Well rounded in strengths, but not so brilliant at skills. You can have a Cadfael cleric or a battle cleric.
Clerics sure were nasty, but if you can't have an average ability score of 16, then the cleric has some weaknesses in the three physical stats so as to get their wisdom nice and high. Do they sacrifice melee to hit and damage, initiative ac and reflex or hp and fort? There is the lower bab, and the buffs to consider, but a cleric caught outside of their buffs or attacked up close before they are ready was quite weak compared to the fighter.
Combat maneuvers were also another way to really hurt low strength average bab clerics. Certainly not saying the fighter wins by default, lord no.
Clerics were amongst the most well-rounded charcaters in 3.5. Their proficiencies gave them access to almost the full gamut of armors and equipment, and they had a reasonable selection of weapons with their deity's as well.
Saying a cleric caught outside their buffs was weak compared to a fighter is like saying a rogue who can't deal sneak attack is weak compared to a fighter. It's a no brainer. Any spell-casting class is weaker than a fighter if you take away their spells. Proportionally, the cleric in 3.5 was the least impacted of any spell-casting class if caught unprepared or in an anti-magic field, as he still had full plate, shields, and a reasonable weapon selection to fall back on. PrC's like the Warpriest even boosted his BAB while sacrificing very little in the way of spellcasting, and supplementing any lost casting potential with potent SLA's.
Combat maneuvers didn't exist in 3.5, and were instead a cumbersome cluster of various rules, which were offset just as easily by cleric buffs as fighter BAB and feats. Often more easily.
I wasn't talking about removing their spellcasting, more the question of are they really ready for what is coming? Can the foes skirmish and avoid till their buffs deplete, with suddenly appearing enemies/assassins are they stuck in the choice of buff and be on the defensive, or attack without buffs. Will they die while trying to heal. Armour and shield is great, but how mobile are they, can they navigate a dangerous area without dying, how much did they really put in climb, tumble, jump etc. That sort of thing.
3.5 special attacks weren't very cumbersome, but some really see it this way. The problem is the wording, you really have to read it and I'd recommend re-writing it in short hand to help any dm really understand the rules as written. Each of them made sense for me though, but I have a long exposure.
There was a pf player in a few 3.5 games of mine, and he complained they just couldn't be understood, too complicated, unintuitive, etc etc. So I sat down and put all the special attacks, except charge and aid another, on one page of a4, using only one side. B%@$!+@s you might say, but I did it. The rules aren't actually that complex when taken outside of the terrible sentences.
When he claimed he could not understand it, he was given the a4 to view and things like grapple were explained and physically acted out "so you reach out and grab their shirt or limb, then you try to beat them in the grapple". I still like grapple and how it was done, to this day. The grab (touch) the opposed check and all that involves, the options.
The grapple section is a mess though. Re-writing grapple into a formula helped the math student to get it.
On the cleric offset
You can take bull's strength, and a fighter with improved grapple is still on a higher bonus to grapple than you, and there is their bab.
Design Manager
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Most of the things you list will negatively impact a fighter as well. The fighter will be a little bit better than a cleric in melee for maybe the first 5 levels or so, but after that... Cleric's get access to things like flight, roaring columns of flame, save or die spells, healing, buffs to push their stats out past the fighters, etc. In 3.5 they also had a treasure trove of PrC's to choose from that stacked on even more abilities without negating their normal progression. Throw in the old 3.5 version of the Divine Might style spells that gave a cleric advanced to-hit that, combined with their other buffs, pushed the cleric's to-hit well outside of what the fighter could reach, and there's little competition.
Also, anyone capable of kiting a cleric throughout the duration of his minute/level buffs will kite that fighter right into the ground long before the cleric's spells run out.
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You should remind him that he can still use all his 3.5 stuff with Pathfinder, therefore all his old options are still available.But quite truthfully, if you're going to use all of the garbage that was loaded with 3.5, you might as well stick to it. Using 3.5 material with Pathfinder makes for an even more unbalanced and unwieldy game than 3.5 with splats. That material was made for a far different set of running assumptions that differentiate Pathfinder from 3.5, one of them being base classes don't suck.
It's just more work than it's worth for most groups. I've played in several PF groups and not a single one allowed any 3.5 material, so yeah, hurray for "backwards compatibility." Per usual, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal.
For all the things Pathfinder improved and "fixed," I tend to find almost as many head-scratchers and WTH moments. PF is a fine game, but considering all the time, money and investment I've made into 3.5 by comparison, I'd rather stick to the system I know, rather than a store-brand side-grade.
That's just my case though. Nearly everyone I game with have all switched up to PF and are happy with it.
On topic? OP's friend is either trolling, or has a terribad case of grognardism.
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There is good grognardism, and bad grognardism. The OP has found the latter case.
Good grognards use PF rules to run games with '3rd edition rules, 1st edition feel!'
Bad grognards complain about how PF feels.
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There is good grognardism, and bad grognardism. The OP has found the latter case.
Good grognards use PF rules to run games with '3rd edition rules, 1st edition feel!'
Bad grognards complain about how PF feels.
I was citing "bad grognardism." The kind of folks who hate things simply because it's not the way it always was.
I'm a 3.5e fanatic, but I'm not opposed to change. If I find a newer system that better fits my playstyle, I'll change up to it no problem. I don't dislike other systems just because they aren't 3.5e, I dislike them because I feel 3.5e does what I need it to do better than the others.
I dislike Pathfinder for actual reasons based on play experience with the system, not made up ones like "wizards and rogues being the same." I still can't fathom how that sentence even formed in the guys head.
No worries, I didn't think you were referring to me. I've taken many an opportunity on these boards to cite specific reasons over "feel," lol.
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I enjoy 3.5 and Pathfinder, but they aren't as "backwards compatible" as one might hope. Our group originally tried introducing Pathfinder material into our 3.5 game with fairly unbalanced results.
Now we play Pathfinder and integrate 3.5 material in on a case by case basis, and it works very well. The core system is essentially identical, Combat Maneuvers are much easier to explain to new characters than than the various rules covering grappling/tripping/etc. in 3.5 (and easier to adapt to doing things in combat not necessarily covered in the existing rules), and most familiar 3.5 characters end up benefiting from the transition.
No worries, I didn't think you were referring to me. I've taken many an opportunity on these boards to cite specific reasons over "feel," lol.OTOH, feel is important. If you don't enjoy playing the system, that's a problem. It's a problem whether you can list specific problems or not.
It's just harder to suggest ways to fix it :)
I agree with that. It was one of the things that kept me from thoroughly enjoying 4e; it just didn't feel right. I expounded on that, dug deeper and eventually figured out the specific problems I had with the system, but it started out with a feeling.
"Not feeling it" is a perfectly valid reason for not liking something, but the lengths at which the OP's friend went to refute PF warranted a little more justification than just "feel." If that's all it was, the whole argument could've been condensed to one sentence:
"Sorry man, I'm just not feeling this ruleset."
That would be perfectly valid. Calling wizards and rogues the same thing, sort of isn't, at least for me.
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Ah, sorry Josh, I worded that poorly. Didn't mean to disparage a fellow 3.5er. :)Don't worry, it's rather obvious that you meant it to dispairage people who prefer the pre-d20 systems. You might as well have just reworded your second statement to say "Bad grognards actually PLAY with those rules"
What makes them bad is they don't go play the rules they feel instead of wasting time complaining about other rules.
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If you're going to go off into good/bad, I'd say that the defining aspect of the "bad grognard" isn't that they complain about the feel of 3.x/4.0/etc., it's that they claim that their feelings constitute objective evidence of the inferiority of the system under consideration. The converse is, of course, also true; the bad neophyte complains about the feel of OD&D/1e/etc. and then makes the same claim about preference and evidence.
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Man I had to look up on the google what a grognard even is.
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What makes them bad is they don't go play the rules they feel instead of wasting time complaining about other rules.Ah, sorry Josh, I worded that poorly. Didn't mean to disparage a fellow 3.5er. :)Don't worry, it's rather obvious that you meant it to dispairage people who prefer the pre-d20 systems. You might as well have just reworded your second statement to say "Bad grognards actually PLAY with those rules"
So when you complain about AD&D, that's a good example?
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So when you complain about AD&D, that's a good example?What makes them bad is they don't go play the rules they feel instead of wasting time complaining about other rules.Ah, sorry Josh, I worded that poorly. Didn't mean to disparage a fellow 3.5er. :)Don't worry, it's rather obvious that you meant it to dispairage people who prefer the pre-d20 systems. You might as well have just reworded your second statement to say "Bad grognards actually PLAY with those rules"
Yes, and you should link me to this post whenever I do so.
New to Pathfinder myself, Started playing the Red box in 1980.. Played on and off until 2ed. Played a little bit of 3ed. Not sure if this is the best place to comment but this seemed close to my own thoughts. Why do we need balanced characters? I find teamwork is essential when characters have different strengths and weaknesses. When everybody has access to the same skills, feats and overlapping powers, we might as well just call our characters adventurures. There was nothing wrong with a wizard needing a couple fighters close by in a fight... then as the wizards powers increased, the fighters did not mind a fireball blasting into the hoard of beasts before they entered the fray. A football team has people with differnet skills... why not adventuring groups?
Well, the Football metaphore kind of doesn't fit the situation exactly. It'd be like if the linebacker barely did anything the first couple games, and the quarterback is awesome. Then by the time you get to the Super Bowl, the quarterback doesn't matter anymore because he can't cast spells. Know what I mean?
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I am a pretty strong supporter of 3.5 over PF, but I have no idea what your friend is talking about. There are plenty of legitimate issues with PF, rogues = wizards isn't one of them.