Pathfinder 1E Could Pathfinder benefit from emulating 5th edition's creature type scheme?

[VelvetViolet]

5th edition more or less uses the 3.5 creature type system except that animals and vermin have been folded into "beasts," magical beasts and monstrous humanoids have been folded into "monstrosities," and outsiders have been split into "celestials" and "fiends."

Could Pathfinder benefit from emulating these changes?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Pathfinder is a fairly detailed system, with a lot of interactions between different rules. Implementing such a scheme would almost certainly be more trouble than it's worth.

 

[VelvetViolet]

Pathfinder is a fairly detailed system, with a lot of interactions between different rules. Implementing such a scheme would almost certainly be more trouble than it's worth.

I'm not convinced. It's an extremely simple change.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Sure, fair enough, but then what do you gain? The only thing that comes to mind right now is specific spell effects which might be perfectly reasonable for vermin or monstrous humanoids, but which probably shouldn't be extended to all animals or magical beasts.

 

[VelvetViolet]

Sure, fair enough, but then what do you gain? The only thing that comes to mind right now is specific spell effects which might be perfectly reasonable for vermin or monstrous humanoids, but which probably shouldn't be extended to all animals or magical beasts.

That's what subtypes are for. Pathfinder still has elemental shape despite elementals being a subtype. Better yet, rework the spells so they can't be exploited like that.

I think that HD/BAB/saves/skills should be completely decoupled from creature type rather than treating them as actual classes. Take a page from 4e and give monsters suitable roles. Most of the types could be deprecated or made into subtypes a la 4e without losing anything of value.

There's no reason to remained enslaved to the sacred cows of 3e. Do creature types really need to determine HD/BAB/saves/skills? Do we really need a dragon type separate from magical beast? Do we really need a monstrous humanoid type separate from humanoid?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

There's no reason to remained enslaved to the sacred cows of 3e. Do creature types really need to determine HD/BAB/saves/skills? Do we really need a dragon type separate from magical beast? Do we really need a monstrous humanoid type separate from humanoid?

I dunno, I find those things are pretty useful. Racial advancement makes more sense than giving everything class levels. And separating dragons from magical beasts makes a lot of sense in terms of what you're parceling out to the various polymorph spells.

If you wanted to implement a 4E-style role system, you would practically have to start from scratch.

 

[delericho]

If and when there's a Pathfinder 2nd edition, it would benefit from looking at everything that D&D has done since 3.5e. And, in fact, everything that other games have done as well.

Of course, much of that material will be of little or no relevance, but there are certainly some things worth adopting. This change to the monster types may well be among the worthwhile changes.

But before PF 2nd Ed rolls around, I suspect it would be more trouble than it's worth. That's the problem with rules-complex, tightly interconnected rule systems - any change, even one ostensibly to simplify things, adds yet more complexity to the whole.

 

[VelvetViolet]

If and when there's a Pathfinder 2nd edition, it would benefit from looking at everything that D&D has done since 3.5e. And, in fact, everything that other games have done as well.

I vote treating ability scores as modifiers (True20) and making skill ranks a fixed value (Unearthed Arcana). It simplifies referencing a whole lot.

Before 3e, only a few creature tags were particularly relevant: animal, extra-planar, humanoid, monster, non-living, plant and undead. If creature statistics are divorced from creature types, then there's less of a reason to have so many of them.

 

[VelvetViolet]

I have to admit that I do have an axe to grind. I've always disliked the outsider type, even more than I've disliked all the other redundant or arbitrary types. The outsider type not only includes fiends, celestials, inevitables, proteans, aeons, genies, jyoti, shae, and so on, but also random creatures that could just as easily be animals like fire snakes and tenebrous worms. I'd prefer to just deprecate the outsider type completely. Fiends and Celestials can become their own type, Inevitables and other lawful outsiders can become constructs, proteans and other chaotic outsiders can become aberrations, Aeons and Genies and Shae and whatever can become Fey, while all the rest can become magical beasts and monstrous humanoids and whatnot. You don't even need to change their statistics if we separate creature type from class features: e.g. the Shae becomes "N Medium fey (augmented outsider, extraplanar)," where "augmented X" indicates it uses the features of X type instead of its current type.