After so much hate...

[Amuny]

Been a while since I posted here. I think a lot of things got cleared out of my mind while playing Pathfinder, and our party is now really proficient in the rules. But let's get to the point.

Pathfinder RPG came basically at the same time than D&D 4th. No need to say, D&D 4 came with a ton of hate. And I was first in line. I followed Paizo through their path(finder, ohoh!) and enjoyed what they did for the community. I was super happy to see an active forum of players AND designers working together to bring the best out of the OGL.

When the first official Pathfinder RPG book came out (Core Rulebook), I bought it immediately. I enjoyed the read, and it was clearly the "3.5" we all wanted. I ditched my 4th edition books, and dive into Pathfinder for 6 years straight.

6 years have passed.

Pathfinder now have a whole bunch of compendiums with Advanced and Ultimate everything. Wasn't exactly what we were blaming on Wizard of the Coast, 6 years ago ?

But hey, Pathfinder did indeed bring a huge focus on their adventures paths. Which are absolutely amazing.

But the Adventure Paths... changed.

Through a lot of talking with my multiple groups of playing, we came to notice that APs are now... blend into the bunch of compendiums added to Pathfinder. And by this I mean that they evolved so much that someone with the core book only basically can't play the last APs.

More, it looks like Paizo... know that their game is broken. Because yes, it is. And any person with a few "power gamers" know it is. There is absolutely no way to balance a group of experienced adventurer in combat past lvl6-7. And the DMing forums are all about that.

And so are the Adventure Paths.

There is some epic starts on all of them. Some great encounters, with a lot of life around them. The first 2 or 3 books are all amazing, both for the DM and the players. But then... then... oh god. Caravan rules, ship rules, realm rules, whatever they can use to fill this huge gap where the DM absolutely lose control on his players. There is nothing to do but dodge the mishap of the compendiums; Pathfinder is now as broken as 3.5 was.

Then, APs that used to end lvl20 now end lvl17, even 15 for a few. They avoid these lvl9 spells like hell. They know there's nothing to do. Nothing to do to make something balanced for everyone. Every group need his special adjustment, because every group is broken to a different level.

There's a whole lot of things that are directly abusive in this game. Litany of Righteousness, or how to deal 1000 damage to the BBEG in 1round, come to my mind. Synthesist Summoner. Oh god why. Gunslingers. Alchemists. Ninjas. Witch. Feats, spells, abilities and archetypes from book to book just bring the thing worst to worst.

6 years later, I don't enjoy Pathfinder that much anymore. It became clustered with sub-par rules, impossible for a newbie to be to the same level (too much research needed), and just need as many books as 3.5. And that's if you don't allow the use of 3.5 material, which absolutely destroys everything you may love.

So after all the hate, 6 years later, we started a few games of 4th edition. And well. I enjoy it. A lot. And I'm already planning to use some Pathfinder Adventure Path and change the encounters to be 4th edition. Because well... encounters are easy to create, to balance, and to play.

In the end, the only things Paizo respected from their starting promises was the regular adventure paths, and the proximity of their community. They destroyed the OGL the same way Wizard did, and it's now a clustered unplayable system.

tl;dr: 6 years later, 4th edition > Pathfinder.

[blahpers]

What promise did Paizo break, exactly?

Sorry, but I just don't see it. The game hasn't really broken down for us as early as 7th level. High-level play (say, 15+) is pretty gnarly, but that's mostly a property of d20 in general rather than Pathfinder specifically.

As for additional rules: Consider the caravan rules. Those come into play almost immediately. They're specific to the campaign in which they appear, though there's certainly optional support for porting them to other campaigns. Anyway, they're a totally self-contained rule set that you can basically ignore if you don't want to play them.

All the APs have some custom crunch in them, from the first one (RotRL) to the latest. That's a feature, not a bug. I don't run sin rules in my custom campaign, but I'm happy that they exist to provide some flavor for the campaign for which they are intended.

As for brokenness, show me an RPG you can't break and I'll show you a game that isn't really an RPG. The best solution for brokenness I can offer is simply--don't break it. You don't throw your toy off a rooftop then complain to the Internet that it didn't survive the fall. Tabletop is a social contract--you get together, agree on some basic rules of conduct, and have a lot of fun.

Nothing wrong with enjoying 4E if it's fun of you. I'm quite partial to GURPS myself.

[WatersLethe]

I'm the reverse. I switched to 4th edition for years, played a bunch of campaigns, introduced new people to it and in general invested a significant amount of time, energy and money into it.

Last year I decided enough was enough. 4th edition insists on making every choice for you. Multiclassing either barely existed or relied on buying more books that let you multiclass in pre-defined, boring ways. Every ability felt the same, and where there weren't enough choices you had to wait for a new book to come out and hope that they added something good. Pathfinder on the other hand had refined the 3.5 stuff I'd never really gone to much depth in and packaged it in an affordable and accessible manner.

I bought the books (though I could have just used online resources) and started anew. It felt so much better to have robust rules governing out of combat situations, to have characters that felt distinct from one another. To play a class without every other sentence in the books telling you how it should be played, or which attributes to use.

Essentially everything feels more flexible and engaging. Players who used to tune out the whole game until combat wherein they would simply tap the "power card" they wanted to use every turn suddenly found themselves roleplaying out of combat, looking at inventive uses for their spells, choosing their spells after reading dozens of options and being excited to bring them to bear.

No one is forcing you to use Adventure Paths. I don't. I use Paizo official rules but build my own campaigns, just as I've always done. If you don't like a class, don't use it or bar it from your table. Options exist so that you can make a choice, not simply to irritate you.

What's wrong with Alchemists and Witches? Ninjas and gunslingers aren't my thing, but why does it bother you if other people play them? Synthesist summoners are overpowered, but many people just ban them.

4th edition was too focused on balance and took all the flavor out of everything.

tl;dr: Pathfinder > 4th edition. YMMV

[137ben]

blahpers wrote:

As for brokenness, show me an RPG you can't break and I'll show you a game that isn't really an RPG.

3.5 using only the barbarian, rogue, spellthief, hexblade, marshal, ranger, scout, warlock, warmage, and fighter.

Oh, and, another one:
3.5 using only the bard, beguiler, binder, dread necromancer, duskblade, ranger, swordsage, psionic warrior, and warblade.

Are either of those 'not really RPGs'?

[voska66]

What APs beyond Wrath of Righteous got to level 20. Most go to level 18, the odd on as low as level 13.

[Thomas Long 175]

Barbarians can trade out fast movement for pounce at level 1. Take Power attack. Take the feat leaping strike. Take the blitzing assault Feat.

You no longer subtract power attack from your to hit. With a DC 15 jump check (which doesn't fail on natural 1's) you triple your power attack damage, so +6 per 1 BAB. You can full attack on a charge now.

Its only part of a build with a prestige class that normally pumps Power attack to 4 per 1 before I triple it, but you can see how it will still get nasty very quickly.

Aka +120 to damage with no - to hit and full attacking.

[Crank]

After six years of playing Pathfinder, you're probably just experiencing some serious fatigue. D&D 4e looks fresh, new, and exciting, especially with its "powers" concept. I'm experiencing similar fatigue. Fighters and other martials don't have much choice in combat other than "swing my sword/axe/rapier/fists". Throwing "Tide of Iron" at somebody seems much more exciting, and it removes the need for clunky CMB/CMD grappling maneuvers (that I've never seen used effectively in gameplay).

Switch to D&D 4e for a while. Maybe after six years you'll come to the same conclusion, and that's all right. Fresh rules may help remove the fatigue, and I've been considering the same thing for some time now. Of course, buying new material is a barrier, but hey, 5th edition should help to bring those costs down.

[voska66]

137ben wrote:

blahpers wrote:

As for brokenness, show me an RPG you can't break and I'll show you a game that isn't really an RPG.

3.5 using only the barbarian, rogue, spellthief, hexblade, marshal, ranger, scout, warlock, warmage, and fighter.

Oh, and, another one:
3.5 using only the bard, beguiler, binder, dread necromancer, duskblade, ranger, swordsage, psionic warrior, and warblade.

Are either of those 'not really RPGs'?

3.5 was severely broken when you wanted to break it. What you show above is a very good attempt at not breaking the game with examples of class selection. You can also add in house rule to do that same.

Personally I find the biggest thing that keeps games from not going sideways is use the stats the game was designed for, 15 pt buy. Then prepare as GM and learn how to challenge your players.

[Amuny]

blahpers wrote:

What promise did Paizo break, exactly?

From Pathfinder own Wiki page

PFWiki wrote:

Design Goals

Jason Bulmahn, Lead Designer for Paizo's Pathfinder brand, began work on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game in October 2007. Because of the flaws in the 3.5 rules set were now being acknowledged by both fans and the developers at Wizards of the Coast, Jason set out to develop a revised version of the existing rules available under the OGL to fix these problems and improve play without starting from scratch and negating three decades of Dungeons & Dragons history.[2] Bulmahn kept several goals in mind when creating the Pathfinder RPG to maintain a focus in the daunting task.

Honorable task. And a very honorable start with the Core Rulebook.

PFWiki wrote:

Improve the Game
One primary goal of designing the Pathfinder RPG was to make the game easier to play for anyone continuing with the current rules set. While the 3.5 rules set is arguably the most thorough incarnation of the world's most popular roleplaying game, it is not without its inherent design flaws. Whether it is game imbalance between classes, confusing mechanics or complicated spells, there seemed to be plenty of room for improvement without throwing everything away and starting from scratch.

CMB/CMD was the only great addition to make the system easier. And that's my first point; the system is now as clustered and complicated then 3.5 was. Classes are everything but balanced, they are even more confusing than before with the archetypes AND prestige class systems living side by side, spells have countless FAQs... Nope.

PFWiki wrote:

Add Options
Due to the various supplementary rules released since 3rd Edition was first announced, many of the core classes became relatively underpowered. Since the Pathfinder RPG would be limited to Open Gaming content, many of these options simply wouldn't be available for inclusion in the revised rules. In order to give players the incentive to use the core classes, and to promote backwards compatibility (see below) additional build options and power increases were provided to all 11 core classes.

If you go with the 11 core basic classes without archetypes... well... they are better than their 3.5 version. But they are completely outshined by their archetyped/prestiged version. And not to take in account just other classes (Ninja vs Rogue... who would seriously do a rogue now?)

PFWiki wrote:

Backwards Compatibility
One of the primary inspirations for creating the Pathfinder RPG in the first place was to prevent existing gamers from finding shelves of 3rd Edition materials suddenly obsolete. To wit, the new system had to be compatible with the products released previously by Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, and any other publisher operating under the OGL. While conversion would be inevitable for almost any pre-Pathfinder RPG source, making this process as simple and seamless as possible was also a major goal of Bulmahn and the Paizo development team.

Everyone knows that if you use 3.5 material, you're in for some intense puzzling and even more game-breaking mechanics. Every fight have to be recreated, hence not being much more compatible than a 2nd edition adventure. Only decent point is that you *might* not have to recreate a spell list for a spellcaster NPC. But... if you don't, he'll probably be mostly useless.

I've ran the full Shackled City campaign in Pathfinder, and needless to say, I recreated every single monster. Some "epic vilains" weren't as strong as a generic monster at this level, and would have been completely destroyed by any PC of this level in Pathfinder.

Compatible ? Somehow. But Pathfinder just raised the stake and basically buff everybody. So be prepared for some intense rework.

There was also some discussion about being less "money consuming" than Wizard of the Coast, and offering more adventures than compendiums. There is more adventure, but as many books as Wizards. So, 1-1 on that one.

@Crank: To be honest, I'm doubtful about 5th edition as it looks to be a Pathfinder 2.0. They are clearly challenging Paizo on this one, making the same Adventure Paths principle with the "subscription" and such, and playtests are... scary to read about. We'll see with the official release, but as for now, I'm really, really confused about this move. The Vancian spellcasting is probably one of the most looked aspect of 3rd vs 4th, and the return it does in 5th makes a lot of people angry. The whole "combat advantage" system looks terrible, and the basic classes just look sooo complicated.... I'll give it a try for sure, but I'm just... skeptical.

[Anzyr]

137ben wrote:

blahpers wrote:

As for brokenness, show me an RPG you can't break and I'll show you a game that isn't really an RPG.

3.5 using only the barbarian, rogue, spellthief, hexblade, marshal, ranger, scout, warlock, warmage, and fighter.

Oh, and, another one:
3.5 using only the bard, beguiler, binder, dread necromancer, duskblade, ranger, swordsage, psionic warrior, and warblade.

Are either of those 'not really RPGs'?

Or Legend. At best you can manage to get "above par", though I suppose "below par" is possible, but only if you intentionally aim for it.

[The Human Diversion]

Amuny wrote:

Everyone knows that if you use 3.5 material, you're in for some intense puzzling and even more game-breaking mechanics. Every fight have to be recreated, hence not being much more compatible than a 2nd edition adventure. Only decent point is that you *might* not have to recreate a spell list for a spellcaster NPC. But... if you don't, he'll probably be mostly useless.

I ran "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil", a 3.0 mod, using Pathfinder about six months ago and I didn't have to change that much. I'm not sure why "every fight had to be recreated" for you.

The players had enough fun that they asked me to run a home game set in Faerun, and we're quite a few sessions deep into that, currently.

[Lemmy]

I'll be the first to admit PF has its fair share of problems, and poor balance is one of them... But when someone complains about game balance and then cites Alchemists and Ninjas as being abusive, I instantly assume they have no idea what they are talking about.

[Amuny]

Lemmy wrote:

I'll be the first to admit PF has its fair share of problems, and poor balance is one of them... But when someone complains about game balance and then cites Alchemists and Ninjas as being abusive, I instantly assume they have no idea what they are talking about.

Ninjas are abusive by the fact that they completely killed the Rogue. Rogue is a pale shadow of the Ninja, who does everything the rogue can do, but better. This is ignoring the fact that quite early in the game they have a "ninja trick" to get greater invisibility for themselve, thus dealing free sneak attack all day long.

And if you think Alchemist is not broken, you probably got the wrong Alchemist. Vivisectionnist+Beastmorph is basically a barbarian on crack with sneak attacks.

[Thomas Long 175]

Amuny wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

I'll be the first to admit PF has its fair share of problems, and poor balance is one of them... But when someone complains about game balance and then cites Alchemists and Ninjas as being abusive, I instantly assume they have no idea what they are talking about.

Ninjas are abusive by the fact that they completely killed the Rogue. Rogue is a pale shadow of the Ninja, who does everything the rogue can do, but better. This is ignoring the fact that quite early in the game they have a "ninja trick" to get greater invisibility for themselve, thus dealing free sneak attack all day long.

And if you think Alchemist is not broken, you probably got the wrong Alchemist. Vivisectionnist+Beastmorph is basically a barbarian on crack with sneak attacks.

Except lacking the +16 to saves vs magic and the ability to hit you every time you attack him, with appropriate feat choices such that you have to make a fortitude save vs each attack at 10+ BAB or be dazed (basically ending your turn)

[Imbicatus]

Amuny wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

I'll be the first to admit PF has its fair share of problems, and poor balance is one of them... But when someone complains about game balance and then cites Alchemists and Ninjas as being abusive, I instantly assume they have no idea what they are talking about.

Ninjas are abusive by the fact that they completely killed the Rogue. Rogue is a pale shadow of the Ninja, who does everything the rogue can do, but better. This is ignoring the fact that quite early in the game they have a "ninja trick" to get greater invisibility for themselve, thus dealing free sneak attack all day long.

And if you think Alchemist is not broken, you probably got the wrong Alchemist. Vivisectionnist+Beastmorph is basically a barbarian on crack with sneak attacks.

If being better than the Rogue is unbalanced, then every class in the game is broken. Hell, the Warrior and Adept NPC classes are better in combat than the Rogue.

As for the ninja? It is a rogue. Alternate classes are glorified archetypes. It's the reason you can't make a Rogue/Ninja multiclass.

[Lemmy]

Amuny wrote:

Ninjas are abusive by the fact that they completely killed the Rogue. Rogue is a pale shadow of the Ninja, who does everything the rogue can do, but better. This is ignoring the fact that quite early in the game they have a "ninja trick" to get greater invisibility for themselve, thus dealing free sneak attack all day long.

Rogue was dead before you even got to his chapter on the CRB. Bard and Rangers are already there. That's a problem with Rogues, not Ninjas.

Amuny wrote:

And if you think Alchemist is not broken, you probably got the wrong Alchemist. Vivisectionnist+Beastmorph is basically a barbarian on crack with sneak attacks.

Hah! Even that is far from what I call abusive. I can honestly say that I have never seen raw damage output break any game, and I GM'd for an optimized TWFing Gunslinger.

[DM Under The Bridge]

blahpers wrote:

What promise did Paizo break, exactly?

Sorry, but I just don't see it. The game hasn't really broken down for us as early as 7th level. High-level play (say, 15+) is pretty gnarly, but that's mostly a property of d20 in general rather than Pathfinder specifically.

As for additional rules: Consider the caravan rules. Those come into play almost immediately. They're specific to the campaign in which they appear, though there's certainly optional support for porting them to other campaigns. Anyway, they're a totally self-contained rule set that you can basically ignore if you don't want to play them.

All the APs have some custom crunch in them, from the first one (RotRL) to the latest. That's a feature, not a bug. I don't run sin rules in my custom campaign, but I'm happy that they exist to provide some flavor for the campaign for which they are intended.

As for brokenness, show me an RPG you can't break and I'll show you a game that isn't really an RPG. The best solution for brokenness I can offer is simply--don't break it. You don't throw your toy off a rooftop then complain to the Internet that it didn't survive the fall. Tabletop is a social contract--you get together, agree on some basic rules of conduct, and have a lot of fun.

Nothing wrong with enjoying 4E if it's fun of you. I'm quite partial to GURPS myself.

Thinking of running jade regent soon, won't be running the caravan gimmick.

I agree with the Amuny quite a bit, and find that with Pathfinder's ever higher numbers, abilities and more DPR obsession, it has gotten a bit out of hand. Giving more to the classes and diminishing the weaknesses of some classes (d4 hit die from 3.5 is GONE) has caused a balance issue, who would have thought?

Silly Pathfinder, it wanted to be a 3.5 variant, then do its own thing and ended up being a clunky 3.5 variant with similar bloat problems to its predecessor.

[Chris Lambertz]

Locking. Edition warring is not OK on paizo.com.