Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder Just Keeps Looking Better

[Wulf Ratbane]

pre-Gen Con.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Anyone else seeing the possibility of a fractured 3.5E community, one embracing Pathfinder and one refusing to touch it?

 

[DaveMage]

Anyone else seeing the possibility of a fractured 3.5E community, one embracing Pathfinder and one refusing to touch it?

Nah - for those that want to stick with straight 3.5, Pathfinder will simply be Unearthed Arcana 2.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Anyone else seeing the possibility of a fractured 3.5E community, one embracing Pathfinder and one refusing to touch it?

Not for very long. I think the subset of folks who don't want anything new, ever, is pretty small.

Most folks will go where there is new stuff to keep their creative fire stoked-- ergo, 4e or Pathfinder.

 

[Treebore]

Not for very long. I think the subset of folks who don't want anything new, ever, is pretty small.

Most folks will go where there is new stuff to keep their creative fire stoked-- ergo, 4e or Pathfinder.

I believe you are right.

 

[Azgulor]

At that point, you need to ask yourself: "What act of this romantic comedy am I in?"

If you're in the first act, chances are that your girlfriend is really wrong for you and that this girl who has sat next to you in homeroom has done it every day, waiting for you to notice her, hoping that you'll see that your girlfriend is wrong for you, and she's right. She'll probably embarass herself in front of you, but you are destined to be together.

If you're in the second act, chance are that girl is a man-stealer who will do all she can to ruin your relationship, and you will give into her, or at least appear to and be caught in a compromising situation, pretty soon. You should probably start thinking of inspiring songs of love you want to sing when you crash your girlfriend's uncle's funeral to tell her that she's the only one for you.

We can tell which act this is by looking at the girls. Is your girlfriend cold, aloof, businesslike, and concerned with appearances? Is the girl next to you perhaps not as statuesque, but more familiar, a little "girl-next-door," easily exemplary of the target demographic, maybe a little funny and keeping a journal? If this is the case, then you need to let Pathfinder win you over with her quirky charm and her deep personality. WotC will put up a fight because she was the prom queen and NO ONE SAYS NO TO THE PROM QUEEN, but she won't be able to stand between you and true love.

Did you recently meet your girlfriend with a hilarious course of events perhaps involving temporary amnesia, a chase scene with a poodle, or witty pop-culture refrences? Is the woman next to you a smoldering temptress in dark, revealing dresses who sits on your lap at every opportunity? If this is the case, you need to make a horrible mistake with Pathfinder before coming back to WotC, who will, of course, forgive you, but only after you debase yourself in an increasingly absurd series of events. You shouldn't be worried about her stern, uptight father (Hasbro), either, because he will warm to your ways once he sees your love for WotC is genuine.

Also, if your girlfriend has gone through a major life change in the last few years (such as a new job, a death in the family, or a new edition), it is possible you're in a drama instead of a romcom, and you should be prepared to cry, hold each other, and be sad, but ultimately not be able to relate to her in her new form, eventually learning that change is inevitable and that just because two people love each other doesn't mean that they can be in a relationship together.

To determine this, can I ask what song plays when you're doing your montage?

This, my friend, was all shades of awesome. Great post!

Sadly, the "spread the wealth around" infection plaguing the boards prevented me from awarding you XP (yet).

 

[Odhanan]

Not for very long. I think the subset of folks who don't want anything new, ever, is pretty small.

Most folks will go where there is new stuff to keep their creative fire stoked-- ergo, 4e or Pathfinder.

I agree.

There will still be people playing 3.5, but most of them will see Pathfinder still in print as a very good thing, even if they don't, in the end, adopt its variants.

 

[Azgulor]

Any new system I adopt will need to be significantly simpler than 3.5e. In particular it must have fast combat, and PCs must be easy to generate and 'maintain' for my less math-inclined players; eg no having to choose skill point allocation every level for every class, or having to make optimised feat choices not to suck.

I haven't heard any indication that Pathfinder does this, it seems very much a number-cruncher's game in the 3e mould.

Given how Pathfinder handles skills, I would suspect your conclusion is in error.

Also (and this is heavily into the IMO realm since I don't know your group), since D&D relies on nothing more complex than simple addition, subtraction, and the occasional x2 or x3 for crits, if that constitutes a steep math curve I think anything more than rules-light systems will eventual become burdensome. If 4e is their bag, go for it. I find it hard to believe that keeping track of marks, conditions, & forced moves on the fly during combat is easier to "maintain" than working on a character with simple math outside of the game itself but different strokes for different folks and all that.

 

[jdrakeh]

I've never really played OD&D. . .

Well, I guess I'm not really playing OD&D so much as I'm playing Swords & Wizardry with rules from Book 3 and Supplement 1 of OD&D.

. . . and what is the Fantasy Trip? Is that the proto-GURPS that SJ designed a long time ago?

It was the precursor to GURPS, yes — but unlike GURPS it was built explicitly for fantasy gaming and was published as a series of microgames.

The one that makes me most curious is Powers and Perils. I bought it a long time ago, made a couple of characters, but never played it.

I bought Powers & Perils back when I was 19 or so, read it (or tried to read it at any rate) and traded it off when I couldn't get past the case numbering and such. I recently re-purchased the Perilous Lands setting, read it, thought "Hey, this isn't so tough!" and decided to give the P&P core rules another go. I was pleasantly surprised.

If you sift through my post history here and elsewhere, you'll see that I have occassionally mentioned trying to pin down a system that handles learning, physical maturation, inherited traits, and other things like that with an eye toward verisimilitude. As my luck would have it, for me, Powers & Perils is pretty much that system.

It does have about 15 pages worth of errata — but I figure that 15 pages worth of relatively minor errata (most of which I never would have noticed in play if it hadn't been pointed ot to me) for a whole, five-book, box set isn't half bad. I've actually considered not using much of the errata, which would make the game far more lethal.

 

[Azgulor]

For me it's all about OD&D, The Fantasy Trip, Powers & Perils, and GURPS right now. I had been waiting for a second printing of the D&D 4e core books that incorporated the errata but I've decided to pass on those indefinitely.

GURPS is a fantastic system. My longest running and most successful sci-fi campaign was run in GURPS and my current fantasy campaign kicked off in GURPS as well. My only regret is that I didn't discover it back in college when I had the free time to devote to the level of customization it can allow.

For campaign customization to exactly what you or your players might want, it can't be beat. I also found to to run very smoothly once learned. I just spent way too much time in campaign building/customization mode and always felt underprepared for running actual sessions. That's a criticism of me, not the system, however. I just couldn't throw the "it's fine, move on" switch and stop tinkering.

Ultimately, OGL games and the availability of campaign settings and ready-to-run adventures lured me away from GURPS. But one day, dammit, I'm gonna run me a kick-ass fantasy campaign using GURPS.