Pathfinder 1E Elephant in the room/thread Forked Thread: Pathfinder - sell me

GMforPowergamers · May 8, 2009

Sadrik said:
I wouldn't expect a major overhaul, with 3e compatibility being a major development item.

snip
I don't think that people will write this product off. It is literally the elephant in the room for WotC.

see here is the real thing, every one of these threads basicly is danceing the subject.
Piazo Vs WotC
4eVs Pathfinder

so lets take this out of the running shall we....

Lets say 4e doesn't exsit. your choices are ONLY 3.5 from WotC, Pathfinder, True 20, and other misc games (rifts, GURPS ect)

What then sells pathfinder on it's own Vs say Mutants and Masterminds?
What about Rifts?

or how about this. What makes this worth rebuying the books I own form Wotc??? and what makes it worth me eaither spending time updating or throwing away 25+ classes that can not be done pathfinder (Not OGL)?

ProfessorCirno · May 8, 2009

The only person trying to make it into 4e vs Pathfinder is you. One could easily tell that judging by your very confrontational posts on the other thread.

So here, let me alter the tread for you:

I'm not a huge fan of 4e, but I like some of the stuff in it, so I've grabbed it and converted it. I wonder if it's going to go the same way. For 4e players, do you think there's anything from Pathfinder you might nick for your own games?

MatthewJHanson · May 8, 2009

If there was no 4e, there would be no Pathfinder.

Paizo's flagship is not the Pathfinder RPG, it's the Pathfinder Adventure Paths. The RPG exists because Paizo did not want to convert to 4e. They don't want their APs to use a rule set no longer in print, so they decided to print their own book, and while they were at it update a few things.

Scribble · May 8, 2009

ProfessorCirno said:
The only person trying to make it into 4e vs Pathfinder is you. One could easily tell that judging by your very confrontational posts on the other thread.

So here, let me alter the tread for you:

I'm not a huge fan of 4e, but I like some of the stuff in it, so I've grabbed it and converted it. I wonder if it's going to go the same way. For 4e players, do you think there's anything from Pathfinder you might nick for your own games?

Umm... I could be reading it wrong, but he seems to have specifically taken 4e out of the equation in this post.

He seems to be asking:

What is it about Pathfinder that makes it worth purchasing. From my point of view it seems to be somewhat at odds with itself. In one case it seems it's supposed to continu support for 3.5... In the other it seems to be about fixing some of the 3.5 knows issues.

1. Is it about being compatible with 3.5? If so then put through his question we seem to get:

What makes this worth buying for someone who already owns the 3e rule books? (Aside from one day yours might wear out.)

2. Is this about fixing issues with 3.5? If so then put through his question we seem to get:

What fixes new features does it enact that make this purchase worth "upgrading" to, rather then sticking with 3.5 (which has lots of source books, some of which cannot be updated in Pathfinder.)

In addition, aside from Pathfinder Vrs 3e, he also seems to just want to know in general, what makes pathfinder better then other RPGs entirely (not D&D or D20 related) that he could spend his money on.

I could be wrong though.

Liquidsabre · May 8, 2009

GMforPowergamers said:
What makes this worth rebuying the books I own form Wotc??? and what makes it worth me eaither spending time updating or throwing away 25+ classes that can not be done pathfinder (Not OGL)?

Keep in perspective that gamers jumping into 4e from 3.5e are potentially throwing away dozens of 3.5e books and "rebuying" a whole new set of D&D books for 4e.

Pathfinder is 3.5e revised. The core classes have been bumped in power level to coincide with the power levels of later released base classes and PrCs. Most of those and the books they are in won't need to be adjusted much or at all. Currently our game group is playing Pathfinder Beta until August release of the game and our DM is running the 3.5e Shackled City Campaign with little or no adjustments.

Whether picking up the Pathfinder core book or not will be entirely up to the individual. If you pick it up and like what you see you can use it along with all the wonderful Paizo support materials (modules, campaign setting, item cards, adventure paths, etc.), all your current 3.5e books and other 3e materials.

Pathfinder is for 3.Xe D&D fans that would like to see an improvement to the system, backwards compatibility, and quality continued support. With luck the quality of Paizo's products will even be able to create more fans of the game and system.

Aus_Snow · May 9, 2009

Ugh, never mind.

malraux · May 9, 2009

MatthewJHanson said:
If there was no 4e, there would be no Pathfinder.

Paizo's flagship is not the Pathfinder RPG, it's the Pathfinder Adventure Paths. The RPG exists because Paizo did not want to convert to 4e. They don't want their APs to use a rule set no longer in print, so they decided to print their own book, and while they were at it update a few things.

If I were not playing 4e, this would be the big selling point for me for PFRPG. Good or bad rules are secondary to good adventures, which paizo produces in spades.

Also, following up on mearls post here, I see this as addressing one of the big issues with OGL, the iterative improvements. I haven't followed the development of PF all that closely, but it seems to me like we could see this sort of incremental improvement with the smaller audience that PF will have (relative to the size of the 3e WotC market).

Intense_Interest · May 9, 2009

Its amazingly easy to avoid the edition war when you remember that you don't have an incentive to fight it. To paraphrase a geek-movie quote, "Hasbro is not the evil empire, Pathfinder is not the plucky hero." (And there is no incense, so there)

Pathfinder has 10+ years of D20 system design and designer experience behind it, along with some of the top-shelf names in the industry flocking to it for art, fluff, and crunch. If you don't think that there will be SOMETHING of worth in the book for any DM/Player of a Fantasy/Magical-World campaign, you're delusional.

Yes, it might be 10 pages of useful in a 500 page bag, but I don't mind- I'm not poor, nor am I banned from re-selling/re-gifting the rule-set if I don't find it to be a keeper. And thankfully, I have a FLGS that allows for me to give a book as hard look as Barnes & Noble does (aka pretty much cover-to-cover) because 90% of the pleasure of buying a gaming book is owning it and being able to reference if when needed, not finding out the secret that I'll run home and write down before I forget.

That said, Pathfinder isn't competing with 4E, and it probably never will- 4E is a "Big Tent" concept, with online magazines, computer tool access, and a larger player-base to find a group from. Instead, it is Pathfinder Adventure Paths are competing with WotC adventure paths, and I don't think Piazo will have a problem. WotC's adventure paths seem to be mostly about being hidden advertisements for new monsters, traps, encounters, and other crunch to advertise to GMs so that they can cannibalize for their own campaigns, rather than fully-written stories that gamers can compare notes to.

Remathilis · May 9, 2009

MatthewJHanson said:
If there was no 4e, there would be no Pathfinder.

Paizo's flagship is not the Pathfinder RPG, it's the Pathfinder Adventure Paths. The RPG exists because Paizo did not want to convert to 4e. They don't want their APs to use a rule set no longer in print, so they decided to print their own book, and while they were at it update a few things.

See, that doesn't really strike me as "good" reason to create a 560 page behemoth.

Pathfinder is, for the most part, an idea made out of corporate necessity, not inherent merit. The concept was twofold: 1.) We want to keep the 3e rules in print so that we don't have to convert to 4e, and 2.) we want to make out product sufficiently different from the WotC books to warrant the audience re-buying these rules.

The first is based on the notion that the 3e core rules will become scarce and "in-demand" and thus require an "additional printing" to replace the dwindling finite pool of 3e books. The second is the carrot offered to get people who have perfectly good 3e libraries (including supplemental WotC books and 3pp books) to 're-buy" the rules yet again.

I suspect there will be enough audience between Paizo fans, 3e enthusiasts, and curious gamers to make the PFRPG a success. I can't foresee it overtaking D&D, or even WoD in popularity; its an 8 year old system rebundled without its famous brand-name with a handful of rule-changes by a company few but the most hardcore gamers have heard of. Its a niche product for a specific niche of players.

I wish Paizo good luck with this endeavor, but I refuse to think its the Second Coming of the TTRPG world...

Intense_Interest · May 9, 2009

Remathilis said:
Pathfinder is, for the most part, an idea made out of corporate necessity, not inherent merit.
...
I wish Paizo good luck with this endeavor, but I refuse to think its the Second Coming of the TTRPG world...

Does it need to be? Mutants & Masterminds has been around since 2002 and is a multiple ENnie award-winning system, and Green Ronin has been a celebrated games publishing company for longer than that.

Yes, Piazo wants to "make money". So does Hasbro & Wizards of the Coast. It isn't a bad thing, and shouldn't be the basis of a slam against the company.

And yet some people have it in their heads that if they don't "win" on ENworld or the internet-at-large in convincing people to convert to their chosen system that they won't find anyone to play. If you can't find anyone to play Pathfinder with, it won't be because you lost an argument on the internet.