Pathfinder 1E What Direction is Pathfinder Headed In?

[James Jacobs]

As for the system being in print, I would say in this era finding used RPG books in good condition on Amazon or eBay is trivial, and Paizo/Pathfinder fans tend to be computer savvy on the whole. I'd say its more for the image of publishing for a live system as opposed to a dead one.

It's certainly an image thing of publishing for a live vs. a dead system. It doesn't look very cool if, 2 years from now, a new gamer comes to Pathfinder and we say, "Yeah; you might be able to find the rules to play our game in some used book store or on ebay, but we can't actually sell those rules to you."

Also, by making the Pathifnder RPG, we can actually do things like refer to the core book by name. Which is actually gonna be kind of nice. There's a LOT of benefits to the situation for Paizo.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

The Pathfinder RPG will indeed be tackling high level play. We'll be playtesting it exclusively in a few weeks, in fact.

Thanks. That's...well, that's awesome. I think you guys have a very, very hard hurdle to jump, but I'm interested as hell to see if you can make it work.

WP

 

[joethelawyer]

Yup! You're reading too much into it. The "Dungeon Magazine Adventure Path" comment was only really a comment that the way I went about building Adventure Paths for Dungeon and Pathfidner are pretty much the same (with improvements each time, of course; it's a constant learning process for me!).

The Pathfinder RPG will indeed be tackling high level play. We'll be playtesting it exclusively in a few weeks, in fact. We've already got a few ideas I'm eager to try out (such as limiting the number of buff spells a character can have on at a time and looking long and hard at those extra iterative attacks and how they're handled and a few more things).

Thanks for responding, James.

I was wondering when I began this thread if you guys would respond. I was hoping someone would.

i guess i was looking for the overall 30 second elevator speech on where it is headed----are there any summarizing statements one could make which would describe the general direction you are taking to differentiate it from 3.5?

i am looking at the future, next summer i will buy it and then take it to my group which plays modified 3.0 rules. how can i pitch it to them to get them to adopt it in whole or in parts---enough to get them excited about it as a different direction, or that fixes big well known mostly agreed upon issues like high level play, or something that jazzes them up enough to get them to buy the pathfinder modules, etc. is beta 90% of the final version? or are there still big changes that might be made to it, like fixing power creep, reliance on stat increasing items, etc?

the other thing was from the original post----what criteria are you using to determine what gets adopted and what doesn't? Let's say for example that you get 10 different ideas as to wizard familiars. By what process does an idea get adopted internally over at Paizo and make it to the final product? Is it an internal vote after discussion at company HQ? Does one guy make the decision? Does the idea have to be playtested first? do you have a list of top 5 or criteria in some order of importance as goals to accomplish, or issues to tackle, or other types of design objectives which act as a filter through which all decisions are made as to whether or not a concept or rule make it into the finakl product?


thanks man...

 

[James Jacobs]

I guess the 30-second speech version would be something like this:

"The Pathfinder RPG is basically the same game you already know how to play, but we've tightened up some rules and made the base classes more appealing all the way to 20th level, and added in a lot of new options in feats while streamlining skills. The overall hope was to avoid cutting as much as we could from 3.5 while adding new options where we could—but in the end, it should still play well with your current collection of 3.5 gaming material."

I wouldn't say the Beta's 90% locked in at all, especially since the print version's missing prestige classes, a lot of spells and magic items and feats. and any flavor text. The final version'll add that all in, and some of the class mechanics may change as well (barbarian rage and wild shape are two that we're really looking at). But the Beta's still a great way to get a preview of where we're going. Again: We try not to cut too much out, but add stuff where we can. We've made a LOT of changes to the sorcerer, for example, but you can still play a 3.0/3.5 style sorcerer if you want; that's still an option. It's just no longer the ONLY option.

Beyond that, yeah; the things we're focusing on from now till we ship to the printer is clearing up language, adding flavor, dealing with power creep, etc.

As for what criteria we use to decide what goes in and what doesn't? For one, we'll be looking at the playtest feedback; if something is universally hated in playtest, it has a good chance of going away. If something is super popular, it has a good chance of staying.

But the playtest is only one tool we're using. We're also using our own collective experience with the game as well, as well as relying on other great designers like Monte Cook for advice as well. But when it comes down to the final stage of the game, and we're making the decisions on how many familiars to add... that decision is pretty much up to Jason. I have veto power, as does Erik Mona and Lisa Stevens, but for the most part the four of us are pretty in sync with where we want to go with the game. So it's basically four of us making those final decisions, with the bulk of that decision making being Jason's job. And of course... he weighs his personal experience with the game, the rest of our experience, advice from Monte, findings from the playtest, and feedback from Paizo's customers from the last six years or so as well to inform those decisions.

I'm pretty confident the game's in good hands, in other words. But I still have my fingers crossed!

 

[Turtlejay]

If pathfinder is not going to make 3.5 substantively better then what is the point with their system? During the lull at the end of our 3.5 campaign and before we started our current 4e campaign we downloaded and perused the pathfinder beta content. It added quite a bit of complexity and powered up the core races and classes. . .and kind of made it difficult to use all that super 3.5 content without some tweaking, DM permission, etc. So. . .if you like using only their stuff, fine, but if you liked 3.5 and were looking for some good fixes you could bring into your 3.5 game, you had to leave that other stuff out, or alter it, and who wants to commit to a system with that comes with that baggage and homework?

I like/liked 3.5 a whole lot. I like 4e a whole lot. I would like Pathfinder a whole lot if it added to 3.5 and addressed the problems while not being wholly incompatible with 3.5. The above mentioned limits on buff spells is a good example. It does not break earlier material but it fixes a substantive problem that others have pointed out. Adding even more mechanics soured me a bit.

Granted, as a 4e adopter I am not necessarily their target audience.

Jay

 

[joethelawyer]

I'm pretty confident the game's in good hands, in other words. But I still have my fingers crossed!

thank you very much for responding james. it does sound like you guys will produce something good, especially to the extent that you can address some of the larger issues like some of the folks have described above.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

thank you very much for responding james. it does sound like you guys will produce something good, especially to the extent that you can address some of the larger issues like some of the folks have described above.

You see, I don't have this faith. I don't have this faith because the source of the troubles with 3.5E are based in the underlying mathematics of the system, and the fact that nonspellcasters increase in power by a linear factor while spellcasters increase in power by an exponential factor, which is again mathematics of a sort. In addition, these mathematics, as applied to character creation and monster creation/application, are what makes 3.5E so much work, particularly on the DM end. These mathematics work tolerably well at low levels, and break down more and more as levels increase. Most, if not all I've seen with Pathfinder is tweaking this and tweaking that, and changing the surface and features of the game. It does nothing to address these fundamental mathematics.

I say this, and I criticize Pathfinder because while I am a 4E convert and am burned out on 3.5E, someday I expect I'll want to go back. Not in full, but to try it again, since I did play the game for years and enjoyed it. If things can be genuinely fixed, that would be a boon to me when that time comes. I'm not seing it though.

 

[joethelawyer]

You see, I don't have this faith. I don't have this faith because the source of the troubles with 3.5E are based in the underlying mathematics of the system, and the fact that nonspellcasters increase in power by a linear factor while spellcasters increase in power by an exponential factor, which is again mathematics of a sort. In addition, these mathematics, as applied to character creation and monster creation/application, are what makes 3.5E so much work, particularly on the DM end. These mathematics work tolerably well at low levels, and break down more and more as levels increase. Most, if not all I've seen with Pathfinder is tweaking this and tweaking that, and changing the surface and features of the game. It does nothing to address these fundamental mathematics.

I say this, and I criticize Pathfinder because while I am a 4E convert and am burned out on 3.5E, someday I expect I'll want to go back. Not in full, but to try it again, since I did play the game for years and enjoyed it. If things can be genuinely fixed, that would be a boon to me when that time comes. I'm not seeing it though.

i do have faith that they will do their best to try and fix the big picture broken elements, based on the representations above. i like the people at paizo. they are honest, and i think most importantly they are a company owned and run by hobbyists, not a megacorporation. pathfinder the rpg is the backbone of their company's focus, and i think they realize they need to make it a big enough distinction from 3.5 to make people want to get involved with the system, and that the best way to do that is to fix some of the biggest flaws in 3.5.

i have more faith in a company owned by gamers, than in wotc. how many companies would do what they are doing with their design process for the rpg? its unheard-of.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

how many companies would do what they are doing with their design process for the rpg? its unheard-of.

WotC, for one. Note the "playtest" material we are now seeing via DDI. I think they took a page out of Paizo's book on that (and it was a good page to take, despite some folks that don't like paying for a beta - both DDI and PF Beta).

I have faith in Paizo as well.

But let's not pull out the tired "WotC is filled with money grubbing corporate types" spiel, eh? Mona, Jacobs, Cook - all those cats have written for WotC. Do you think Mearls (who was part and parcel with the aforementioned names) suddenly lost his soul when he took a job deemed good for him? Is Heinsoo a corporate shill? Logan Bonner, Noonan, etc. These guys are as much gamers as any of us.

There's enough divisiveness these days that we don't need to be adding more.

WP

 

[joethelawyer]

I have faith in Paizo as well.

But let's not pull out the tired "WotC is filled with money grubbing corporate types" spiel, eh? Mona, Jacobs, Cook - all those cats have written for WotC. Do you think Mearls (who was part and parcel with the aforementioned names) suddenly lost his soul when he took a job deemed good for him? Is Heinsoo a corporate shill? Logan Bonner, Noonan, etc. These guys are as much gamers as any of us.

There's enough divisiveness these days that we don't need to be adding more.

WP

true. i didn't mean to slam wotc, as much as to express my relief that paizo doesn't have the same corporate issues that come from being a small piece of a much larger entity, and more importantly that they are a company run from top to bottom by gamers. its the best of all worlds.

i'm sure wotc is comprised of a great group of people who do the best they can with the situation they are in. but at the same time i bet they wish that everyone up and down the corporate ladder at hasbro was a longtime dnd gamer. that's all i was getting at.