Pathfinder 1E So what do you think is wrong with Pathfinder? Post your problems and we will fix it.

[Wicht]

In my case, improving is not my strong suit,...

I really hope you meant "improvisation."

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'm seeing a pattern here: I say that I want parity, and you think I want every 10th level character to be exactly equal. I say I want to avoid random cakewalks and TPKs, and you imply that I want totally predictable adventures. I say that I don't like PCs getting killed in their first encounter, and you jump to "TS must not like the possibility of death, ever!"

So maybe not immediately jumping to the most extreme implications of what others say would be better for civil discussion, dontcha think?

Well, implicit in your statements of "I want parity" or whatever else you want is that PF doesn't already have. You're not phrasing it in terms of gray areas ("I want more parity"), so I don't interpret it as such.

Moreover, PF already has what you want. It's quite easy to run a game with whatever level of preparation you want, and not have characters run all over it or get TPKed. People are doing it right now as we type. The things you want were already focused on in the original 3e design, the 3.5 revision, and the shift to PF, almost to the point of myopia. PF is a very tightly balanced game with relatively low lethality for low-level characters and relative parity among the classes. This was supposed to be about fixing things, and I don't see any impetus to fix what the game is already optimized to do.

(Giving NPCs 'innate' bonuses to shore up their numbers is actually something I recommend to remedy the 'NPCs are pushovers without a kingdom's worth of magical gear' problem.)

So a real problem would be something along the lines of the Christmas tree effect. This I don't know that PF really fixed. I don't particularly like that characters have to be decked out with magical gear to function effectively. I don't know that inherent bonuses are the answer, but it's at least something to ponder on.

Dying in your first encounter is a good way to become soured to the hobby forever, or at the very least be forced into another 30-90 minute chargen session. (I've never met a player who didn't want to make their own PC, despite my offers to provide pregens.)

I don't understand this phenomenon of being driven away from rpgs by one minor failure. Is there something about rpg players that makes them extra sensitive? Even if beginner characters are not immediately slaughtered, they're definitely going to fail in some meaningful ways.

If someone's coming in from the cRPG world (or have played an FPS or any game where character death is possible), they're used to having their character die a dozen times before they figure out how to really play. A lot of people, you have to convince them that character death matters, not massage their broken souls after it happens.

And even then, if you're trying to DM for true beginners, it may make sense to reduce the lethality level or throw in a free resurrection or something. Or maybe not. That's DMing advice, not something the rules need to concern themselves with.

Deciding whether to fudge the dice to save a PC or whether to force a player into another 30-90 minute chargen session because I'm bad at gauging power level is not my idea of a fun decision.

So maybe your solution would be to make the death window bigger or intentionally lower the challenge level or to make battles less frequent. That's fine. The game itself is not responsible for making sure that adventurers who are frequently engaged in battles to the death never actually die.

Sure, any DM can run a game on zero prep -- just pull stuff out of your nether regions, and roll those dice! The question is: how fun is the result? In my case, improving is not my strong suit, and my experience says that while some DMs are better at 'winging' it than I am, none do it so well that prep isn't preferable. So naturally, I want the game to help the DM out as much as possible

I think it's pretty likely that the more you put into something, the more you'll get out of it. How much time this hobby is worth though, is a very individual question. I'd also like the rules to help, but I'd mainly like them to help by getting out of the way. The prep time that I think is wasted is the time I spend patching and fixing things that are inconsistent or nonsensical. So...maybe we should fix those.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I really hope you meant "improvisation."

Maybe he can't improve because he's already doing it right.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I really hope you meant "improvisation."

Clearly, my shorthanding skills need improvement!

Moreover, PF already has what you want. It's quite easy to run a game with whatever level of preparation you want, and not have characters run all over it or get TPKed. People are doing it right now as we type. The things you want were already focused on in the original 3e design, the 3.5 revision, and the shift to PF, almost to the point of myopia. PF is a very tightly balanced game with relatively low lethality for low-level characters and relative parity among the classes. This was supposed to be about fixing things, and I don't see any impetus to fix what the game is already optimized to do.

If it wasn't already blindingly clear, we're just going to have to agree to disagree, because we live on completely different planets.

I agree that those things are true in comparison to earlier editions, so let's just leave it at that.

 

[Ahnehnois]

If it wasn't already blindingly clear, we're just going to have to agree to disagree, because we live on completely different planets.

I would have hoped though, that given the title and topic, this thread ought to be for people who use PF and accept it as a workable game and want to talk about making it a better version of what it is (i.e. the ones from my solar system).

 

[EnglishLanguage]

I would have hoped though, that given the title and topic, this thread ought to be for people who use PF and accept it as a workable game and want to talk about making it a better version of what it is (i.e. the ones from my solar system).

We've been trying, but everytime a flaw with Pathfinder is brought up it just turns into a shouting match of people telling us we're wrong or telling us to go play a different game if we think PF has a problem, neither of which are very helpful.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I would have hoped though, that given the title and topic, this thread ought to be for people who use PF and accept it as a workable game and want to talk about making it a better version of what it is (i.e. the ones from my solar system).

the title to me was a question... what is wrong with pathfinder, and I answered that question, then it says post your problems witch I did, then it says we will fix it... but instead of the last 4 words being true I am just told I am wrong....

I played 3.5 for 7ish years and 4e since 2008 when KotS came out. My group split and to try to keep up with friends I have tried to play pathfinder a few times. I have problems with the game system, and when I was offerd (in the title of the thread) people would help me fix it, I came here looking.

See I'm here trying to find work arounds to make me be able to go back to the guys playing pathfinder and say "Hey, here are some suggestions on improving the game and making me enjoy it more"

I am yet to hear an answer to may of the "problems" brought up here...

1) unbalanced progression. This is a big catch all of problems, weather you believe in lfqw or not, there is something here you must admit. It is possible to have 2 groups of PCs that are the same level going into the same dungeon, and be vastly different power levels. If group 1 is a power gamed wizard a pretty powered druid, a decent made gunslinger, and a multi classed power gamed twink, and group 2 is a fighter a rogue, a ranger and a paliden you could watch group 1 take less damage in the entire dungeon then group 2 takes in the first fight.... not so bad in different tables, but very bad when mixed.

1a) I still want to hear an argument for why wizards and clerics, a commonly held high powered set of classes needed to be given MORE class features, I'm pretty sure you could have cut there power and still left them 2 of the best classes in the game, but they chose to up them instead...

2) Legacy issues. Now you can argue that he unbalanced progression is a legacy issue in and of it self, but this goes a bit deeper then that, and it really needed it's own bullet point. Trying to keep pathfinder backwards compatible enough, left it full of issues that people had there own house rules for, that now need readdressing. It is the most surprising flaw I found back in 2010... It is so close to being 3e that it has a lot of the flaws, but different enough that my fixes needed to be reworked...

3) Abstract meta features. Love it or Hate it, pathfinder classes are just as full of gamest parts as 4e was. I laugh when people tell me that the 4e fighter come and get it is worse then an alchemist that can only use potions on himself, or a gunslinger that would fit right next to any class in 4e. One of the strong points of 3e (or so I was told) was how simiulationist it was, but it seams half of the new classes they made where gamest... witch confuses the whole system.

4) Splat book compatibility (AKA the money grab) remember how in bullet 2 I said they had changed enough to remove house rules, they also made changes to everyclass... and most feats. So any class race or feat from a non open source from wotc needs to be reworked to fit pathfinder... now to some that means it is just a new edition, but since it was sold atleast at first as a continuation, it annoys me that I have a few $100 worth of books that dont' work out of the box... Example: Warlock is one of my favorite classes but I have never met a PF GM that will let me play one. Bo9S was my favorite book from 3.5, followed closely by the second complete arcane, but both need to be tossed out in PF...

 

[pickin_grinnin]

That people keep repeating it's a DM issue that the casters keep outshining the non-casters is just sad... you're acknowledging that you actively need to build encounters around the fact that the non-casters only have limited ability to participate in the game and that casters have very powerful option, while the GM must force himself to create situations where not only these characters can participate BUT also show that they are required.

I think we have a fundamental difference in how we're conceiving of games and campaigns.

Combat and physical challenges are only a portion of any game I run, no matter who is playing or how their characters are designed. Just as much of it is pure roleplaying, figuring out mysteries, working through social issues with NPCs, strategizing, and other things that require more thinking than muscle or magic. When a player shows some genuine effort to roleplay his/her character (of any class or power level), I'm going to spend some time encouraging and rewarding that behavior. I don't take the stance that combat and getting treasure is the central thing, and everything else just leads up to that. It's all important, and not every course of action necessarily ends in fighting or wealth.

I go into a game (and even a long campaign) with a general outline of people, places, events, monsters, etc., but it's only a loose sketch. I ad-lib and improvise a lot as we go along. I don't design linear adventures that must be followed step-by-step to finish. The characters start in a particular time and place with all sorts of things happening around them (near and far), and pursue whatever catches their interest. It's a bit like a sandbox environment, but most players choose to go where the action is, and I make sure they know where opportunities for adventures exist. If they hear about a war in one kingdom and a monster in the hills killing strangers and trouble with pirates down to the south, they will generally go to check one of those things out. Whichever route they take, I have things prepared. If they decide one thing isn't worth it and switch their focus to another, so be it. I keep enough stuff prepared to give them the ability to find some sort of adventure anywhere they look.

Any adventuring party in my campaigns will come up against things that are real challenges for them. Those challenges may differ according to the levels of the characters, the mix of classes being used, etc. No matter how powerful the characters are, they are going to face challenges that they may not defeat, because overcoming challenges is part of the fun of playing.

It's not that I have to alter my game to give everybody a chance to shine. Every game and campaign I run is automatically going to be designed that way, because that's a fundamental part of the way I run them.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

feats lack direction, and having Power Attack, Empower Spell & Acrobatic all cover the same design space AND resource cost boggles my mind. This makes feat choice difficult as sometimes you want feats so your character stays relevant (barbarian with combat feats) but, as you point out later on, also need feats to shore up deficiencies in the system (like, say, limited skill points and skill selection).

feats are a neat concept as they allow for customization, but they need more refinement and focus to be truly helpful.

<snip>

my problem, again, is that the skill selection various classes have access to is a mess. "get a better int score" or "use your feats to get skills" doesn't solve the conceptual issue that there are 35 unique skills in pathfinder and by default, the fighter of average intelligence can pick 2.

this seriously limits the number of viable concepts one can make as class choice should not inform how skilled the character is. that two fighters, one that comes from an aristocracy and all the educational and social privileges thereof and one that is basically a farmhand with a swordarm should not share the same conceptual skill base, yet they do. this is, IMO, a failing of the game.

I definitely agree with you on those points. Feats do represent a fairly odd mix of things that more properly should have different resource costs, and the general skill limit on some classes really is ridiculous. The skill list if woefully short, as well.

My preference would be for Pathfinder to move to a classless system to let people come up with more well-rounded characters. I don't see it happening anytime soon, unfortunately.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

Rather, the best approach to designing encounters is to put in a variety of challenges in a way that seems pleasing and desirable to you the designer, and then let the players deal with it however they want.

You don't have to figure out ahead of time all the ways your players will solve the problems, because they will likely surprise you (at least they tend to surprise me).

However, if your design incorporates a variety of challenges, requiring more than one solution, then chances are much higher that the party will have to work together to solve the challenges. And while magic will be the solution to some of the problems, if you have done it right, there is little reasonable way it can be the solution to all the problems. Wizards just do not get that many spells per day.

Yes, exactly.