D&D 5E Could Paizo go 5e?

Zardnaar · Jan 20, 2016

If they did I would expect a dip a toe in the water approach and it would be conversions of existing material probably Rise of the Runelords or the Inner Sea Campaign guide. The ISCG would require very little conversion.

hawkeyefan · Jan 20, 2016

Mistwell said:
I get there is competition between fans there, but I don't know if it's as extreme as you paint that picture. I dunno, I run 5e, and ran 4e and 3.5e before that....but I am using a Paizo Pathfinder adventure path that I am converting on the fly with 5e, and one of their initiative trackers as well. I somehow doubt a meaningful number of people would be so upset by Paizo converting an existing AP to 5e such that it would impact their sales in any negative way. You really think die-hard fans of either Paizo or WOTC would suddenly change their buying habits as a result of them doing that conversion such that it would hurt one or both of those companies in terms of sales? I can't see that happening.

I've already incorporated Golarion into my 5E campaign, too. I am not averse to using material from either company, or both. I do think that there are fans that are averse to it, though. I think that's very clear. Is it a significant portion? No way to know for sure, not unless this actually happened. However, I think that perception would be something the Paizo folks would keep in mind. It's likely the least concerning of the factors I listed, though.

But I think it also comes into play as a question of resources. I do believe that there are Pathfinder fans who absolutely will not try 5E. So does Paizo risk making a product that some of its fans would not even consider purchasing? And since you narrowed our hypothetical product down to an existing adventure path...how many people who already owned and played the AP would buy a 5E conversion? I mean, you're using an existing AP yourself and converting on the fly. Maybe you'd welcome a version that was already converted for you, but I also think there'd be plenty of folks who were fine with saving the money and continuing to do conversions themselves.

So in a general way, I think the fan perception certainly plays a part. But less so that other factors, and it's not always easy to draw a clear line between factors.

Staffan · Jan 20, 2016

JudgeMonroe said:
That's true. They didn't port it out to the SRD, though, and some of it came from other OGL sources in the first place, but yes a whole whack of variant rules were Opened in UA. The comparison stands; UA was one book of dozens, and Paizo's SRD still grows with every release.

Wizards did include psionics, epic levels, and divinity rules in the SRD as well.

Eric V · Jan 20, 2016

darjr said:
Yea. IF Paizo did a Greyhawk book with WotC I don't think it'd be for the money.

They'd get MY money, that's for sure!!

delericho · Jan 21, 2016

Staffan said:
Wizards did include psionics, epic levels, and divinity rules in the SRD as well.

Yep. Also some domains that first appeared in, IIRC, the FRCS.

lkj · Jan 21, 2016

Nevermind Paizo. Maybe they can just hire Erik Mona to work on it as a passion project.

JudgeMonroe · Jan 21, 2016

delericho said:
Yep. Also some domains that first appeared in, IIRC, the FRCS.

As far as I can tell, there are no domains in the SRD that weren't present in the PHB; I don't know what FRCS domains you are thinking of.

Not that it matters; really Wizards got off to a good start with the SRD but it was effectively frozen once revised to 3.5 -- epics, divine, and psionics were added to the SRD even though the associated books for those rules were not themselves Open; MM2 included a couple of pages of open content because they recycled 3rd party monsters.

The point is still that fundamentally the development of 3.5 remained closed, and Wizards produced a phenomenal amount of content for the game that was never added to the SRD or quietly Opened like UA. In contrast, I don't think Paizo has published so much as a stat block without opening it (hyperbole, folks). It follows that Paizo knows they can't put the genie back in the bottle -- if they alienated their fanbase with Pathfinder 2 (or Path5nder) someone can come in and do what they did to Wizards in the first place, except with the entire Pathfinder ruleset, no crunch held back, and pick right up where Paizo left off. I think that's an incredible incentive to keep themselves honest.

The tipping point for Paizo will be when the value of their IP (iconic characters, Golarion, adventure paths) exceeds that of the *rules*. As I mentioned earlier, they've done a good job of double-dipping on a lot of their IP, but they have yet to crack the digital domain (Pathfinder Online being considered a loss until further notice). The day may come where that tipping point is reached, and I think it's only then they'd make any substantial shift to the rules of their tabletop game, and even then there's no particular reason to echo the DND5 rules in particular.

Staffan · Jan 21, 2016

JudgeMonroe said:
As far as I can tell, there are no domains in the SRD that weren't present in the PHB; I don't know what FRCS domains you are thinking of.

These domains.

JudgeMonroe · Jan 21, 2016

Staffan said:
These domains.

Like the rest of the Divine rules, those domains came from Deities and Demigods. They may have also been in FRCS (I don't care to check) but they were shoveled into the SRD as part of the D&D package. What's funny is that they didn't even bother updating these domains for 3.5, i.e., the 3.5 update booklet lists the changes to be made to these domains but those changes never made it to the 3.5 SRD.

delericho · Jan 22, 2016

JudgeMonroe said:
As far as I can tell, there are no domains in the SRD that weren't present in the PHB; I don't know what FRCS domains you are thinking of.

I was thinking of the ones [MENTION=907]Staffan[/MENTION] linked to. You're right, however, that those come from "Deities & Demigods" (some of them, such as Madness (RttToEE) and Scalykind (FRCS), don't originate there, but that's the book where they're all gathered).

Not that it matters...

The point is still that fundamentally the development of 3.5 remained closed, and Wizards produced a phenomenal amount of content for the game that was never added to the SRD or quietly Opened like UA.

Sure, I agree with that.

As always, though, it's worth noting that WotC were never under any obligation to add anything to the SRD. It's really good that Paizo see significant value in open gaming, and I'll list that as one of their strengths, but that doesn't imply that I'll necessarily criticise WotC for coming to a different conclusion.