Pathfinder 1E New Convert... do i get a free welcome gift?

[wlmartin]

I am a big 3rd fan... the lack of good games for 3rd in my area drew me towards 4e and after much time I am now clawing my way back to my loved edition and waving goodbye to 4th edition.

I immediately pulled out 3.5 books and started revisiting and refreshing my knowledge and the more I did, the more I was getting pulled towards Pathfinder. At first I was like "blurgh" (spits out food), why would I want to move to a non-d&d platform. Then i read up and saw that Pathfinder is basically just a rose-by-another name and by all looks, you could very much justify it is 3.5, with house rules that are logically thought out and quite productive.

Now, I am pretty much sold on Pathfinder as a replacement for 3.5 which in turn is going to be a replacement for 4e.


So now that I am aware of the key changes

• some minor changes to combat
• some skill amalgamations
• more balanced skill point allocation
• no more XP MC penalty
• no more 1rog splash exploits or ftr exploits
• mages can use some 0-levels as at wills (thus not resigning themselves to slinger or rushing the group to a rest to refresh their spell slots)
• no more dead levels
• more effective improvements to classes (i love the rage can be seperated over an entire day for barbs

So in preperation for my upcomming changes as DM,

Am i missing any bit gotcha's?



Also, are there any big pieces of advise for softening the blow for a group that is mostly new to d&d and is pretty much 4e as their teeth-cut, rather than myself who knows it all (lol)


EDIT : My group is 7 strong, 4e combat is quite hefty at 1-2 hours per encounter... at 3rd/4th level what difference should I expect in encounter length?

 

[Matthew Ashburn]

Our group,which has been going for maybe 5 years now,still takes quite a bit of time on combat.I can't compare it to 4E,as I've never played, but pathfinder combat rules do get pretty crunchy. Though that may not be the case with newer players,we just tend to have complex builds.

 

[Kinak]

You got pretty much everything. Almost all of the combat changes are in combat maneuvers, so I'd read over those.

There is an important result to some of the changes when you add them together: multi-classing isn't that big a deal anymore. A lot of the best builds are single-classed and you generally don't have to dip or prestige class to keep up.

Like with any edition, combat length varies a lot by group. My group (two experienced players, two less experienced) can get through three or four combats in a two to three hour session with time left for exploration and roleplay. That's with maps and minis and all that, around 13th level.

The biggest slowdown in my experience for Pathfinder combat is the enemies. I was the bottleneck for my group, so I reworked the monsters pretty extensively. I'm not sure you'll find the same thing with 7 players.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[DMZ2112]

Also, are there any big pieces of advise for softening the blow for a group that is mostly new to d&d and is pretty much 4e as their teeth-cut, rather than myself who knows it all (lol)

You definitely need to explain to them that it is going to be a completely different experience. Saying that the title is the only thing the two games have in common is a bit of an overstatement, but I know enough people who have played both editions and now refuse adamantly to play one or the other to say that the differences are extremely contentious.

The best gameplay advice I can give you is make sure you're running Pathfinder with a battlemat and miniatures, so that at least that feels as familiar as possible.

EDIT : My group is 7 strong, 4e combat is quite hefty at 1-2 hours per encounter... at 3rd/4th level what difference should I expect in encounter length?

It does depend a great deal on party makeup and encounter complexity, but generally speaking you should see a dramatic decrease.

 

[wlmartin]

Tell them? What fun is that (LOL)

Just "poof" you now no longer have your 4e attack powers, oops you died, oops

They will know, no worries
We use d&d tiles anyway and a massive dumper truck sized box of minis

 

[the Jester]

Have fun!

Personally- nothing against Pathfinder, but with all the 3e material I have and the minor level of changes made to it to generate PF, I just have never felt any motivation to buy in. Especially because it didn't address most of the issues I have with 3e.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

My 4e fights only took that long at paragon...

The biggest differences are spell-like abilities. Wizards get spell-like abilities based on their specialty or lack thereof. So at 1st-level you can cast more. The abilities are fairly weak, but still better than using a crossbow. The abilities either don't scale or scale poorly, but that's the point; a caster that has grown out of them has enough spells per day.

Note that some of the abilities are very weak (eg necromancer, universalist) and some are not (eg conjurer).

Many cleric domains get similar spell-like abilities, if you want to cast rather than bash face. (If you want to bash face, look at Luck and Destruction.)

Sorcerers get expanded spell selection based on bloodline, but I'm not a good person to ask about this.

Be sure to monitor what classes and archetypes PCs use. Some (summoner, gunslinger) are problematic and aren't well-balanced. The core stuff... well, it's familiar, and usually slightly better balanced than 3.5.