How were his skills determined? Its doesnt appear to be 2 per level. Iit doesnt appear there is a general athletics skill, which is a bummer, particularly since they have perception. I hate the skill tax just to do basic "action hero" type stuff (jump, climb, etc).
He also seems to have separate feats for longsword and shortsword, another disappointment, as I was hoping towards a more unified weapon based feat system to avoid such a sink. The guy would seriously be better off just using 2 short swords. I note his weapon training class feature is based off category (heavy and light). To me at least, it seems that the feats should have been as well.
I'm not seeing a huge improvement in his fighting capability to make up for being nearly useless outside of combat compared to a caster with access to a horde of utility spells to basically wreck plots and solve most problems with a scroll. Inexplicably, he's actually nerfed in strength in some ways (power attack limit, expertise). Melee combatants still require a full round action to do their thing, another letdown.
I started a Golarion game with 4th edition rules, due to wanting to try the system and general 3rd edition burnout. It may end up remaining that way. I'm *really* digging their fluff, and was hoping that Pathfinder would go far enough to fixing my issues with 3rd edition. Comparing him to Seoni next week might give me a better picture however.
I'm very disappointed by the skills, both by the failure to redivide Perception (into active and a passive modes) and by the failure to combine the athletic skills.
I'm actually surprised by how disappointed I am. I hope these non-changes aren't indicative of the rest of the rules.
__________________ Jeff Wilder, San Francisco Bay Area If your sig is longer than your posts, your sig is too
long. Nobody reads it, they just get annoyed by it. And if you bore me, you lose your soul to me. - Belly
I'm very disappointed by the skills, both by the failure to redivide Perception (into active and a passive modes) and by the failure to combine the athletic skills.
Yep, it is to me pretty mind boggling that a "super" skill like perception can cohabit in the same game system with specialized skills like jump and swim... this last one ranks slightly above use rope in terms of usefulness.
I was hoping they had levelled out the saves, at 14th level the difference between fort and will is a big problem. Target that fighters will will charm or whatever by a 14th level caster and he is in trouble!
How were his skills determined? Its doesnt appear to be 2 per level.
If you take out the +3 for the class skills and the stat bonus, he has 5 skills with 14 ranks each. My guess is 2 for being a fighter, 1 for intelligence, 1 for being a human and 1 for the favored class or something like that.
If you take out the +3 for the class skills and the stat bonus, he has 5 skills with 14 ranks each. My guess is 2 for being a fighter, 1 for intelligence, 1 for being a human and 1 for the favored class or something like that.
Bleh. I was hoping he got 4 per level. There's no particularly good excuse for not throwing them that minor bone for non-combat effectiveness.
I was hoping they had levelled out the saves, at 14th level the difference between fort and will is a big problem. Target that fighters will will charm or whatever by a 14th level caster and he is in trouble!
I dont understand the need to level out the saves at all. If he's a fighter then he's good at being tough and fighting. Everything else not so much. I think this iconic is designed to be the typical (baseline) fighter. I've always worked under the assumption that the PC's are a team and each had their strengths which covered up for another members weaknesses.
I think they kept the save progression from the Beta (Fort +9, Ref +4, Will +4 (-1 for a 8 WIS) ).
I do agree that they could have compounded Climb and Swim into Athletics, but that's a minor issue for me. I think they reversed the changes from the beta because so many people screamed bloody murder that it was soooooo incompatible with baseline 3.5. Which is sad because I liked alot of the changes in the Beta (except for the skill system, but only because I still want to run 3.5 adventures and rejiggering the skills for the Beta would have been one of the few things that would have been a pain in the butt).
If Jason and crew went too far back in the other direction, I'll probably wind up using the Beta as my main rulebook.
__________________ I'm thinking you're totally out to lunch on this one. Find another form of foreplay that doesn't involve 3 hours of explanation and a pocket calculator.
I haven't been following the 'Road to Pathfinder'. But I would have anticipated one of the goals was simplifying things. To that end why didn't they simplify iterative attacks so that you have a single given attack bonus, and if you want to make two attacks, you take a -5 penalty to hit with both. Want to make three attacks, then its a -10 penalty with all three, etc. It also goes someway to alleviating the (3.5) disparity between martial and spellcaster classes in that at high level, fighters could have maybe 5 or 6 attacks, but the chances are those attacks will only hit 'mooks'.
Similarly they could invert Power Attack so that when a Fighter would have had three iterative attacks (for example); instead of taking three attacks at their normal damage, they could choose to take two attacks dealing +5 damage, or one attack dealing +10 damage.
This way its not only simpler, but also adds a slight tactical aspect.
Incidently, here is my take on revising the Fighter Class from about two years ago.
The 'levelling of saves' I was hoping was not to the same extent as 4E but more than that preview shows. OK he has got a below average WIS but against a caster with 18 in the ability score and a 7th level spell he has to roll an 18 or higher if it is a will save and 9 of higher if a fort, IIRC it has been a year since I played 3E now. I is just too much difference for me but then again I maybe in the minority as I am playing 4E!
I wonder what the philosophy behind keeping iterative attacks was...and how those things are going to be put to use given that they usually can't actually hit the things the characters are facing...
Well, it's the same progression as D&D and it wasn't changed in alpha or beta.
I referenced the Beta only because I'm sitting at my computer and I had it available as a PDF. The 3.5 PHB was across the room on a shelf. Sorry.
__________________ I'm thinking you're totally out to lunch on this one. Find another form of foreplay that doesn't involve 3 hours of explanation and a pocket calculator.
I wonder what the philosophy behind keeping iterative attacks was...and how those things are going to be put to use given that they usually can't actually hit the things the characters are facing...
The impetus behind keeping them is almost certainly "compatibility." A system like Wulf Ratbane's would be better, but would probably be seen as too incompatible. (I personally don't think Wulf's system would be any harder to handle on the fly than incorporating things like Vital Strike, but I'm not making the decisions. Wulf's system is also statistically much more robust than the Vital Strike tree.)
As the player of a 17th-level melee brute under Pathfinder Beta, I can say that Vital Strike does make my last iterative attack useful (in that it gives me something to swap on for 3d6 more damage on each of my other attacks). So I guess if that's your only metric, it succeeds.
__________________ Jeff Wilder, San Francisco Bay Area If your sig is longer than your posts, your sig is too
long. Nobody reads it, they just get annoyed by it. And if you bore me, you lose your soul to me. - Belly
Pathfinder seems more like a house-ruled 3.5 system rather than a modernized revision (or 3.75 as some had called it). I look at that fighter and find I have zero desire to play. It looks...clunky. Just my 2 cp.
__________________
It only surprised me up until around 1977, ... I had thought we were going to have a considerable audience of gamers and science fiction and fantasy fans. I thought easily with those we'd have 50,000 or more [buyers], but when people began to write me [with questions] about what fantasy books to read, and I saw the wide range of both younger and older people who were attracted to the game, I understood that it was reaching a deeper chord, something deep within us. E. Gary Gygax (July 27, 1938 March 4, 2008)
The impetus behind keeping them is almost certainly "compatibility." A system like Wulf Ratbane's would be better, but would probably be seen as too incompatible. (I personally don't think Wulf's system would be any harder to handle on the fly than incorporating things like Vital Strike, but I'm not making the decisions. Wulf's system is also statistically much more robust than the Vital Strike tree.)
As the player of a 17th-level melee brute under Pathfinder Beta, I can say that Vital Strike does make my last iterative attack useful (in that it gives me something to swap on for 3d6 more damage on each of my other attacks). So I guess if that's your only metric, it succeeds.
Lame reason, but if they give me something to do with them, I can maybe forgive it for being well-intentioned. Most of the time those things are just wasted space on a character sheet.
I wonder what the philosophy behind keeping iterative attacks was...and how those things are going to be put to use given that they usually can't actually hit the things the characters are facing...
Iterative attacks are there because if you use PFRPG with a 3.5 module, you'll want to know where that +23/+18/+13 comes from, and because, believe it or not, some people actually liked iterative attacks (I know our group does). But, if you don't like them, they've given you a way out via the Vital Strike feat chain, which lets you give up some of your iterative attacks to gain a damage bonus.
Do you want to keep iterative attacks as they are? Ban VS. Do you want them to go away? Give every character the benefits of VS for free, and mandatory. Do you want a middle ground? Keep them as feats.
That's the beauty of 3.x: Options, not restrictions. And it works at both sides of the DM screen
The impetus behind keeping them is almost certainly "compatibility." A system like Wulf Ratbane's would be better, but would probably be seen as too incompatible. (I personally don't think Wulf's system would be any harder to handle on the fly than incorporating things like Vital Strike, but I'm not making the decisions. Wulf's system is also statistically much more robust than the Vital Strike tree.)
Here is the problem Pathfinder found itself in IMHO.
Compatibility and Innovation are a slide-scale. The further from Compatible you move, the further you can move toward innovation. Pathfinder was forced to hover somewhere in the middle; it needed to keep the underlying math problems (iterative attacks, save progressions, etc) to keep it compatible with other 3.5 material, which limits its ability to "fix" such problems as flurry of misses and "roll a 20" saves. At best, you create some patch (Vital Strike). At worst, it ignores it.
I would have much preferred a SAGA like approach which irons out bab/save/defense math, allows some rebalancing of classes without adherence to the 3.5 progressions, and fixes spells and such to keep the classes viable WITHOUT going with the 4e system.
If it hovers too close to "compatible", it ends up just being a fancy-house rule document. If it goes to close to innovative, it stops being "3.5+" and starts becoming its own system (which loses its original purpose; being the successor to the 3.5 core books).
. I is just too much difference for me but then again I maybe in the minority as I am playing 4E! 
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