There are many complaints complaints with the system as is:
- Monk doesn't live up to their advertised flavor.
- Combat expertise makes you worse at performing the combat manuevers it a pre-requisite for.
- Dex to damage can only be acheived through a weapon property or a feat for schimithars wich kills or hampers certain builds and, personally ruins the flavor of the agile swordman when his good because of his weapon not because of himself.
- DCs for spell doesn´t scale properly.
- Touch AC doesn't scale wich makes some touch attack always auto-hit at later levels.
- Adding ranks to a skill eventually makes them autosuccess
- The big six magic items, boring similarly equipped characters.
- Vital Strikes is underwhelming.
- Weapon Focus/Specilaization binds you to a single for your whole carrer.
Many of this problems where inhereted from 3.5 and where kept because there wasn't a reasonable way of fixing them without violating the backward compatibility directive, others where created due to rules change (Combat Expertise and CMB).
There are many posible solution to this issues, some better than others and some requires more rewriting of the rules. I am compiling some suggestions over the boards and classifying them among rule addition/new options (like the monk combat styles), soft retcons (changes like the paladin smite evil) or mayor rule changes that are more in line with an edition change (like the changes to stealth). I don't necesarilly agree with all propossed changes.
-PF 1.5: you add the AC bonus to to either to-hit or AC, limit INT bonus, doesn´t apply when using Power Attack, now it has more synergy with manuevers and arguably matches the fluff better.
-PF 1.5 or 2.0: Weapon Finesse effect is automatic for all finessable weapons, Weapon finesse feat acts as Greater Weapon Finesse(above), may be to much but STR fighters still has bigger dice and better AC because heavy armor being better until very high levels.
-PF 2.0: Incorparate bounded accuarccy to reduce the need and existance of numeric bonuses items.
Note: D&D 4.0, incorporated a system in wich DCs scale with the character level, swinging in a chandelier to kick an oger was always DC 15+level, that make me cringe
Humbly,
Yawar
I agree with some of your complaints, but hardly all.
- Monk doesn't live up to their advertised flavor.
Agreed. Even the devs have agreed the monk needs fixing.
- Combat expertise makes you worse at performing the combat manuevers it a pre-requisite for.
How do you figure that? You don't have to be using CE to perform the maneuvers, you just have to have the feat.
- Dex to damage can only be acheived through a weapon property or a feat for schimithars wich kills or hampers certain builds and, personally ruins the flavor of the agile swordman when his good because of his weapon not because of himself.
Rightly so. Dexterity adds to a LOT of things: Reflex Saves, AC, missile attacks, and a lot of skills. It's the single most versatile score you can have. You want to add it to damage as well? No.
If you want to give the swashbuckler/agile fighter a boost to damage, add wisdom or intelligence modifiers to damage instead with your Greater Weapon Finesse feat.
- DCs for spell doesn´t scale properly.
Yes, it does in my experience. At higher levels, higher scores and stat boosters ensure it.
- Touch AC doesn't scale wich makes some touch attack always auto-hit at later levels.
Yes, it does. Stat boosts and items like rings of protection boost touch AC, it just doesn't scale as well as normal AC (unless you are a monk). Frankly I do not have a problem that a hulk in plate armour has problems avoiding a lightning ray - it's not like he doesn't have the hit points to take the hit at that level anyway.
- Adding ranks to a skill eventually makes them autosuccess
That depends on what you are trying to do. It can also mean that as you rise in levels you get to master many skills, not just one.
- The big six magic items, boring similarly equipped characters.
It's called 'parallel evolution'. Sadly some things you need to have to do a particular role. Unless you plan on getting rid of items all together, there are few ways around it, and even then warriors will still wear armour, and still need weapons.
- Vital Strikes is underwhelming.
I agree, the damage bonus should be fixed and not weapon dependent. If it was 2d6 regardless of weapon I could see a lot of takers.
- Weapon Focus/Specilaization binds you to a single for your whole carrer.
No it doesn't, you can take the feats many times for different weapons if you wish, and if you are a fighter you can retrain them.
Opinion:
Even if redone, there will still be complaints. Human nature.
I am am a pro artist. I can jobs all the time. There are always complaints even if I follow the clients instructions and give them exactly what they wanted to tee (in fact I get more complaints from those clients).
Some writes a best selling book, people complain. Wizards is going into their next set rules, try to please everyone, lots of people will complain.
Does Pathfinder need fixes? But they still sell a ton of products even with the 100 or so complainers on this board.
Someday Paizo will make Pathfinder 2.0. And it will probably be very different from the current game.
It will probably address the abstractness of a 6 second round, attacks of opportunities and such. It will address HP and skill bloat. It might even address balance issues between classes (I pray it does not).
But still people will complain.
Re: Dex to Damage
Dex already does a lot. Neglecting Str (or any other stats) should have its toll IMO.
Re: Big Six
The Big 6 is a big issue on its own. Numerous treads were started to address that one alone. I'm not sold on bounded accuracy, but i agree that opponents can be designed along an algorithm that doesn't assume that the PCs stack pluses the way they do now. This allows the game to eliminate many numerical bonuses altogether, such as magical enhancement bonuses.
A magic sword would be just that; a magic sword. Give it a +1 bonus for masterwork (perhaps extends that to damage as well) and that's it. Being able to bypass DR and affect incorporeal creatures is already non-negligible, as are the different enchantments one can slap on magic weapons.
That would encourage diversification of weapons and arnours but as it was stated before, fighting characters will always rely on (better) weapons and armours...
Re: Weapon Focus / Spec
I think the feats should apply to an increasing amount of weapons as the fighter gains level, like 1 extra weapon at level 6th, 11th and 16th.
'findel
Combat Expertise and CMB: Yes
Dex to damage: Meh, Str Needs something and if you start making dex to damage easy and UN-controlled that unbalances things.
Vital Strike: Hell Yeah!
Big Six: I sort of see what your getting at. I played 2nd ed and it was like this for the most part, but 3.x has sort of made this a staple. Maybe we add items that level/grow with you eliminating the need to go to a shop to up-grade/replace them all the time and making them more important. Maybe we could add enhancement type bonuses to non-primary class stats to eliminate.
Weapon Focus/Specialization: Yes
Skill ranks and flat DCs: NO. I like it as is. Unless we go to a vastly bigger die type, like the % dice, I am sorry but if you do a backflip all your life, sure you have a vastly smaller chance than 5% to fail it. So this needs to stay.
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The only valid complaints I see on that list are the Big Six and Vital Strike being underwhelming.
I mean, seriously? Autosuccess skills are a problem? You mean that people who are far better than anything our world has ever seen actually getting to a point where they don't f&@% up is a problem? Scaling DCs are a horrible idea. You never get better at your skills. You just add bigger numbers.
Monks live up to their flavor wonderfully. The idea that they don't is just a stupid meme that people like to repeat without critically thinking about it. It's such a laughably bad argument that it's barely worthwhile to address. The monk has worked fine since PFRPG came out. Some people confuse it for meaning to be a powerhouse of damage. It never was meant to be that. False expectations never turn out well.
And whee, what a great idea to add your full dex as damage to some weapons. Then it becomes absolutely useless to be anything strength based but two-handed fighting. Really well thought through position, there. Lets make the god-stat even more of a god stat so the min-maxers are always Dex based. Maybe Strength based people should be able to add their strength to AC, and initiative! The complaints by people that there should be dex to damage AND a fix to the Big Six are especially ironic. The whole idea of the "agile swordsman" has been to skillfully whittle your enemy down while avoiding their counterattacks, not to strike them down in a few big blows. You'll do fine as a dex based fighter. Someone being better than you at quickly smiting down their enemies with their great force does not make you bad.
Touch attacks being too easy? Well no crap! You just need to touch them.
My god, it's like people forget that the game is built around the elite array or at best 15 point buy. So many things on these forums people take for truths that simply aren't. The disconnect between people on these forums and the vast majority of other players is huge. There are very few things in this game that are actually bad, but if you listen to this little teapot of a forum, or others, the majority of options are.
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- Dex to damage can only be acheived through a weapon property or a feat for schimithars wich kills or hampers certain builds and, personally ruins the flavor of the agile swordman when his good because of his weapon not because of himself.
Dex already does too much and is arguably the strongest single stat in the game. Leave poor strength alone.
I mainly agree with Cheapy.
One of the few minor things I am looking at possibly house ruling away is that Charisma (Strength of Personality) applies to Will Saves instead of Wisdom. Wisdom applies to intiative instead of Dexterity. (Wisdom is tied to Perception and Sense Motive, the two skills that would tell you to act because of danger.) Dexterity would remain as is, but lose the bonus to intiative.
I mean, seriously? Autosuccess skills are a problem? You mean that people who are far better than anything our world has ever seen actually getting to a point where they don't f$+% up is a problem? Scaling DCs are a horrible idea. You never get better at your skills. You just add bigger numbers.
They are a problem, because they trivialize ability scores and feats that give skill bonuses. I said auto-sclaling DCs made me cringe. I suggested bounded accuarcy because it makes ability scores, and feats matter, it makes skill focus and athletics thing you would like to invest to be a mountain climber.
Monks live up to their flavor wonderfully. The idea that they don't is just a stupid meme that people like to repeat without critically thinking about it. It's such a laughably bad argument that it's barely worthwhile to address. The monk has worked fine since PFRPG came out. Some people confuse it for meaning to be a powerhouse of damage. It never was meant to be that. False expectations never turn out well.
"Monks suck" is different than "don´t live up to their flavor" and require sysmtem to be good at hitting things without dying horribly, even the devs have said the monks needs fixing, but they where limited by the backward compatibilty.
"And whee, what a great idea to add your full dex as damage to some weapons. Then it becomes absolutely useless to be anything strength based but two-handed fighting. Really well thought through position, there. Lets make the god-stat even more of a god stat so the min-maxers are always Dex based. Maybe Strength based people should be able to add their strength to AC, and initiative! The complaints by people that there should be dex to damage AND a fix to the Big Six are especially ironic. The whole idea of the "agile swordsman" has been to skillfully whittle your enemy down while avoiding their counterattacks, not to strike them down in a few big blows. You'll do fine as a dex based fighter. Someone being better than you at quickly smiting down their enemies with their great force does not make you bad."
There are 2 ways to achieve these already, and there aren´t complaints about breaking the game, as far as I know. The proposed suggestion was more in terms of fluff. My problem and other people's with the elegant weapon quality is that it is a weapon quality. A magic trick and not a representation of the character actual skill, and also wouldn't work with classes that have limits on enhancements to their weapons. Finally, the way you portray the agile swordman has no basis in PF, because the agile guy has 2 less AC than the hulking guy in full plate so its the other guy whithle them down and dealing massive damage.
My god, it's like people forget that the game is built around the elite array or at best 15 point buy. So many things on these forums people take for truths that simply aren't. The disconnect between people on these forums and the vast majority of other players is huge. There are very few things in...
Fun fact monks get better and better the higher they array, because it solves their MAD problem. How do you know the vast mayority of the people? How do you know these complaints aren't statiscally representative of a significant portion of Paio consumers. The game is made on 20 point buy, the elite array is for NPC. Go check PFS basis.
Humbly,
Yawar
EDIT: accidentally submitted before finished.
I forgot which 3.x book this was in, but it mentioned changing the d20 for 3d6. It has the same average and about the same range, but makes the very high and very low rolls much less likely, which helps a lot with the skill issues (assuming you see it as an issue). Of course, this is a D20 system game, so it's not very likely that'll ever be official.
Edit: In another thread, I did a little math and showed that bounded accuracy only just barely works with a d20. You basically have to limit the maximum total bonus to everything to just +10. It's doable, but the results will not be the same game. There are probably better solutions.
- Dex to damage can only be acheived through a weapon property or a feat for schimithars wich kills or hampers certain builds and, personally ruins the flavor of the agile swordman when his good because of his weapon not because of himself.Dex already does too much and is arguably the strongest single stat in the game. Leave poor strength alone.
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The biggest problem facing Pathfinder RPG is not necessarily the rules mechanics themselves, but the language copied and pasted from 3.5
I agree that a PFRPG 2.0 should be considered sometime soon, but not as a rework of the mechanics but of the language used. So many of the problems we experience here is based upon poor wording, a failure to have language standards when discussing certain topics in the rules, and horrendous organization.
These are all legacies from 3.5, and could be put right with a total rewrite from the Paizo staff. That would not be a small undertaking at all. But one advantage of such a rewrite is that PFRPG 2.0 would still be useful with 1.0 books.
Mechanics-wise there will always be certain minor rules that will annoy a few people here and there. Trashing a system that works to quiet the complaints of a vocal minority is never a good idea. Stick with what works and just clean it up some.
Monks live up to their flavor wonderfully. The idea that they don't is just a stupid meme that people like to repeat without critically thinking about it. It's such a laughably bad argument that it's barely worthwhile to address. The monk has worked fine since PFRPG came out. Some people confuse it for meaning to be a powerhouse of damage. It never was meant to be that. False expectations never turn out well.
I could live without it being a powerhouse of damage if it were able to do something else offensively other than maneuvers. It can't, and the damage output is worse than a fallen paladin's. It has problems, even the devs have agreed on this.
As for this being a stupid meme repeated by those unable to do analysis, that's just blatantly untrue given the number of threads that have diagnosed the monks problems mechanically and mathematically.
It IS true that a good monk is not impossible; it is also true that this requires a great deal of system mastery and restricts available choices.
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The biggest problem facing Pathfinder RPG is not necessarily the rules mechanics themselves, but the language copied and pasted from 3.5
I agree that a PFRPG 2.0 should be considered sometime soon, but not as a rework of the mechanics but of the language used. So many of the problems we experience here is based upon poor wording, a failure to have language standards when discussing certain topics in the rules, and horrendous organization.
These are all legacies from 3.5, and could be put right with a total rewrite from the Paizo staff. That would not be a small undertaking at all. But one advantage of such a rewrite is that PFRPG 2.0 would still be useful with 1.0 books.
Mechanics-wise there will always be certain minor rules that will annoy a few people here and there. Trashing a system that works to quiet the complaints of a vocal minority is never a good idea. Stick with what works and just clean it up some.
Agreed. A "reworded edition" would be interesting.
PFRPG 2.0 however, should take some more bold departures from its 3.X origins. There are too many good games out there that make the old d20 framework look woefully cluncky.
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If you use ability scores and feats to increase your skills to the point that they're auto-successes, that means you've then got plenty of extra skill points to put into other skills. So they are useful, since they let you diversify.
If skill DCs increased as the game went on, then you'd be locked in to just keeping your core skills maxxed out all the time, just to keep from falling behind.
If you use ability scores and feats to increase your skills to the point that they're auto-successes, that means you've then got plenty of extra skill points to put into other skills. So they are useful, since they let you diversify.
If skill DCs increased as the game went on, then you'd be locked in to just keeping your core skills maxxed out all the time, just to keep from falling behind.
Ummm the DCs should always increase because at higher levels you should be trying to do more difficult things. Look at Tumbling past opponents it becomes nie impossible after level 12. Things are so big and have such high hit points you can't get past them with a maxed out acrobatics unless you too skill focus.
Ummm the DCs should always increase because at higher levels you should be trying to do more difficult things. Look at Tumbling past opponents it becomes nie impossible after level 12. Things are so big and have such high hit points you can't get past them with a maxed out acrobatics unless you too skill focus.If you use ability scores and feats to increase your skills to the point that they're auto-successes, that means you've then got plenty of extra skill points to put into other skills. So they are useful, since they let you diversify.
If skill DCs increased as the game went on, then you'd be locked in to just keeping your core skills maxxed out all the time, just to keep from falling behind.
The same task shouldn´t be harder because you leveled, it breaks the inmersion. The whole idea of bounded accuarcy is that your character shouldn´t became better at stuff he doesn't actively invest in it. This means that, for example, a trained character gets a training bonus + stat bonus + feat bonus + magic item bonus. So, keeping stuff in check with pathfinder, a tumble bonus would be +4 (1 rank + 3 trained) + 4 dex for a total of +8 and the DC would remain 15 you would have a decent 30% chance of succes, unless you invest to improve it.
Bounded accuarccy implies that you don't get skill points or, like Alternity, it gets progrssively harder to improve skills with skill points; for example, 1st rank costs 1 ponit, 2nd costs 2 and so on. This encourages diversivfication rather than extreme specialization reduces minmaxing in skill points unless you want a one trick pony.
Humbly,
Yawar
PFRPG 2.0 however, should take some more bold departures from its 3.X origins. There are too many good games out there that make the old d20 framework look woefully cluncky.
Never going to happen. Backward compatibility means that Paizo can keep selling their old adventure paths without wasting time re-working them. They are not going to pass up on that as the adventures are what Paizo are all about.
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PFRPG 2.0 however, should take some more bold departures from its 3.X origins. There are too many good games out there that make the old d20 framework look woefully cluncky.Never going to happen. Backward compatibility means that Paizo can keep selling their old adventure paths without wasting time re-working them. They are not going to pass up on that as the adventures are what Paizo are all about.
Adding: Pathfinder is great for what it is, a clunky super-powered, monster-slaying, rules-nostalgic romp.
Plenty of other games are doing less well in the market despite a more "modern" RPG design. That's because — for whatever reason — people want this.
Rather than abolishing this and making it like all the others, how about we keep this, and if we feel the need to play an RPG with modern rules development, we just go play another game?
I don't mean that in a trite "love-it-or-leave-it" kind of way, since I follow this advice frequently myself. I mean it in more of a "Excuse me sir, you appear to be hammering nails in with a screwdriver... may I offer you the use of this 'hammer'?" way.
If and when they do get around to PF2.0, I hope they at least take the chance to cook some sacred hamburger.
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Ummm the DCs should always increase because at higher levels you should be trying to do more difficult things. Look at Tumbling past opponents it becomes nie impossible after level 12. Things are so big and have such high hit points you can't get past them with a maxed out acrobatics unless you too skill focus.If you use ability scores and feats to increase your skills to the point that they're auto-successes, that means you've then got plenty of extra skill points to put into other skills. So they are useful, since they let you diversify.
If skill DCs increased as the game went on, then you'd be locked in to just keeping your core skills maxxed out all the time, just to keep from falling behind.
The problem with scaling DCs is that it gets harder, over time, to make the same jump over a ten foot pit. With static DCs, the ten foot pit gets easier, but in a few more levels, you can easily jump a 10 foot pit, but the 15 foot pit is still a challenge.
I don't see Paizo killing off any of the truly sacred cows because one of the the publicly and commercially stated purposes of the Pathfinder RPG is to remain compatible with d20 products from the 3.5 era. Devs have gone on record saying that they prefer to add to the system rather than subtract, so the most I can see happening is that in a new sourcebook or printing of the core, more gets added to the class ability or feats lists to shore up the deficient classes or character types. I'd be sacred cows like the xmas tree don't get removed, though it would be nice to see a definitive way to run low-magic games by replacing the math that is currently handled by magic items with other plotline boons, like blessings or morale bonuses.