The First Edition era is coming to a close, at least from a 1st party standpoint, and over the past years there's been a lot of good and bad that's happened with this game. For me it's been mostly good and I love PF1e, I will not be joining folks on the mechanical side of things for 2e, but I look forward to the continue fluff and setting information as it comes out.
Despite collecting all of PF 1e there's a few things that I wish we'd gotten that had me really hyped and then never came to fruition.
1) The Medium. I really really really loved the Playtest for the Medium using the entire Harrow collection as spirits was not only an impressive undertaking but a massively deep and complex idea. According to multiple posts the class was complete and designed that way, but they reworked it a bit before release as it would take too much space in the final product. Over the years there have been calls and requests to have the original vision of the Medium come out, but the answer has been no. I hope one day we get to see this beautiful monster, PAIZO TAKE MY MONEY PLEASE.
2) Bastardhall Mega Dungeon written by F. Wesley Schneider. Ustalav is his pet area of Golarion and Bastardhall is his baby. I was lucky enough one Paizocon to sit in on him running part of Bastardhall, I believe it was the gate and gardens area. I want more! I was really hoping that it'd be somewhere in the production line, but then a parting of ways seemed to doom that dream. I still hold out that a Bastardhall megadungeon or AP comes out to showcase this cursed keep.
There's been a lot to love though! All the variety in available races, feats, spells, and magic items. The Adventure Paths, even the ones I have no intention of running gave me good fodder for encounters and pre generated NPCs for almost any situation. I've especially loved the variety in the APS all the different styles of adventure have been amazing to read through and even run some of. I'll never forget cracking open AP 1 for the first time and reading through and the feelings and inspiration I got from it.
I know I'll miss the support for 1E from Paizo, I do hope that backwards compatability/converting isn't too difficult, and if that's the case I may start picking up the occasional rulebook for 2E to pillage. I'll miss the massive amounts of 3rd party support. While it will still exist the offerings will dwindle as time goes by, even now some things I've seen that intrigue me are 5E oriented as they wait to see PF2 and design for that over PF1.
Of the things I've hated I'll openly admit it's mostly been errata decisions that I can ignore at my own table. Which is incredibly minor in my reckoning.
I'm curious to see what others in the community feel were highlights or missed opportunities! Let's put on our rose colored classes and let the nostalgia whisk us away.
Loved: Basically every 6th level caster.
Wanted: Harrowed Medium
Hated: Full Attacks
Will Miss: All the classes, but hopefully we'll see most of them show up in one way or another in PF2 given time.
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Just seems that it's getting quieter and quieter here. I mean, we are about to release Book 6 of Tyrant's Grasp and the entire AP has a underwhelming 439 posts as I write this. I would have thought folks would have been all over these AP's - Return of the Runelords and then Tar-Barphon? Like, where is everybody?
I'm starting to miss the liveliness of the message boards, TBH.
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Farewell my piggy feet.
Loved: Depth
Wanted: More
Hated: Whining*
Will Miss: Paizo, if their new game doesn't pan out.
Loved: Summoning, in general
Wanted: A do-over of the synthesist that worked more like the Pathfinder polymorph, with a stat boost instead of a stat replacement.
Hated: General lack of martial versatility outside of combat.
Will Miss: The customized archetype system. The pf2-feat-based-archetype system doesn't please me at all.
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Will Miss: The customized archetype system. The pf2-feat-based-archetype system doesn't please me at all.
I kind of like the idea of the modularity the expanded use of feats provides, but I'm worried that in practice we're going to end up with a lot of concepts that end up being really feat hungry because everything pulls from the same limited pool of resources.
If I want to take a wizard multiclass and get the basic support covered I'm not getting any access to my own unique class options, or wizard class options, until level 6 or 8. That's a long time before I can pick up any of my unique class feats or other sorts of options.
I realize that's ultimately a problem of my own making, and having lots of neat options is a better problem than having a lot of less neat mandatory options, but I'm still worried that a lot of builds are going to feel constrained by an over reliance on class feats.
We do know that feat chains are much shorter.
We do know that feat chains are much shorter.
The "problem" with feat chains is that you can always add on to them.
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Loved: The 2/3rds casters, Hybrid classes, Unchained's Automatic Bonus Progression (in theory, practically: only with houserules)
Wanted: Pathfinder's take on some of their unused 3.5 classes - the Warlock, the DFA, the Binder, the Scout, the Factotum, etc. I know we got a few tastes here and there through archetypes but it would have been nice to see full classes.
Also want every instance of a non-INT based class with 2+INT skill points to be changed to 4+INT skill points.
Hated: That they kept Combat Expertise AND split up the effects of its subsidiary feats. I don't think they needed as radical a change as proposed by the popular Elephant-in-the-Room feat tax houserules but adding more feat tax was a blunder and kept me from switching from 3.5 to PF for a long time.
Will Miss: None of it! While I'm sad 1E is finishing, it's a very good set of rules and I'm not going to stop using it. I already own a dozen 1E books and another dozen 3.5 books - I don't really want to buy into a third RPG, especially if 2E doesn't end up as easily cross-compatible as 3.5/1E.
I won't be surprised if I end up buying 2E APs, though. Getting to continue to use Golarion lore and characters could be fun and the 1E APs all had pretty good plots and dungeon maps and the like.
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*pats PF1e on the head*
Don't you worry, buddy. I'll keep you company until the rest come on back, like they did with 4e.
Loved: Every single hybrid class. The 3/4 BAB, 6th level casters also.
Wanted: More 3/4 BAB, 6th level casters.
Hated: Hate is such a strong word. Disliked? Not getting resolution to how bardic music and masterpieces interacted in the FAQ.
Miss: Nothing. I'm not going anywhere. I'll create a Frankensten's monster out of PF1e with houserules that I borrow from 2e and D&D 5e.
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PF1 is the system I began GMing in. It will always hold a special place in my heart.
Loved: All of the creative feats and archetypes that could inspire me to make whole characters around, like Haruspex, Ki Throw, or Green Knight. Bonus shout-out to the extra ancestries on the planar scions and similar races. Love me that Lavasoul.
Wanted: Some of the feat types in the splat books could have been so much more, like the team work feats in the Evil and Anti-hero books. Also, Equipment Tricks never made it to core.
Hated: All the necessary feats that really hampered taking the cool feats above. It was way too easy to gimp a character with your feat choices.
Also, the traits make my headspin. While neat in concept and often cool, there are so many that it is hard to keep track of. Not to mention the broken ones that everyone wants to take.
Will Miss: Having an near encyclopedic knowledge of a system. Maybe it won't take too long to get there in the new one.
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Loved: 6th Level casters and particularly the addition of the Oracle and witch (for hexes)
Wanted: stronger cantrip options to make low level casters less absolutely abhorrent to play.
Hated: feat chains and feats for things that never needed to be a feat for, just let people make there characters do things, creating a feat for every possible thing imaginable actively stifles improv
Will miss: Classes the vast wealth of classes and archetypes.
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Wanted: Some of the feat types in the splat books could have been so much more, like the team work feats in the Evil and Anti-hero books.
Personally, I'm hoping to expand on some of those abandoned subsystems in my own time. ^_^
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Loved: The mechanical granularity and complexity of the system. It was always so satisfying to get a well-tuned character underway and watching it work like a carefully crafted machine. Plus, how the world could more or less function on the given rules without GM handwaviness. Plus, the options. All the options.
Wanted: Shapeshifting that actually worked, as shapeshifting, as a potential 1-20 character.
Hated: Most of the FAQ/erratas (with a special place in my heart for the Diabolist and Spell Manifestation FAQ). Still, easy enough to ignore, I guess.
Will miss: Getting support from Paizo, with no more new classes, archetypes, and the like coming in the future.
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Wanted: Some of the feat types in the splat books could have been so much more, like the team work feats in the Evil and Anti-hero books.Personally, I'm hoping to expand on some of those abandoned subsystems in my own time. ^_^
I do look forward to seeing some unfiltered Isabelle content. The future of Pathfinder must be 3rd party.
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Ok...
Loved - Reworking of base classes for PF1 in the Core Rulebook from 3.5.
Wanted - Reworking of Prestige Classes from the Core Rulebook from 3.5. (Enter from level 4, Darn it)
Hated - Overpowered magic using classes from hardcovers.
Will miss - Attacks of Opportunity. (well, unless I have the one class that has the one reaction for it)
Lets do another one...
Loved - The Inquisitor (Living Grimore) Having so much fun with this character.
Wanted - Tibbit. Even though it is a Wizard's copyright in a Paizo produced article (printed in a best of book), I think there could have been leeway to include this race for Pathfinder.
Hated - The disparity between wielding weapons and what weapons are. (With Two Hands or One Hand vs. Being a Two Handed, One Handed, or Light weapon) No one can double wield two Earth Breakers, gentlemen!
Will Miss - Prestige Classes (RIP)
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Wanted: Some of the feat types in the splat books could have been so much more, like the team work feats in the Evil and Anti-hero books.Personally, I'm hoping to expand on some of those abandoned subsystems in my own time. ^_^
A hell yeah. You've always been one of my favorite people in both the Paizo books and forums.
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Loved: All of the classes, and the archetypes and other options to go with them.
Wanted: The Harrow Medium - please just make the playtest version a downloadable freebie or something!
Hated: The snarky and sometimes vicious sarcasm on the message boards - oh wait, thats probably not going anywhere :(
Will miss: Nothing - I've got a fifteen+ year (real play time) backlog of 1st edition material to play through! :)
Loved:
... How Paizo took 3.5 and made it better,
... Oracle class (although I still do think that Mystic would have been a better name),
... Blood of the Coven/changeling stuff,
... Pathfinder Unchained - specifically the four re-worked classes, the fractional BAB and saving throws, background skills and Lore/Artistry, combat stamina and all those nifty tricks (for Fighters only!), and the nasty, nasty new poison and disease rules,
... the looks on my players' faces when they realised that I'd swapped out one of the glabrezu's more useless feats so that it could now cast Mirror Image as a quickened spell-like ability 3/day,
... how Paizo was not afraid to mix Mythos, pulp, and science-fiction into their world. (It's not immediately obvious in my own howe-brew version of Golarion, but it's definitely in the background if you look carefully.)
Wanted:
... Harrowed Medium,
... more wild-blooded Sorcerer bloodlines (to match the newer bloodlines),
... real psionics (psychic magic is neat, but it's not quite psionics),
... better vetting of the later rulebooks plus the Golarion content to avoid over-powered abilities and combinations (kudos to PFS for their list of forbidden stuff),
... faster/better reactions to FAQs and other rules-related questions.
Hated:
... the Magus (which was essentially a 3.5 Spellbade, something which I really hated - instead they should have made it more like the Warpriest, something which I've done as a home-brewed archetype for the Magus),
... certain other classes which rubbed me the wrong way for various reasons (Bloodrager, Mesmerist, some aspects of the Gunslinger),
... feats/class features which allow "spell-poaching" (using one or more spells from another class' spell list - e.g., what might be reasonable for a Wizard is not necessarily reasonable for a Magus),
... Crane Style feats (so many errata, and too easy to abuse in combination with other stuff),
... and all the ways in which the system's entirety (rulebooks plus not-quite-vetted content from Player Companions, etc.) could be stirred up, squished together, and turned into cheese by players who pay no attention to world flavour ("You want traits from three different geographical regions?!?") and would rather have a character with AC 47.
Will miss:
... Nothing, as I plan to stick with PF 1 and I definitely have more AP content, etc. than I can use for the rest of my life.
Loved: The endless character build tinkering. I can spend hours just playing around with a character sheet and fine tuning a build and have plenty of fun with that before I even get to the table.
Wanted: A base class martial shapeshifter. Real shame that Paizo never got around to that one.
(Real answer is the Harrowed Medium. At least let Mark release the draft, Paizo...)
Hated: Heavy-handed nerfs that seemed designed to remove an ability or item from the game rather than make it more balanced.
Will Miss: The massive library of 3rd party content available. I would expect this to get fixed in PF2 eventually, but... who knows who long that'll take.
Of course, I have no intention of dropping PF1 even if PF2 turns out to be good enough to play given that I know people on both sides of the issue and will gladly play whichever game is being ran.
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I loved the depth and complexity offered by the options for character building.
I wanted compendiums of feats and spells.
Didn't really hate anything. I save my hate for politics.
I'll miss the addition of new feats, spells, items, and classes.
We're not switching over to PF2e. I know official support for it will wane quickly but I have all of the rulebooks (none of the NPC books, though) and a smattering of Player Companions. Between PF1e and D&D 3.5e back engineering, we'll never run out of options.
That reminds me. What I will miss the most are new APs for PF1. Right now I have quite a few that I haven't even touched. But eventually, I'll have gone through them all. There will probably be a few good 3rd party APs, but those are more rare and hard to judge for quality, and of course won't be set in Golarion.
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Loved: options and customisation. One of the areas where I think PF2 will come unstuck is that character design feels very modular, 'lego brick' and dull whereas PF1 had a much more personal feel to it.
Wanted: D6 divine class..... pretty much the only mechanical gap unfilled, a v.popular 3PP design choice but yet bizarrely ignored by Paizo.
Hated: Too many archetypes that had no RP or mechanical relevance. Would have much preferred more alternate classes (eg ninja, antipaladin) to give some proper depth where a separate class wasn't needed but an archetype just couldn't do the design justice. Lots of archetypes felt very rushed.
Will Miss: Tinkering around with builds and the forum debates!
C'est la vie.....
would like to have seen more development on Words of Power. There was a good idea there it just needed more.
I'm gonna miss getting new APs and Player Companions
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Also, is it too much to ask for streamlined, intuitive, and flexible grappling rules? ;)
Apparently so. It's been a problem in tabletop RPGs since the first time a player said "Can't I just grab 'im?".
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In the case of grappling I'm pretty sure "streamlined and intuitive" is mutually exclusive with "flexible".
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Annoyed we never got a proper Starstone module.
Annoyed we never got a proper Starstone module.
I feel like they were heading there until Mythic met a poor reception.
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Loved: All of it. Pathfinder First Edition was my first GMing experience, and apparently my friend circle enjoyed how I presented Golarion and allowed the most options and creativity. I have an enormous collection of the PDFs and hardback copies, which I can still use even after support for 1e has ended.
Wanted: As a GM, more campaign setting books, and it appears Paizo will continue releasing them in a edition-neutral format, which means I can stay up-to-date.
Hated: Having to add so many layers of defenses to the higher CR monsters so they last longer than two rounds in combat. My players always felt cheated when they'd do 400+ damage in a round to the enemy Sorcerer and he actually started gurgling out his final lines before expiring. But that's the nature of high level play in this game.
Will Miss: Should I play 2e in the near future, I'll probably be soured on the fact that I've wanted to play an Occultist as my next character for some time, but I can't until such a class is reintroduced to the Second Edition.
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Annoyed we never got a proper Starstone module.I feel like they were heading there until Mythic met a poor reception.
Speaking of mythic, my favorite Pathfinder book is Mythic Adventures. It finally made epic play possible from level one.
I had played for years and years and years and never had the chance to make it to epic play until Mythic Adventures came along.
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Loved: The customization options available at all levels. Two characters of the same class could be radically different via feats and archetypes. Without being stuck on a set progression path. At the same time the original base classes (from 3.0) got serious upgrades making it so that you weren't wasting your time taking more then 1 or 2 levels and/or not grabbing a prestige class ASAP.
Wanted: Better support for necromancer builds and/or a class based on building constructs (that is having a bunch instead of just 1). For awhile I was using a bunch of 3.5 necromancer feats because pathfinder didn't offer anything (even now there's more 3.5 necromancer specific feats than what's in pathfinder). Additionally, the Summon Monster and Summon Nature's Ally tables need a major overhaul. At some levels you barely get any options and at other levels more then half your choices are actually terrible when you run the stats.
Hated: Lack of prestige class support for certain class abilities. For example if you want to have character based on wildshape very few prestige classes actually advance this ability normally. This means that some builds get locked into their base classes because you can't multi-class and you have little to no prestige class options. One of the two prestige classes that gives flexibility in this area, Dawnflower Anchorite, I feel is an amazing model of how most prestige classes should work. However, its locked behind a deity I hate. Meaning its only an option for me if I can get DM approval to ignore the deity requirement.
Will Miss: It really depends on how different 2nd edition is. From what I've seen minion type builds got majorly nerfed by having minions consume your action economy, making it difficult at best to have very many. I like playing characters that have minions and I would rather see a system that streamlines and balances such character concepts instead of penalizing them to the point that only very specific styles of minion builds are even possible.
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I'm going to miss all the occult classes. I adored the kineticist, the mesmerist, the medium and the whole flavor of the book. I liked the unique style of casting and I adored the general weird sensations they provided.
I know the bard will have occult casting, but somehow it just doesn't feel quite the same to me.
I'm also deeply going to miss the Inquisitor. Probably my favorite class in terms of playstyle and balance with sixth level casting and decent martial skill. You can build an inquisitor to focus on just about any combat style and have it be reasonably effective.
I'm not going to miss the convoluted animal companion rules not to mention their power level. We've had so many discussions over how much control players have over them, what they are able to do and what types of items they can have it's annoying. Plus it always seemed overpowered that a ninth level caster essentially got its own personal fighter with zero drawbacks.
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Loved the breadth and complexity of the rules.
Hated Paizo's spotty FAQ releases the past few years. Especially on long running and high divisive arguments resulting from ambiguously or poorly worded rules. The fact that they stopped issuing FAQ altogether almost a year ago has just made issues worse.
Wanted a revised synthesist. Either as an unchained summoner archetype or as their own class.
Will miss nothing. I stopped buying from Paizo a year ago when Paizo stopped supporting the game with FAQs. All of my purchases over the past year have come directly from 3rd party providers using their websites. I have enough unplayed material to last decades and will continue to use it.
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Sure, why not. Just remember that while these are only my opinions, they're still better than yours.
Liked: The artwork. Bloodlines and School Powers. The Witch class, the idea of the Shifter class. Archetypes. Racial Favored Class Bonuses. Literally all of Pathfinder Unchained. Second Darkness, Distant Worlds, People of the Stars. Dreamscarred Press and Rogue Genius Games.
Hated: exacerbating 3.5's caster supremacy, nerfing combat feats, refusing to include "multige" classes, the firearms rules and everything that touches them, SKR's attitude towards Monks, Gray Guards and Hellknights, people who defend Gray Guards and Hellknights, people who defend Gray Guards and Hellknights while whining that NG or CG Paladins will ruin the entire game as we know it, and the Psychic classes.
Wanted: More space stuff, more non-European stuff, more weird stuff, better multiclassing support, mostly just less stuff from my "Hated" list.
Will Miss: The artwork, mostly, and the familiar iconics. I'm going to miss the version of Pathfinder that I work with being the curent version with the most discussion about it.
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Loved
- The Kineticist, Occultist and Vigilante
- The support for 3.5 players
- The Adventure Paths and its content
- The archetypes
- The artworks
- The consistent format
Hated
- The prestige classes, mostly because after the introduction of archetypes, they felt restrictive and repetitive.
- The feat bloat, as many could have been merged into one single feat that scales with your levels.
- Lack of extra information for monsters, as some of them didn't get descriptions due to the page space.
- How they treated the Shifter, I would have loved more transparency...
Wanted
- A dragon-like PC race... or a Medium Kobold...
- An AP compendium, like 4 or 5 APs bundled into a single book. Same with modules and booklets.
- An AP Bestiary, full of reprints.
Will miss
- Pretty much everything missing from 1E... Yeah, I'm a little tired of seeing companies hitting the Reset button...
Sure, why not. Just remember that while these are only my opinions, they're still better than yours.
Liked: The artwork. Bloodlines and School Powers. The Witch class, the idea of the Shifter class. Archetypes. Racial Favored Class Bonuses. Literally all of Pathfinder Unchained. Second Darkness, Distant Worlds, People of the Stars. Dreamscarred Press and Rogue Genius Games.
Hated: exacerbating 3.5's caster supremacy, nerfing combat feats, refusing to include "multige" classes, the firearms rules and everything that touches them, SKR's attitude towards Monks, Gray Guards and Hellknights, people who defend Gray Guards and Hellknights, people who defend Gray Guards and Hellknights while whining that NG or CG Paladins will ruin the entire game as we know it, and the Psychic classes.
Wanted: More space stuff, more non-European stuff, more weird stuff, better multiclassing support, mostly just less stuff from my "Hated" list.
Will Miss: The artwork, mostly, and the familiar iconics. I'm going to miss the version of Pathfinder that I work with being the curent version with the most discussion about it.
Would you mind elaborating on the "multige class" thing? The only reference I could find in a brief search related to gestalt levels so my understanding of this is probably flawed.
Would you mind elaborating on the "multige class" thing? The only reference I could find in a brief search related to gestalt levels so my understanding of this is probably flawed.
It's a portmanteau of "multiclass prestige": Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight, Mystic Theurge. Prestige Classes designed to patch over the fact, discovered between 3.0 and 3.5, that the multiclassing system simply does not function as intended.
Wizards published a lot more of these classes between 2003 and 2007, but Paizo never did, nor to my knowledge did they ever reprise the vast majority of multiclassing feats.
These features are necessary to replicate the kind of "multiclassed characters" that were featured in AD&D.
Would you mind elaborating on the "multige class" thing? The only reference I could find in a brief search related to gestalt levels so my understanding of this is probably flawed.It's a portmanteau of "multiclass prestige": Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight, Mystic Theurge. Prestige Classes designed to patch over the fact, discovered between 3.0 and 3.5, that the multiclassing system simply does not function as intended.
Wizards published a lot more of these classes between 2003 and 2007, but Paizo never did, nor to my knowledge did they ever reprise the vast majority of multiclassing feats.
These features are necessary to replicate the kind of "multiclassed characters" that were featured in AD&D.
There was the battle herald and rage prophet in the APG, but otherwise you are correct since Paizo stopped printing prestige classes in core books after that.
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I never liked prestige classes, myself. I greatly prefer the archetypes that Paizo introduced.
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Multiclassing still sucked if you assumed that a Wizard/Fighter would go into Eldritch Knight. Paizo's solution was to create the Magus instead.
Multiclassing still sucked if you assumed that a Wizard/Fighter would go into Eldritch Knight. Paizo's solution was to create the Magus instead.
Yeah. I guess I understand some people missing that, but I think Pathfinder’s solution was pretty effective for meeting the same flavor.
The only thing we were really missing was a good mystic theurge analogue.
Personally, I think prestige classes were underutilized. There were some that were really cool and unique, and others that were really bland, uninteresting, and samey.
*glares at Diabolist*