gaping hole in the game.
I don't know it it's the right place to ask that but:
I would like Adventure Paths with a slower XP progression than actually, and the possibility of playing two adventure paths with the same PCs (which means AP for say levels 01-10 and for levels 11-20).
I'm becoming boring to create new characters at each AP. It would be cool to play our characters longer.
I think this is the wrong place to ask, but your message will likely get through anyway.
I like a slower pace too. Take pathfinder #1... the longest you could possibly drag that out is 2 months or so (in game), and the characters gain 4 levels? 5? It strains credulity!
I do try an pad things out with side-quests and downtime as much as possible. I think you're unlikely to see slower APs, because it's more material, and there's an amount of fatigue that consumers undergo if the finish line seems too far off.
I think this is the wrong place to ask, but your message will likely get through anyway.
I like a slower pace too. Take pathfinder #1... the longest you could possibly drag that out is 2 months or so (in game), and the characters gain 4 levels? 5? It strains credulity!
I do try an pad things out with side-quests and downtime as much as possible. I think you're unlikely to see slower APs, because it's more material, and there's an amount of fatigue that consumers undergo if the finish line seems too far off.
Oops...
That's exactly my concern.
Yes, but it would be great to play 2 APs with one character.
Also it would be great to allow more down time in APs modules, since including side quests is not always possible giving some time restrictions.
one of the more entertaining reads for 2nd edition forgotten realms was the Volo Guides
I would love to see some travelogue like books
I sincerely apologize if this is a redundant/extraneous/etc. post but is there (or could we have) a stickied post concerning the existing and expanding PFRPG canon? I'm aware of the Pathfinder wiki, but I think it'd be great to have a thread on this site that gives a synopsis of the contents of each release. Personally, I live in Thailand and print copies are somewhat difficult to obtain, so I would love to be able to check one thread as new products are released to determine whether or not to buy.
If such a thread or other resource exists I would be grateful if someone could point me to it. As an old school AD&D 2nd ed player recently returning to the game, I've got a lot of catching up to do. I'm loving the community aspect of PFRPG, and I've got to say, misprints and typos aside, the core book is probably the main reason I've got back into roleplaying.
Zo
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Now, I may be totally biased (see: definitely totally biased), but I would definitely like to see a Pathfinder Draconomicon, with not only new options for Dragons for Game Masters, but also new player options, as well as expanding upon Sorcerers with the Draconic bloodline. I hope Paizo can provide in the near future.
Let me add my two cents' worth.
1. Psionics - I was never happy with the points system, never. If Paizo did a totally different psionics system, I'd jump in feet first.
2. Epic Levels - Yes, most definitely yes if it were designed as Mr. Jacobs mentioned with a 1st-level Epic Character vs. a 20th-level regular character.
3. Rules Bloat - Having to look through umpteen dozen books for something was never my cup of tea, but just one or two books a year would probably be fine.
4. Races - As other posters have mentioned, variants of existing races is what I'd prefer to see unless any new race(s) were both crunchy and fluffy. Sort of like bacon-wrapped cotton candy.
5. Prestige Classes - Gah! Don't get me wrong, I loved some of the ones from WoTC in 3.5, but most were...lacking. However, considering Paizo's track record, I'd buy the book(s) regardless.
6. Cost - At the moment, I (hangs head in shame) get all my Pathfinder books from Amazon because of the discount and the fact most of them are Prime eligible (free two-day shipping), but I am seriously considering a subscription for the APs and map folios. Of course, my hubby pointing out the benefits of said subscriptions isn't helping my indecision.
Regardless, though, as long as you fine folks put out the Pathfinder/OGL stuff, I'll buy the majority of it. I'd probably keep going on this, but right now I need to see if hot strips of bacon really can be wrapped around cotton candy. Wish me luck.