Pathfinder RPG Mechanics in Pathfinder Online

[Uninvited Ghost]

Per the suggestion of Goblinworks, I've created this thread. I haven't been following the blog, but I do know that Pathfinder Online is based on the Pathfinder (Golarion) campaign setting, but not based on the Pathfinder RPG rules.

What I do want to know is, what in PFO mechanically WILL remind me of the Pathfinder RPG rules.

Are there ability scores? Classes? Races?

What sort of things will make me think of the Pathfinder RPG rules in this non-Pathfinder RPG rules game?

[Jamie Charlan]

Its rather difficult to follow things exactly. Several reasons abound, and you gotta first get those working before you can even get around to bringing the proper 'feel'.

First come time:
-Realtime vs Turn-Based
-MMO time progression vs table-driven Compression/Dilation

The first is self-explanatory: Any system based on a per-turn action economy is inherently different from just about anything you play as MMOs.

It certainly is possible to make things actually turn-based when comes the time for combat, however, but the pacing, particularly when multiple players get involved, becomes an important issue to consider. In that regard, a fairly restrictive time-limit, such as "20s to plan/execute" is needed, as you need to keep things going fairly smoothly. Too short and certain classes/builds [or more likely, certain UI macros] are the only way to go, as anything else loses turns in many circumstances. Too long, and you're bored off to the uninstall folder right and quick.

Nevertheless, that's a specific form of design, and would be very different from the standard "action MMORPG", being closer to something like NWN2 on 'autopause' [which would probably happen often, through interrupt options and the like].

The second turns a society on its bloody head. You can no more tell the players to sleep logged-in [otherwise there's no random encounters at night risk] for eight bloody hours than you can just click a button to suddenly have rested for eight hours. This forcibly separates many effects normally linked to time of day [including when a cleric of a given deity might regain his spells] from the normal ruleset, requiring instead new forms of resource allocation and recovery.

Now those two above are huge. Absolutely huge. And often enough, depending on your engine or game model, there's just no getting around it, you'll have to make the bypass, and you'll have to find a compromise.

Ability Scores, Classes, Races, Archetypes, Feats, Skills are all likely to be there.

-Ability Scores are in almost any game in some form or another. There's little problem here, I doubt they'd get changd.

-Classes are primarily affected by the time systems: As a result, the spellcasters are the most significantly changed. Mind, this wouldn't really be an issue in, say, in Kenzer Co's Count-Up system from Aces and Eights or the new Hackmaster, but the rest-systems themselves would still be getting changed all-around for everyone.

-Races are often unchanged, save for their abilities affected by the time systems. This can result in their bonuses being slightly different as a result of class changes, OR they go in straight with no such considerations and we get things like "gnome mages have a full +5% intelligence, which improves damage and mana, instead of the +5% to only mana like this other race. Also they're harder to target, can avoid LoS entirely with exploits, but we swear its totally balanced". Mind, this was on a game that didn't even use an RPG to begin with; so there was little excuse there.

-Archetypes only have the issue of "will the devs want them implemented or will they wait till later". Hopefully they're in there from the start, being class options that are fairly simple overall [different table-changes; get this at x instead of that at y] but you know how it is with implementing stuff in games.

-Feats and Skills would likely be heavily affected by time-constraints. Also, in the latter case, in a real-time environment, there can be implementation issues. When half your class skills are 'knowledge' and items are auto-identified, and you can't just scan critters for their weaknesses, your class needs something else.

Of course, a really good development would be that said knowledge skills immediately net you conditions, weaknesses and other info on your HUD, but then, why not just ignore them and load the page that tells you from the wiki, or download a UI mod that gives the DC40 level of info about everything?

Designing a game from the ground up can be bloody rough.

[Nihimon]

@OP, if you only read one blog, read Your Pathfinder Online Character. It will answer a lot of your questions.

[Uninvited Ghost]

Jamie Charlan wrote:

Amazing post

You bring up a lot of good points, and made some good educated guesses.

In my perfect Pathfinder MMORPG, it would not be a direct simulation of the Pathfinder RPG, for many of the reasons you mentioned.

Some games that kind of used some pen and paper mechanics are NWN games and SW:KotOR games (haven't had the pleasure of playing SW:TOR yet, but I'm guessing it deviated away from Star Wars d20, mechanically).

So, you can't just drop the feats in and they all make sense, but that doesn't mean you can't have feats with the same names that do similar things.

[Uninvited Ghost]

Nihimon wrote:

@OP, if you only read one blog, read Your Pathfinder Online Character. It will answer a lot of your questions.

Thanks! I just read it. It's good to know a few things, like abilities scores and level 20 meaning something are intact, but it really keeps many details vague...

I'll play either way (as soon as there is a native Mac version), but I'll enjoy it it more if it feels Pathfinder-y to me.