Why do you still play PF1e / 3.x - and why not newer or older editions of the game?

[Joynt Jezebel]

Ozreth wrote:

Joynt Jezebel wrote:

For me to get the appropriate nostalgia hit it would involve going way back to AD&D which is markedly inferior.

Joynt Jezebel wrote:

I don't recall playing 2nd ed at all. Maybe I played it once or twice but can't recall. So I am only talking about AD&D. I agree with TOZ and Dragonchess Player that version of the game didn't have the merits you found.

Ozreth wrote:

I suppose I wonder if it has been so many decades since trying it, why do yu deem it inferior? At the very least, the quickness, simplicity of rules (in combat, at least),

Joynt Jezebel wrote:

Hell no.

The DMG was so hopelessly disorganised you practically had to know it by heart, which I did incidentally, to find anything.

Ozreth wrote:

Not to mention characters staying within a reasonable power level at all levels

Joynt Jezebel wrote:

Can't say I agree here either.

You can apply exactly what the DMG says you should do and get massive parties that are near impossible to challenge and round take forever.

In AD&D every character automatically had leadership.

[Warped Savant]

Sysryke wrote:

4e wasn't as good as what I'd read of 3rd edition, but that DM taught me that "the roleplaying is what you bring to the game" and I have many happy memories... 4e is definitely not the best system, but I'll never agree with the hate some folks throw at it.

I love your whole post, but especially this part in particular.

[Lord Fyre]

Sysryke wrote:

4e is definitely not the best system, but I'll never agree with the hate some folks throw at it.

A lot of the hostility to D&D 4e has little to do with the system itself.

1 - In the minds of many, D&D 4e came out too early - well before D&D 3.5 had run its course. I offer the popularity of Pathfinder 1e as evidence of this.
2 - Some of the actions of WotC to try to force the new system on the community did not engender good will. Hasbro/WotC has a general problem with the way the interact with the RPG Community.

[Sysryke]

Lord Fyre wrote:

Sysryke wrote:

4e is definitely not the best system, but I'll never agree with the hate some folks throw at it.

A lot of the hostility to D&D 4e has little to do with the system itself.

1 - In the minds of many, D&D 4e came out too early - well before D&D 3.5 had run its course. I offer the popularity of Pathfinder 1e as evidence of this.
2 - Some of the actions of WotC to try to force the new system on the community did not engender good will. Hasbro/WotC has a general problem with the way the interact with the RPG Community.

I definitely agree with the first point. I never have been involved enough in pop-culture or social media to have been aware of the second part, but it makes sense.

[TxSam88]

Lord Fyre wrote:

Sysryke wrote:

4e is definitely not the best system, but I'll never agree with the hate some folks throw at it.

A lot of the hostility to D&D 4e has little to do with the system itself.

1 - In the minds of many, D&D 4e came out too early - well before D&D 3.5 had run its course. I offer the popularity of Pathfinder 1e as evidence of this.
2 - Some of the actions of WotC to try to force the new system on the community did not engender good will. Hasbro/WotC has a general problem with the way the interact with the RPG Community.

I've been told that 4E was pushed by Hasbro as a mechanism to get rid of the OGL, and designed to be a failure to make it seem like the loss of the OGL wasn't the main focus.

[Matthew Downie]

That sounds like a very convoluted plan to sabotage your own IP.

The theory of the "failure" of 4e that I always found plausible is that the designers chose what seemed to be the right numbers for satisfying tactical combat, but they hugely underestimated how inefficient the average new group trying the game would be, so they gave everything lots of HPs, and players got frustrated that their combats took three hours and abandoned the game.

[Arkat]

Matthew Downie wrote:

The theory of the "failure" of 4e that I always found plausible is that the designers chose what seemed to be the right numbers for satisfying tactical combat, but they hugely underestimated how inefficient the average new group trying the game would be, so they gave everything lots of HPs, and players got frustrated that their combats took three hours and abandoned the game.

Now THIS sounds like something that an incompetent RPG company (Hasbro) would do!

[Joynt Jezebel]

Lord Fyre wrote:

Sysryke wrote:

4e is definitely not the best system, but I'll never agree with the hate some folks throw at it.

A lot of the hostility to D&D 4e has little to do with the system itself.

1 - In the minds of many, D&D 4e came out too early - well before D&D 3.5 had run its course. I offer the popularity of Pathfinder 1e as evidence of this.
2 - Some of the actions of WotC to try to force the new system on the community did not engender good will. Hasbro/WotC has a general problem with the way the interact with the RPG Community.

I tried 4th ed after hardly playing D&D for decades and thought it an OK [but no better] system.

I found the degree of hate a lot of players had for 4th ed bizarre. Can't you just play something else, or stay with 3.5?

I would add that 4th ed changed a lot of things players did not want changed. I have heard the complaint that it "just wasn't D&D" often.

[Dragonchess Player]

I'll try to summarize the pushback in a non-emotional way.

Basically, unlike with the 3.0 rollout, WotC threw out or changed a lot of the non-mechanical underpinnings of the TSR intellectual property. Much of the time, it seemed as if they were intentionally attempting to tear down and replace 30 years worth of the game's history simply for the sake of making D&D 4e "new."

Also, the perceived condescension from the marketing campaign really irritated a large group of people who had been playing D&D for years. The marketing campaign spent way too much time attacking 3.5 in an attempt to convince people that they didn't really enjoy playing in that system and 4e would be much better (without providing much detail as to how).

It seemed as if the marketing strategy was to "fire" the "grognards" in an attempt to attract replacement gamers from other systems and/or MMOs.

[Diego Rossi]

For me, 4e was a failure in advertising.

When articles presenting it sprouted with great fanfare: "You have abilities like XX, that trigger once a day when you die", my reply was "What? A mechanic who assumes that you die regularly?"
Or "Every character does the same damage, an X level fighter does X damage, a X level wizard does X damage. Everyone can do out of combat rituals for magic", my thought was: "Where is the difference between the characters?"

Probably, they were examples taken out of the contest, but presenting them as great and central features instantly killed my interest.
I never tried it.

[Sysryke]

That all makes a lot of sense. I literally never saw, read, or heard any advertisements for 4e. My initial exposure was thumbing through the books in Barnes and Noble, and then my first store game a year or so later. I came in fresh with no preconceived notions one way or the other.

[Warped Savant]

Dragonchess Player wrote:

Also, the perceived condescension from the marketing campaign really irritated a large group of people who had been playing D&D for years. The marketing campaign spent way too much time attacking 3.5 in an attempt to convince people that they didn't really enjoy playing in that system and 4e would be much better (without providing much detail as to how).

I had forgotten about that!

To be fair, I think that type of marketing was really "in" at the time.... "This ain't your dad's D&D!" type of thing.

[Tom Sampson]

Alakqualyn wrote:

Generally, I prefer games that adhere to a certain standard of simulation-ist mechanics. It's a component of immersion and the meat of sourcebooks that make me actually want to read them. 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e always felt like the designers cared about modelling things, even less "important" stuff like social structures and hazards. Pathfinder did admittedly break some things; create water at-will breaks droughts and channel energy breaks battlefield hospitals (unless you treat those injuries as non-hp thing, which I think is bad for system health). But, overall, I feel Pathfinder still did a good job keeping the world-building in mind.

Pathfinder 2e and 4e don't have that same feel to me, and I can point to a lack of multiclassing as an example of the pervasive design philosophy. Both systems push power-ups on a character that aren't flavor-neutral. You have to get better at being a wizard, even if your character has second thoughts about their career choice. You have to get more dwarf-y in pathfinder 2e as you level up, even if your character isn't really interested in their heritage.

5e technically has this issue with its multiclass limitations, but no one really goes into a class without the appropriate stats so it isn't really relevant. I have enjoyed the amount of video content produced for 5e, though I have my gripes with it (crossbows and polearms, weapons famous for requiring a ton of training and being speedy to attack with). The books are also bland in comparison to 3.5, which I consider the best art-wise due to variety, and the mechanics don't flow naturally out of the surrounding text (the lore is also still very borked from 4e). Really, though, the reason I'm dropping 5e is because of the OGL; I don't feel I can support them, even with eyeballs.

So, yeah. To add a bit more to my point, if I'm not looking to mechanics for immersion, I'd just prefer a system with simpler mechanics, so there isn't much draw there for me for 2e and stuff. If there's ever a Pathfinder 3e, I'll probably check...

I will admit to quite a bit of surprise at this. Playing Pathfinder for detailed simulationism or immersive mechanics feels like a recipe for mental pain if you ask me. If that's what you want you should be playing GURPS instead. It's excellent at immersive simulation mechanics. Pathfinder is something you play for the game side of things, if you don't want to ask questions about how the game mechanics make sense as part of the world and just want to have fun with the mechanics. Extensive suspension of disbelief or taking it all in stride is a necessity for enjoying Pathfinder in my view.

[Dragonchess Player]

The mechanics of PF1, being based on 3.x, were not an "excellent" simulation. However, the old Calibrating Your Expectations from the Alexandrian does lay out that D&D 3.x did a better job at simulation than many believe; granted, there were compromises made in the interests of simplifying and streamlining play rather than attempting strict simulationism (which is fair, considering this is a game and was designed to be played without computer support).

[Tom Sampson]

GURPS is also a tabletop RPG system designed to be played without computer support and it is far, far, far better at simulationism than Pathfinder is. I recall Gygax back in the day was quite clear on D&D being gamist rather than simulationist and I think later editions of D&D haven't particularly improved on simulationism. If simulationism is what you are after, to my understanding Pathfinder is really the wrong system to be playing. Yes, Pathfinder is mechanically dense, but it isn't terribly good at simulationist gameplay.

[Ozreth]

Tom Sampson wrote:

GURPS is also a tabletop RPG system designed to be played without computer support and it is far, far, far better at simulationism than Pathfinder is. I recall Gygax back in the day was quite clear on D&D being gamist rather than simulationist and I think later editions of D&D haven't particularly improved on simulationism. If simulationism is what you are after, to my understanding Pathfinder is really the wrong system to be playing. Yes, Pathfinder is mechanically dense, but it isn't terribly good at simulationist gameplay.

True, but as Dragonchess player implied, with 3.x you get some level of simulationism without losing the D&D, which is a sweet spot for many. Moving to GURPS or other much more simulationist systems throws all the D&D traditions out the window. Compare 3e to AD&D and you can see where Tweet, Cook and Williams took all the elements they liked from Rolemaster, GURPS, Runequest, Ars Magica etc and applies it to the D&D chassis. Which is what brought a lot of D&D players back into the fold after they left 1e or 2e for the above or similar systems.

3.x gives a mix of gamist, simulation and narrativist elements. Some much more than others, but it’s all there to varying degrees and I think that’s why it is so popular, although I don’t even like using those terms. We beat them to death throughout the 00’s.

[Dragonchess Player]

Yes.

The simulationism in 3.x/PF1 is mostly "close enough" at low level play (while maintaining a certain level of simplicity to keep play moving). Which, to be honest, is where modeling "realistic" effects should be important for a level-based system. As stated in another Alexandrian article, E(X): The Many Games Inside the World’s Most Popular Roleplaying Game, 3.x/PF1 moves though multiple stages/types of fantasy as PCs gain levels.

If you want a 3.x/PF1 game where PCs are more "realistic" and the simulation maps fairly well to what happens outside the game, then that was the whole reason for the E6 modification.

[Set]

I don't see it as 'realistic' so much as 'internally consistent,' which gave a *sense* of versimilitude, even if some of the more gamist aspects, like hit points, or how poison worked, did not seem even slightly meant to be 'realistic.'

To an audience who grew up with modern media, and expected a certain level of suspension of disbelief from even NON-fantastical/speculative movies, TV, books, etc. (of course someone can get shot in the shoulder and keep on fighting, with no lingering effects, ever! Of course cars explode when you shoot them, and you can jump faster than the explosion to get to safety!), I feel like 3.5/PF at least *felt* realistic *enough* to scratch that itch, without feeling a bit too obviously gamist, so much that the mechanics like 'per encounter abilities' or whatnot weren't constantly snapping you out of the immersion/experience/fantasy adventure story like a stagehand caught on stage midperformance.

[Ozreth]

Set wrote:

so much that the mechanics like 'per encounter abilities' or whatnot weren't constantly snapping you out of the immersion/experience/fantasy adventure story like a stagehand caught on stage midperformance.

And early 3e had very little of this, and when it did it was mostly per day stuff, not per encounter. Later 3.5 and then especially Pathfinder added a lot of the "dissociated" mechanics.

[Diego Rossi]

Ozreth wrote:

Set wrote:

so much that the mechanics like 'per encounter abilities' or whatnot weren't constantly snapping you out of the immersion/experience/fantasy adventure story like a stagehand caught on stage midperformance.

And early 3e had very little of this, and when it did it was mostly per day stuff, not per encounter. Later 3.5 and then especially Pathfinder added a lot of the "dissociated" mechanics.

3e (and previous editions) had facing. The 360° sight is one of the things is one of the things that always feel a bit off, together with the "6 seconds round" that allows you to do more than the old 1 minute round of AD&D.

[Set]

Diego Rossi wrote:

Ozreth wrote:

Set wrote:

so much that the mechanics like 'per encounter abilities' or whatnot weren't constantly snapping you out of the immersion/experience/fantasy adventure story like a stagehand caught on stage midperformance.

And early 3e had very little of this, and when it did it was mostly per day stuff, not per encounter. Later 3.5 and then especially Pathfinder added a lot of the "dissociated" mechanics.

3e (and previous editions) had facing. The 360° sight is one of the things is one of the things that always feel a bit off, together with the "6 seconds round" that allows you to do more than the old 1 minute round of AD&D.

I feel like every edition has stuff I liked, and stuff that I tried very hard to forget, like weapon speed factors and those weird armor class adjustments based on weapon type, or whatever (which I'm not describing well, because we never used them!). Ug. 1st edition had some real nit-picky pain baked into it!

Adjusting your initiative count based on what spell you were casting, and being able to be interrupted if someone had a fast weapon speed weapon capable of reaching and interrupting you, like a thrown dart? Yeah, fun. NOT.

Slowly but surely, these things have fallen away. Some of them, like Vancian casting and alignment, I never thought were going to die, but hey, the future slowly slouches towards Bethlehem, it seems.

[Ozreth]

Set wrote:

Diego Rossi wrote:

Ozreth wrote:

Set wrote:

so much that the mechanics like 'per encounter abilities' or whatnot weren't constantly snapping you out of the immersion/experience/fantasy adventure story like a stagehand caught on stage midperformance.

And early 3e had very little of this, and when it did it was mostly per day stuff, not per encounter. Later 3.5 and then especially Pathfinder added a lot of the "dissociated" mechanics.

3e (and previous editions) had facing. The 360° sight is one of the things is one of the things that always feel a bit off, together with the "6 seconds round" that allows you to do more than the old 1 minute round of AD&D.

I feel like every edition has stuff I liked, and stuff that I tried very hard to forget, like weapon speed factors and those weird armor class adjustments based on weapon type, or whatever (which I'm not describing well, because we never used them!). Ug. 1st edition had some real nit-picky pain baked into it!

Adjusting your initiative count based on what spell you were casting, and being able to be interrupted if someone had a fast weapon speed weapon capable of reaching and interrupting you, like a thrown dart? Yeah, fun. NOT.

Slowly but surely, these things have fallen away. Some of them, like Vancian casting and alignment, I never thought were going to die, but hey, the future slowly slouches towards Bethlehem, it seems.

The 360 view I feel makes sense when you consider that the explanation for founds has always been that characters are ducking, weaving,parrying etc. and that it isn't just one swing per round. They are active and moving. This is the 3e to 3.5 explanation for round bases and removal of facing (which wasn't legitimate facing in 3e anyways). If they are constantly moving in a round then it makes sense to me that they are not just facing one opponent the entire round.

I love Vancian casting because I am a fan of Dying Earth and all of the other Sword & Sorcery that the game was based on. The further back you go you find that most of the mechanics and flavor of the game can be tied to this or that S&S author. It was a literary game meant to emulate Sword & Sorcery, and we lost a lot of this over the decades. The game now is self-refferential, rather than having roots in literature, which was far more interesting. But nobody reads anymore, the designers of current D&D and PF are far removed from this literature tradition, and now we've ended up with imagery like you see on the cover page of paizo.com. And 5e is just as bad. A shame.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Diego Rossi wrote:

Ozreth wrote:

Set wrote:

so much that the mechanics like 'per encounter abilities' or whatnot weren't constantly snapping you out of the immersion/experience/fantasy adventure story like a stagehand caught on stage midperformance.

And early 3e had very little of this, and when it did it was mostly per day stuff, not per encounter. Later 3.5 and then especially Pathfinder added a lot of the "dissociated" mechanics.

3e (and previous editions) had facing. The 360° sight is one of the things is one of the things that always feel a bit off, together with the "6 seconds round" that allows you to do more than the old 1 minute round of AD&D.

My first edition I ran and played was D&D 3rd Edition, and facing was not a part of D&D 3.0.

The 6-second round was definitely a part of 3.0, but got more attention with 3.5 and the introduction of the swift action.

[Ozreth]

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

Diego Rossi wrote:

Ozreth wrote:

Set wrote:

so much that the mechanics like 'per encounter abilities' or whatnot weren't constantly snapping you out of the immersion/experience/fantasy adventure story like a stagehand caught on stage midperformance.

And early 3e had very little of this, and when it did it was mostly per day stuff, not per encounter. Later 3.5 and then especially Pathfinder added a lot of the "dissociated" mechanics.

3e (and previous editions) had facing. The 360° sight is one of the things is one of the things that always feel a bit off, together with the "6 seconds round" that allows you to do more than the old 1 minute round of AD&D.

My first edition I ran and played was D&D 3rd Edition, and facing was not a part of D&D 3.0.

The 6-second round was definitely a part of 3.0, but got more attention with 3.5 and the introduction of the swift action.

It’s true that it didn’t have legitimate facing, but miniatures were considered to have “face”, which made movement very awkward. When the transition to 3.5 happened there were heated debates about this and the prevailing argument in favor of round based was “why have square and rectangular bases that imitate facing without actual rules for facing?”

From the 3e PHB:

“Face

How much area a character occupies in combat. Face is essentially the border between the square or rectangular space that a character occupies and the space next to it. These faces are abstract, not "front, back, left, and right," because characters are constantly moving and turning in battle. Unless a character is immobile, it practically doesn't have a front or a left side-at least not one that can be identified on the tabletop.”

Regarding the 6 second round: for many years people complained about the 1 minute round and how little you actually did in that time. This is mostly because people failed to understand that the rounds emulated a LOT of combat happening and your roll to hit was just to see how much damage came out of a lot of combat that you didn’t actually see unfold. This is how units in Wargames worked.

People wanted the actions they rolled for to better represent the actual actions their characters were taking, which is how most other RPGs were doing it. This was finally acknowledged in the 2e Combat and Tactics book which I think changed it to 10 seconds?

There’s a funny story about Cook and Tweet spending hours making Skip Williams imitate everything a character could do in a certain amount of time with a stopwatch and they ended up with 6 seconds seeming about right.

Swift actions weren’t in core 3.5 but came pretty soon after in a couple of the splatboooks. My group still plays a 3e/3.5 hybrid and we don’t use swift or immediate actions.

[Dragon78]

Personally I still think Pathfinder 1e ended too soon. There were a lot of things I would have liked to have seen(see various wish lists). We didn't even get any compilation books like one that has all the classes(and their variants), a bestiary that has all the remaining monsters from the APs/modules, "Ultimate Equipment 2", etc. We still haven't gotten all the pocket versions of the hardcover books.

[Diego Rossi]

Dragon78 wrote:

Personally I still think Pathfinder 1e ended too soon. There were a lot of things I would have liked to have seen(see various wish lists). We didn't even get any compilation books like one that has all the classes(and their variants), a bestiary that has all the remaining monsters from the APs/modules, "Ultimate Equipment 2", etc. We still haven't gotten all the pocket versions of the hardcover books.

Hasbro was rattling sabers about finding a way to cancel the Open Game License, so Paizo decided to move to a new system that is less vulnerable to challenges in court.

It is an age-old story, sadly. Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) was killed by a cause from TSR (owned, at the time, by Lorraine Williams). It had no merit, but they had to defend themselves and spend money. At the end, they were forced into an out-of-court settlement. After that, they closed.
What I find even more sad is that the English-language version of Wikipedia has been sanitized, saying only, "The company disbanded February 29, 1996, after suffering financial troubles." The Italian version still has the whole story, one that people playing at the time know very well.

BTW, a year later, TSR was bankrupt and was bought by WoTC.

Considering the above, Paizo's move is understandable, even if we don't like it.

[TriOmegaZero]

And all those compilation books wouldn’t have made a return worth investing in, no matter how much we happy few would have paid for them.

[Neriathale]

I play several non-D&D games, but if I’m playing a D&D-esque one it will be PF1.

5E is too simple and I dislike the fact it is nigh on impossible to pick up new skills/change a character’s direction. Classic example being playing the entire Saltmarsh campaign and never having the opportunity to learn to swim.

PF2 we tried… but it just felt like someone was sitting there ready to slap you on the wrist and say ‘you can’t do that, it’s too much like having *fun*’ every time we tried to come up with clever ways of using spells or abilities. This was exacerbated by a couple of the PFS GMs who were PF2 evangelists telling me I was playing my character wrong (I’m pretty sure the people you first play with have the biggest impact on whether you enjoy a game system).

In contrast I know PF1, I know I can create pretty much any character idea I can visualise, and I am still coming up with new things to do - e.g. in our current campaign I am playing my first ever summoner and having fun figuring out how to use the toolbox of summonations most effectively.

[Joynt Jezebel]

Diego Rossi wrote:

Hasbro was rattling sabers about finding a way to cancel the Open Game License, so Paizo decided to move to a new system that is less vulnerable to challenges in court.

It is an age-old story, sadly. Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) was killed by a cause from TSR (owned, at the time, by Lorraine Williams). It had no merit, but they had to defend themselves and spend money. At the end, they were forced into an out-of-court settlement. After that, they closed.

I have a law degree and used to practice. It is hard to see any way of cancelling an open use license or even seriously trying to. My legal knowledge is Australian and hardly up to date but it sounds far fetched.

Which is all kind of irrelevant as the financial resources of Paizo and Hasbro are so imbalanced.

@Neriathale

Your comments about the systems I would almost totally agree with. Except regarding PF2 which I have never played, so I can't really say anything beyond it sounds a bit too much like 5th ed, or 4th ed.

[Diego Rossi]

Joynt Jezebel wrote:

Diego Rossi wrote:

Hasbro was rattling sabers about finding a way to cancel the Open Game License, so Paizo decided to move to a new system that is less vulnerable to challenges in court.

It is an age-old story, sadly. Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) was killed by a cause from TSR (owned, at the time, by Lorraine Williams). It had no merit, but they had to defend themselves and spend money. At the end, they were forced into an out-of-court settlement. After that, they closed.

I have a law degree and used to practice. It is hard to see any way of cancelling an open use license or even seriously trying to. My legal knowledge is Australian and hardly up to date but it sounds far fetched.

Which is all kind of irrelevant as the financial resources of Paizo and Hasbro are so imbalanced.

TSR brought GDW to the tribunal, claiming that Dangerous Journeys, Gary Gygax's new game, infringed on D&D's copyright.

Besides the author being the same and both being high fantasy there was no similarity between the games.

Dangerous Jurneys

From what I know, the out-of-court settlement had GDW cede all rights to was published of the game in exchange for an undisclosed sum.
The complete game should have been something similar to GURPS, with multi-dimensional universes and parallel worlds with different rules.
As the settlement didn't include what was programmed but not printed, Gygax refused to work with TSR on it. He made some of that available on his website.
I have all the books and had some of what Gygax made available online. Probably in the 30 or so years old 3.5 disks that I threw away recently.

Dangerous Journeys was interesting at the time, but the system was cumbersome, from what I recall. Probably it wouldn't have been a great hit.
The closure of GDW was a sure loss for the gaming world, they had several interesting products and ideas.

[Dragonchess Player]

It's not as if TSR and WotC were the only game companies that used the courts to go after competitors. I still vaguely recall Palladium's lawsuit against WotC (back when WotC was a small fry*) over Primal Order.

*-before the release of Magic: The Gathering, let alone being acquired by Hasbro

[Tim Emrick]

I spent a year in grad school in Normal, IL (GDW's hometown) a couple years before the company went under. I tried Dangerous Journeys very briefly, in demos at the public library. It had some interesting ideas, but I found it overly arcane in its mechanics (a all-too-common tendency for Gygax's work). It felt like it was trying to be both D&D *and* GURPS, and fell flat on both counts.

[Dragonchess Player]

IMO, Alternity (TSR's last RPG) had a similar problem: It was trying to be both a level-based and a point-based system; instead, it ended up doing neither that well.

A bit of a shame, really. Like Dangerous Journeys, it had some interesting ideas.

[Diego Rossi]

It had some interesting ideas.
I liked particularly "Exposure to magic reduces fertility. Spellcasters have few descendants, and even exposure to a single spell will reduce your fertility by a perceptible percentage."
It explained why you had high birth rate, barbarian populations with very few spellcasters that weren't conquered by their neighbors with high magic technology.

[Heather 540]

I like the character customization from Pathfinder much better than 5e. I don't play Pathfinder 2e because I'm very busy and I don't want to spend time to learn an entire new system.

[Sysryke]

Neriathale wrote:

I play several non-D&D games, but if I’m playing a D&D-esque one it will be PF1.

......

I’m pretty sure the people you first play with have the biggest impact on whether you enjoy a game system.

Sing Sweet Wisdom! Truer words were never spoken.

[Haldrick]

My group is over 60. In the past we have played many systems, Now we how only play one system. We tried 4th D&D and didn't like it. We likes Pathfinder 1st. When Pathfinder 2nd came out, we didn't dislike it but we have many AP still to rum. We have many classes to we want to try. Pathfinder 2nd just didn't appear to be enough of an improvement to waste the investments we had made.
We probably have enough stuff to do to last into our 80s

[Magic Butterfly]

I GM both. I thought 2e would become my system of choice because it's honestly a very good game and addressed a lot of the issues that I had with 1e. But now that I've played a lot if 2e I'm glad I still have a 1e game going.

I like that 1e has a lot of flavor abilities, even if those abilities are sometimes bad or janky. I like that there's a lot of stuff that's designed for utility with little obvious combat application. I like that classes can do stuff like talk to spirits, haunts, or animals, or walk through underbrush without difficulty, or become able to speak any language. Things without obvious combat utility but help a character feel cool and magical. The balance issues can be very difficult to manage, but sometimes its fun to be really good or really bad at something. I think a the jank and issues give the game a lot of personality-- but can also be really frustrating as well. 2e, by contrast, feels really well designed, but a little sterile.

I do quite like 2e though. It's fun to GM, easy to learn for such a complex game, and the rules make sense and just work. High-level play is also actually fun, unlike in 1e, where the game really breaks down once you hit double-digit levels.

I also just find the first edition Adventure Paths more interesting. t's probably personal preference, but I think they struck the right balance between being on theme while avoiding being too specialized. With the 2e ones, they come out so quickly that I think a lot of them never get played. They don't develop any kind of reputation and ultimately they feel a little forgettable.

[glass]

Although I do play and run other systems (including PF2), there are a number of reasons why PF1 remains my primary system: It is partly historical accident and inertia, partly that I now know the system really well, and partly that I have a lot of material for it (including all my 3.x stuff with minimal tweaking, and a decent amount of homebrew).

But if I had to pick one reason, I would have to go with the all the PF1 APs I have not played or run yet.

[glass]

glass wrote:

But if I had to pick one reason, I would have to go with the all the PF1 APs I have not played or run yet.

To expand a little, we are currently playing Curse of the Crimson Throne and Savaged Tide*, and have Strange Aeons and Return of the Runelords lined up to go after (technically we started the latter a while back, but we decided we had too many things on the go and parked it until after CotCT). We have already completed Age of Worms*, Rise of the Runelords, Shattered Star, and the original unnamed 3.0 Adventure Path (sometimes called the "Sunless Citadel" AP).

Beyond that, there are a bunch of PF1 APs that I would love to play/run/both one day: Carrion Crown, Reign of Winter, Wrath of the Righteous, Mummy's Mask, Iron Gods, and Ruins of Azlant.

While some of the PF2 APs look fun (including Abomination Vaults, which I am running currently, and Quest for the Frozen Flame and Stolen Fate which I picked up in the recent Humble Bundle), none of them grab me in the same way the best of PF1 do. With the possible exception of Strength of Thousands. EDIT: Part of it might be that I like full-length APs, and Paizo pretty much abandoned them at about the time they might otherwise have been hitting their stride. Even the upcoming fourth Runelords AP is apparently going to be half length.

(* 3.5 AP but played in PF1, converting on the fly. After the first chapter, in the case of AoW.)

[Arkat]

glass wrote:

Beyond that, there are a bunch of PF1 APs that I would love to play/run/both one day: Carrion Crown, Reign of Winter, Wrath of the Righteous, Mummy's Mask, Iron Gods, and Ruins of Azlant.

If you weren't considering Tyrant's Grasp, definitely do that one. Just make sure you play Carrion Crown first.

If you do play Wrath of the Righteous, take your time with it and if you do use the Mythic Rules, definitely consider using Mythic Solutions to tone down the Mythic stuff a bit.

[Charles Markley]

Arkat wrote:

glass wrote:

Beyond that, there are a bunch of PF1 APs that I would love to play/run/both one day: Carrion Crown, Reign of Winter, Wrath of the Righteous, Mummy's Mask, Iron Gods, and Ruins of Azlant.

If you weren't considering Tyrant's Grasp, definitely do that one. Just make sure you play Carrion Crown first.

If you do play Wrath of the Righteous, take your time with it and if you do use the Mythic Rules, definitely consider using Mythic Solutions to tone down the Mythic stuff a bit.

I agree with Arkat that this post about the Mythic Solutions being needed to tone down the Mythic stuff! I am running WotR for my third time. 1st time we moved to a different state right before end of book 2, second time COVID killed the group at the end of book 2. But each time I read ahead and while prepping and reading here on the forums, knew some changes would be needed.

Not all of PF1 adventures appeal to me, but more do than PF2. PF1 can be a problem with nonsensical character stories that min-max for a character to be uber-powerful, but there are so many options and each character can be distinguishable from the next. I don't see that in PF2, each character's abilities appear to be balanced, and now with the new licensing and big divorce from WotR, even the historic names and "races" and alignments are changing? Not appealing to me. I get why Paizo had to do this recently, but Paizo went with PF2 and cut new material and Adventure Paths way too soon for my already applied time and investment; not quite as condescending as Hasbro with the 4e 'screw you established gamers, we want to make a video game!' version, but close enough.

I understand from a business standpoint that it is difficult to support two lines, but it seems as if Paizo didn't even try. I still buy 1e stuff from Paizo and 3pp, and would love to throw more money at 1e. Sigh. The 'explanation' of we (Paizo) want to make a balanced game from the ground up, to me at least, put out an easy to run/manage game that is restrained/constrained/vanilla, where the PCs seem...just...like...NPCs.

[Arkat]

Arkat wrote:

If you were considering Tyrant's Grasp, definitely do that one. Just make sure you play Carrion Crown first.

Fixed.

[BigNorseWolf]

Alakqualyn wrote:

create water at-will breaks droughts

I volunteered briefly in Mauritania, africa, all the way to the left, third country down. They had a had a gas powered water pump the size of a collie, and it could blow away a low level caster spamming create water spamming create water 24 7. The caster could probably be more efficient by placing water on crops and whatnot, but tje upshot is if your village has a caster they can eek out a village but they arent going to make the desert bloom

[BigNorseWolf]

Pathfimder two and what I ve seen of d and d let me pick a class and subclass. They do not let me really build a character.

[TriOmegaZero]

I think d20's problem was treating PCs like something other than NPCs with no in game justification, unlike the way that Scion and other games do.

Like sure, have your heroes able to fend off armies, but because they're demigods, not just because the players have been playing awhile.

[Charles Markley]

TriOmegaZero wrote:

I think d20's problem was treating PCs like something other than NPCs with no in game justification, unlike the way that Scion and other games do.

Like sure, have your heroes able to fend off armies, but because they're demigods, not just because the players have been playing awhile.

Good point, at least with Mythic there is some kind of story explanation. Even a non-mythic lvl 10-15 PC character has some super-heroic abilities compared to a level 1-2 NPC, partially owed to the plethora of magical items that a PC accumulates and/or creates.

That being said, the economy in PF1/3.5 is broken, with high value magic items in the tens, fifties, and hundreds of thousands of gold pieces: "Good merchant, let me just check my wallet here for coins, let just count them out in piles here". Every high-level merchant transaction is like a modern day cinematic equivalent of briefcases full of cash.

From what I have seen, I do like think that monetary value revision in PF2e seems to be better.

[glass]

Arkat wrote:

If you weren't considering Tyrant's Grasp, definitely do that one. Just make sure you play Carrion Crown first.

I liked the idea of Tyrant's Grasp when I first heard about it, but then I heard some things that put me off. Nothing concrete (since I try to avoid spoilers), but the impression that I got by nerd-cultural osmosis that it has a downer ending: More like a WFRP adventure than what I would normally expect from Pathfinder.

Without going into details, is that impression broadly correct? And if so, how easy is it to tweak it to be less Warhammer-ish?

(There is also the factor that there are already 8.5 APs still to play mentioned in my post, which could easily keep me going for the next two decades.)

Arkat wrote:

If you do play Wrath of the Righteous, take your time with it and if you do use the Mythic Rules, definitely consider using Mythic Solutions to tone down the Mythic stuff a bit.

Yeah, if I do ever end up doing WotR, I would definitely look at tweaking the mythic rules. Whether I would go with exactly Legendary's tweaks or not I would decide nearer the time.

[Arkat]

glass wrote:

Arkat wrote:

If you weren't considering Tyrant's Grasp, definitely do that one. Just make sure you play Carrion Crown first.

I liked the idea of Tyrant's Grasp when I first heard about it, but then I heard some things that put me off. Nothing concrete (since I try to avoid spoilers), but the impression that I got by nerd-cultural osmosis that it has a downer ending: More like a WFRP adventure than what I would normally expect from Pathfinder.

Without going into details, is that impression broadly correct? And if so, how easy is it to tweak it to be less Warhammer-ish?

(There is also the factor that there are already 8.5 APs still to play mentioned in my post, which could easily keep me going for the next two decades.)

There is a sidebar (I think in the last book) that gives the GM a way to avoid the complete downer ending.

The GM in the campaign I played didn't make it known to all the players, but my character figured it out when he was talking one-on-one with one of the NPCs.

Because my Sorc figured out how to mostly avoid it, he cast 4 Wish spells so the other four players would avoid the worst part of the end.

Don't want to give too many details here.

If you want to know more, send me a PM and I'll tell you what happened.

[Jenner2057]

glass wrote:

Yeah, if I do ever end up doing WotR, I would definitely look at tweaking the mythic rules. Whether I would go with exactly Legendary's tweaks or not I would decide nearer the time.

I'll agree both that it's a great AP story wise and that the mythic rules don't work. I used a rechargeable pool of Hero Points and that worked great 99% of the time.

I documented the changes I made over on the Wrath thread.
Link if you're curious.