
vikking |
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I was looking for additional information on 3.5 modules that’s when I realized wizards of the coast was going to fourth edition and then I saw a link for pathfinder, clicked on it they were on the third adventure path, so I looked into them, subscribed, and when the beta testing was done, bought the rulebook and been playing ever since

Skull |
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IIRC. DnD 4E just launched, and we were really not impressed. I started in DnD 3.0 and then 3.5, but 4 was a hot mess.
So someone in the group did some digging and came across a playtest for Pathfinder. Back in the days when a cleric's channel was both to heal and harm at the same time. We've been playing Pathfinder 1e ever since.
After Pathfinder 2e came out we tried it a bit, but then explored some other systems (some 40K stuff and more fantasy settings), but Pathfinder 1e is still my all time favourite system.

JiCi |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |

A lot people got there start in Pathfinder because of D&D 4e.
It's not just that...
- The early 4E announcements didn't please fans, such as replacing gnomes for tieflings.- The Dungeons and Dragons magazines got halted pretty abruptly.
- The WotC message boards were completely wiped and relaunched with a paid subscription.
- The gameplay itself suffered from complicated and convoluted rules, such as the Once per Encounter, the Tiers and the overall damage nerf to players.
- Many staple features took a 2nd or even a 3rd core rulebook to be added back.
- IIRC, the 4E open license was pretty restrictive for creators.
Then you have Paizo, the people behind the magazines, launching Pathfinder, which is 99% like D&D 3.5 with tweaks and without much of a hassle to convert.

Neriathale |

4e was a huge difference from previous editions. You could without too much work convert an AD&D character to AD&D 2e, and an AD&D 2e character to D&D 3/3.5e, because you are adding more options. But 4e meant starting new characters from scratch, and I am willing to bet a lot of people wanted to stick with existing campaigns.
That and WotC’s insistence on defaulting to the worst published setting of any games system, the Misbegotten Renfair Realms.

JiCi |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |

That and WotC’s insistence on defaulting to the worst published setting of any games system, the Misbegotten Renfair Realms.
I... see nothing wrong with the Forgotten Realms TBH...
What did happen is that WotC continued Faerun's lore in one direction... only to retcon everything when 5E dropped, as if all events from 4E never occured, and it was in both the core rulebooks and the novels. Instead of the lore going from 1 to 5, it went from 1 to 4, backtracked to 3 and went to 5, as if 4 was "a wrong turn".
My personal gripe with 4E was the Once per Encounter rule. Coupled with the (one die x your tier [1, 2 or 3]) damage revision, it made for some pretty lackluster abilities. While some abilities had interesting effects, so many were about "dealing raw damage". I compare those to video games:
- Imagine if in a FPS, you could reload once per life.
- Imagine if in a MOBA, you could use your spells once per fight.
- Imagine if in a fighting game, you could use your special moves once per round.
- Imagine if in a platformer, you could double jump once per life.
Also, an "encounter" doesn't have a fixed duration. It can last 1 round, 5 rounds or even 20 rounds, and that's if the DM lets players "close" the encounter and not waiting until all targets are dealt with, including that far-off sentry.
Finally, if it was to imitate a MMORPG, your abilities have a cooldown/recovery mode, but you still can reuse those abilities once these are recharged. If Encounter powers had a recovery mode of 1 round/level, that would have been less punishing, especially when missing a roll wastes the power. If cooldowns would have been too complicated, then the damage should have been revised.
- At-will: (die x (level/3))
- Encounter: (die x (level/2))
- Daily: (die x level)
On a sidenote, someone told me that "4E is good if you change the rules", but when I need to do that, it just means that the established rules are broken.

Ronnam |
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On a sidenote, someone told me that "4E is good if you change the rules", but when I need to do that, it just means that the established rules are broken.
Great point. I liked your whole spiel on 4e. I agree with those criticisms. At the time, I was more aggravated by the fact that gnomes, druids, barbarians, etc. weren't in the PHB. And how regimented and boring magic items were.

JiCi |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

JiCi wrote:On a sidenote, someone told me that "4E is good if you change the rules", but when I need to do that, it just means that the established rules are broken.Great point. I liked your whole spiel on 4e. I agree with those criticisms. At the time, I was more aggravated by the fact that gnomes, druids, barbarians, etc. weren't in the PHB. And how regimented and boring magic items were.
There were some good ideas, but those were poorly executed.
I double-checked 5E to be sure... and I haven't seen "once per encounter" stuff. You have features that you recharge after a short or long rest, but at least it's far more logical to rest up to regain them than to magically get them back on the second fight with the BBEG's minions.

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I just want to forget that 4e ever happened at all. But at least one good thing happened because of it....Pathfinder 1e.
Yep. Disappointment with 4E led to me giving Pathfinder a try. But what really hooked me was the quality of the Rise of the Runelords AP. It was easy to become immersed in the story and the wonderful town of Sandpoint.
Thanks Paizo for making great adventures. I haven't had a homebrew ever since.

Zepheri |

What i like of paiso is that they take consideration of the player, in game like forgotten realms is hard to say how that world changed to much if you don't read the novels, but Pathfinder is better they not only tell you how the world of golarion change, they let you be part of they history by playing the AP the give the change of the world and is for this that the game still be my favorite, they now how to get to the player

Lord Cozy |
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Greetings first of all.
I learned it through Owlcat's games, Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous, as most people lately I can imagine.
I'm a videogame-only guy as you can imagine and I have only ever taken 1 taste of trpg many years ago in summer camp. I think it was DnD. I like Pathfinder and its world thus far and I would be interested in further exploring it in a tabletop fashion.
Although to be honest, I'm also looking forward in playing BG3 (or a BG game in general) in order to get roughly accostumed to the DnD setting as well.
But I started with PF1e if that says something.
All in all, I'm in exploration mode and I'm happy to be here.

Rageling |

Subscribed to Dragon Magazine for over a year, and loved Paizo through that. One day, I was using a less than reputable website to find a D&D 3.5 resource I had apparently lost, and saw: "Pathfinder DnD 3.75 pdf" and was like... Wait, what?
Knowing nothing of it (it had literally JUST came out), curiosity got the better of me. After scrolling through the first 50 or so pages...
"This is like 3.5 but WAY better! The art is sweet too and kinda familiar. (flips to specific page) ...and they even improved Fighters?! Who the heck made this?! (checks back cover) Paizo. That explains EVERYTHING!"
Within 30 minutes of stumbling upon the Pathfinder Core Rulebook for the first time, on accident, I was on Amazon ordering a copy. I didn't need to read more of that shady data. I could wait til it was in my hands! Never turned back.
Been with PF ever since, and still run 1e for friends and even some 2e for a few conventions, but as an always GM, the sad fact is that I only got to actually play non NPC characters a handful of times in all of 1e's lifespan, and most of those were short lived, so I still very much want to be a player in 1e to this day. LOL

Bellona |

I acquired the Basic D&D red box back in 1980, but due to cirumstances was unable to find a group. So I was reduced to making the occasional character and sighing in dramatic despair. :)
When I started university in 1986, I found an 1e AD&D group and bought a few books for that system. I still have the contents of the original grey Forgotten Realms box (the box itself is long gone) and a few other FR sourcebooks.
Then 2e rolled around, followed by the Player's Option series and a proliferation of settings beyond Oerth and Toril. Loads of fun! My university gaming group was quick to adapt to 2e as it loosened a number of shackles on character creation, etc. I still have a good selection of material from that period, mainly FR, Al'Qadim, and Ravenloft, with a sprinkling of Spelljammer, Planescape, Maztica, Kara-Tur, and other settings and/or systems.
When 3e came, I was living in a different country and had a new gaming group. Again, we adapted fairly quickly. And yet again when 3.5 turned up. I bought many rulebooks, etc. for 3.5 and expanded my FR collection where possible. By that point I was running a "homebrew variant" of FR. Also, when White Wolf got the license to publish the 3.x version of Ravenloft, I grabbed what I could there too. (There was a particular sale on their website where I got the bulk of my WhW RL sourcebooks. Much money was saved there!)
During the years of 3.5 I also dipped my toes in the d20 (revised) Star Wars pool and took a deeper plunge into the Saga Edition Star Wars pool. (To my eternal regret, I didn't move fast enough to buy the Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide. That book sold out incredibly quickly!) This brought me to the message boards at WotC. At the same time, I was also buying both the Dragon and Dungeon magazines more frequently and had noticed a series of connected adventures. "An adventure path, you say? Let my buy some more Dungeon and Dragon issues!" The Savage Tide AP bowled me over; I still want to run it some time - or even play it!
Then the 4e announcement hit and the Grand History of the Forgotten Realms was published. Yikes! While I appreciate deeply the work that went into most of the GHotFR (the original free PDF which was the basis of that project is still one of my most treasured PDFs), the "future" years described were grim tidings indeed, including character assassination - both literal and figurative - of many deities.
For 4e, I have precisely 2 books: the PHB and the FR Campaign Guide. While I did participate in a few sessions of 4e, it was more for the companionship than for the system itself. (No offence meant to my 4e GM! It was the system, not his game, that turned me off.)
I do recollect someone from a FLGS showing me the first two issues of the RotR AP at a local gaming convention in the autumn of 2007, but I didn't bite immediately. Instead, it took some posts on the WotC boards (before everything was wiped) to lead me to Paizo's website in 2008 where I found CotCT being published and news of an upcoming AP with drow. It was (and still is) a very friendly place. I haven't looked back to WotC since.
So now I have all the PF rulebooks, most of the Golarion sourcbooks and APs in one format and/or another, a bunch of single adventures, several decks, many boxes of pawns, and multiple maps and map tiles. Plus I dropped a load of cash on HeroLab's system so as to be able to print out character sheets which included spells and other necessary class features.
PF2? No, thank you; I've invested enough in PF that I don't feel like moving on to yet another (and not so compatible) system. I acknowledge that PF has some warts after ten plus years of rulebooks, etc., but I'll stick with it for my standard fantasy RPG gaming. After all, I have enough material to run games for the rest of my life! :D
Note: this description of my history with D&D/PF does not include most of my other, none-D&D game experiences (Call of Cthulhu, FFG Star Wars, Hero System/Fantasy, Savage Worlds, etc.).