Is There Possibility of a PF1.5 or a 3.5 Revival? Whether Directly or Something With Similar 'Ethos'

[payn]

I honestly wonder what people want from 3.x that PF1E doesn't fill the need.

Im guessing its something that solves the perceived problems of the system. As noted, those can vary person to person so there is absolutely no central target here.

 

[Staffan]

I honestly wonder what people want from 3.x that PF1E doesn't fill the need.

Warlocks? Hyperspecialist casters (Warmages, Beguilers, Dread Necromancers)? Martial adepts (though I believe Dreamscarred Press did something along those lines)? Artificers?

For all the additional classes PF1 made, they sure avoided some of the cooler 3.5e class concepts.

 

[Pedantic]

I honestly wonder what people want from 3.x that PF1E doesn't fill the need.

Good feat design?

Really though, the answer is design progress and completeness. PF1 was absolutely just nibbling around the edges of change, and at best cleaned up things like the weirdness of skill scaling and dead class levels, and doing strange things, like doubling the number of feats while roughly halving their power. If you wanted to take the design forward, you'd need to settle on which parts of 3e are core to the experience, and then double down on delivering them. My list of essentials is probably something like:

• Unified PC/NPC progression rules
• Completely explicated skills
• A robust object interaction engine
• Less a concern for me, but important to many people- Class levels as chunky point buy

After that, it gets a little wibblier on what's an improvement, exactly. Personally, I'd prefer to see more unique magic progression systems and better silo'd access to spells in general (more Dread Necromancers and Beguilers, less Archivists and Wizards). Throw in more aggressive skill effect scaling to higher levels, and I'd be pretty happy. I think core to the whole idea is that anything that's important should be modeled with specific mechanics, and that those mechanics should be transparent to players and available for their use.

 

[Reynard]

Good feat design?

Really though, the answer is design progress and completeness. PF1 was absolutely just nibbling around the edges of change, and at best cleaned up things like the weirdness of skill scaling and dead class levels, and doing strange things, like doubling the number of feats while roughly halving their power. If you wanted to take the design forward, you'd need to settle on which parts of 3e are core to the experience, and then double down on delivering them. My list of essentials is probably something like:

• Unified PC/NPC progression rules
• Completely explicated skills
• A robust object interaction engine
• Less a concern for me, but important to many people- Class levels as chunky point buy

After that, it gets a little wibblier on what's an improvement, exactly. Personally, I'd prefer to see more unique magic progression systems and better silo'd access to spells in general (more Dread Necromancers and Beguilers, less Archivists and Wizards). Throw in more aggressive skill effect scaling to higher levels, and I'd be pretty happy. I think core to the whole idea is that anything that's important should be modeled with specific mechanics, and that those mechanics should be transparent to players and available for their use.

But at that point is it really a continuation?

 

[TheHumanHydra]

• Less a concern for me, but important to many people- Class levels as chunky point buy

Just curious what you mean by "Class levels as chunky point buy."

 

[Alzrius]

Personally, I think there's so many PF1 third-party products out there that it's easy to mix-and-match various system tweakes/changes that it's easy to make the game engine into what you want it to be. The real issue is finding what you're looking for in the firs place (well, that and making everyone else at the game table familiar with whatever eclectic hodgepodge you eventually cobble together).

 

[Pedantic]

But at that point is it really a continuation?

Yeah, absolutely. We've got ongoing design work derived from basically every other iteration of D&D at this point. 3e is the only edition that's really treated as closed, we're even seeing a spike of interest in 4e derived designs lately. The 3pp market for 3e/PF1 was massive, if all you're looking for is more products to support what was already there, you can just go find that from the existing material. I'm much more interested in someone doing a design iteration emerging from the 3e era.

Just curious what you mean by "Class levels as chunky point buy."

That's the 3e (and now still 5e) multiclassing model, where you take classes one level at a time and pick each time you level up what you're going to invest the level into.

 

[aramis erak]

I honestly wonder what people want from 3.x that PF1E doesn't fill the need.

Core 3.0 is slightly simpler than core PF1.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I honestly wonder what people want from 3.x that PF1E doesn't fill the need.

PF1 is taking the D&D 3e that we got, and continuing on in that direction (stopping to make a few course-corrections along the way). If you enjoyed the basic premise/design ethos of 3e, but thought it had done one or more things specifically wrong, some other attempt at the same basic conceit might be more to your liking. Mind you, this leads down a nebulous 'what makes something 3.x-ish?' line of questioning.

 

[Reynard]

PF1 is taking the D&D 3e that we got, and continuing on in that direction (stopping to make a few course-corrections along the way). If you enjoyed the basic premise/design ethos of 3e, but thought it had done one or more things specifically wrong, some other attempt at the same basic conceit might be more to your liking. Mind you, this leads down a nebulous 'what makes something 3.x-ish?' line of questioning.

Right. What would it look like to be a 3.x game that wasn't PF?