D&D 3E/3.5 3.5 E, older D&D and Pathfinder. What do D&D vets think of pathfinder

[grufflehead]

The following is written from the perspective of someone who has played every edition of D&D apart from the very original box, who was happy to support Paizo by buying the Pathfinder Core Rules (and will buy the APG when it comes out) and for whom it is still likely to be the go to system for games.

Here's a suggestion for keeping the rogue 'viable' (never has a word so misappropriately applied made my blood boil like this one is beginning to accomplish): how about instead of lazy game design, quick fixes and pandering to the lowest common denominator, people actually try to write an adventure outside the model of 'spend a little bit of time making a couple of skill checks which are increasingly subverted by magic at higher level > get hit over the head with plot device > have a fight! > repeat until bored'? So, you know, the rogue player actually gets a chance to shine doing roguish stuff rather than being a poor-man's fighter who just happens to get a lot of skill points?

Please, for god's sake, let's not turn this place into the Paizo boards, which seem to be a watered down version of the Wizards' boards - the place is lousy with talk about 'builds', optimal choices, sh*tty WoW knock-off terminlogy like 'DPR' and pet names for classes. If you haven't realised it yet, Pathfinder, like its daddy, and its daddy before it, is not a balanced system - just like *gasp* 'rogue' <> 'fighter' so you can take your whining about how the rogue can't do as much damage as the other melee classes somewhere else. Spellcasters have always been able to do stuff that people who hit things with bits of metal *never* could. Saying that the rogue has been nerfed (see? I can use stupid terms too!) because he can't deal with undead while the wizard casually throws around disintegrates and the like is a false argument and a total waste of time.

It's designed to be a team game, which fosters cooperation, problem solving, builds confidence through taking on of personas and roles. As a mechanical exercise, it's about as balanced as a game of Monopoly where 1 player plays by the normal rules, 1 plays by the same rules but isn't allowed to buy property whose name begins with an 'S', and the other 2 start the game normally, then once they've played a few turns 1 gets a free hotel every turn and the other gets a wad of extra cash. If 'balance' is the way you judge the merit of your game system, go and find another one - it's not like there's a dearth of choice out there - because Pathfinder isn't, and never will be, it.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Here's a suggestion for keeping the rogue 'viable' (never has a word so misappropriately applied made my blood boil like this one is beginning to accomplish): how about instead of lazy game design, quick fixes and pandering to the lowest common denominator, people actually try to write an adventure outside the model of 'spend a little bit of time making a couple of skill checks which are increasingly subverted by magic at higher level > get hit over the head with plot device > have a fight! > repeat until bored'? So, you know, the rogue player actually gets a chance to shine doing roguish stuff rather than being a poor-man's fighter who just happens to get a lot of skill points?

I don't suppose you can recommend any adventures that are designed this way? Also, what do you think of Paizo's adventures?

Also, here's the standard video response that sums ups how a team dynamic can be wrecked when there's large power differences between players.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw"]YouTube- Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit[/ame]

 

[Votan]

Here's a suggestion for keeping the rogue 'viable' (never has a word so misappropriately applied made my blood boil like this one is beginning to accomplish): how about instead of lazy game design, quick fixes and pandering to the lowest common denominator, people actually try to write an adventure outside the model of 'spend a little bit of time making a couple of skill checks which are increasingly subverted by magic at higher level > get hit over the head with plot device > have a fight! > repeat until bored'? So, you know, the rogue player actually gets a chance to shine doing roguish stuff rather than being a poor-man's fighter who just happens to get a lot of skill points?

I'd like to think that there is an important difference between a few tweaks to keep the game running smoothly and a focus on hyper-optimization.

There are already a few things that the rogue can do with skills that are not straightforwardly physical possible. They can evade a fireball in a room that is completely filled. With enough skill they can balance on a cloud. Why is it not possible that they can find vulnerable points even on Undead? Or an ooze (after all, killing an Ooze with a sword is already an abstraction)?

So I guess I lean towards "make the class fun" and see the sneak attack revisions as helping to accomplish this goal. It still won;t make the rogue better in melee than a tricked out warrior nor will careful class design ever replace careful adventure design. But I think it is fun to enjoy tweaking an element of a class that seemed to work poorly (especially when the current tweak is actually included in Pathfinder and removing it would be a house-rule).

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Here's the thing. The rogue, nor any other class should be able to fight like the - what's his name again - oh yeah, FIGHTER. The entire premise that all classes should be equal in combat needs to go. Each class should be best at what it does. Rogues should be good at subterfuge, pickpocketing, disarming traps, etc. The core problem with rogues is the flanking mechanic. Lose that and make them have to, you know, sneak. That would change the entire dynamic of the class and go a long way towards losing the idea of "class balance." Balancing the classes by damage is an exercise in futility, anyway. I'd change this myself, but my players would mutiny. The cat is out of the back, too late to stuff it back in now. Funny thing is, back in the day, when thieves did crap all for damage, I never had a shortage of them. They were one of the most fun classes to play, regardless of their damage potential in combat.

 

[ancientvaults]

Please, for god's sake, let's not turn this place into the Paizo boards, which seem to be a watered down version of the Wizards' boards - the place is lousy with talk about 'builds', optimal choices, sh*tty WoW knock-off terminlogy like 'DPR' and pet names for classes. If you haven't realised it yet, Pathfinder, like its daddy, and its daddy before it, is not a balanced system - just like *gasp* 'rogue' <> 'fighter' so you can take your whining about how the rogue can't do as much damage as the other melee classes somewhere else. Spellcasters have always been able to do stuff that people who hit things with bits of metal *never* could. Saying that the rogue has been nerfed (see? I can use stupid terms too!) because he can't deal with undead while the wizard casually throws around disintegrates and the like is a false argument and a total waste of time.

It's designed to be a team game, which fosters cooperation, problem solving, builds confidence through taking on of personas and roles. As a mechanical exercise, it's about as balanced as a game of Monopoly where 1 player plays by the normal rules, 1 plays by the same rules but isn't allowed to buy property whose name begins with an 'S', and the other 2 start the game normally, then once they've played a few turns 1 gets a free hotel every turn and the other gets a wad of extra cash. If 'balance' is the way you judge the merit of your game system, go and find another one - it's not like there's a dearth of choice out there - because Pathfinder isn't, and never will be, it.

Well said! I scuttle around the fringes of the Paizo board, but don't post very much because of the mounting similarity to the WotC forum. There were so many posts mentioning "gish" in the title at one point that I almost threw out my Pathfinder books in disgust.

Like grufflehead said, it is a team game. It is not balanced. Don't try to make it balanced, just find a few friends and play the game. Enjoy the game. Don't min/max your character, just go with the flow. Run with the flaws and have as much fun with those as the strengths.

 

[grufflehead]

I don't suppose you can recommend any adventures that are designed this way? Also, what do you think of Paizo's adventures?

Although I haven't read beyond chapter 3, ENWorld's own War of the Burning Sky certainly has some different elements and challenges to it. Whether they can keep that up as the levels increase I'll have to see. From past experience, I'd put good money on Rite Publishing having a damn good go at it with Rituals of Choice but that is heavily tied to Arcana Evolved so probably would take a bit of work to shoehorn into PF/3.5.

As far as the Paizo AP's go, my experience hasn't been too stellar BUT it was all early stuff. One of the original gripes was with Age of Worms (which I think was them in the days they still did Dungeon for Wizards). I played 2 chapters of Rise of the Runelords and gave up. Boss fights taken to the max, it's the first time I've had a PC killed in a long time (and that was just a run of the mill encounter), and we were pretty much TPKed 4 or 5 times. The bad guy at the end of pt 2 (or maybe it was pt 3) was just ludicrous, frankly, so we left it at that. Kingmaker seems to be a fairly radical departure in game style though, so maybe the newer stuff is more varied?

Of course, the 2 answers to my moaning are: 'well if you're so clever why don't you write something better', and, probably more tellingly, 'the majority of our customers like this type of game so we'll continue to produce it'. For point 1 I'd pick a better game system, and for point 2, even though everything I've said leading up to this has been a criticism, I hope Paizo keep doing what they are doing. I want them to survive and flourish as a company, so if that makes them money, then it stands to reason they should pursue it.

Thanks for the video link - think it sums the 'balance' issue up pretty well

 

[Goblyn]

The monsters that are immune to sneak attack/critical hits in the PFRPG is actually pretty small:

Elementals, oozes, swarms, incorporeal creatures. That's pretty much it (although I feel like I'm forgetting one).
(snip)

Plants?

 

[grufflehead]

There are already a few things that the rogue can do with skills that are not straightforwardly physical possible. They can evade a fireball in a room that is completely filled. With enough skill they can balance on a cloud. Why is it not possible that they can find vulnerable points even on Undead? Or an ooze (after all, killing an Ooze with a sword is already an abstraction)?

Good point about Evasion, although they are not the only class to get that feature. As far as Balancing on a cloud, without trawling through the books for numbers I'd suggest that by the time you were high enough level to do that, not only would you have used a hefty chunk of skill points (and possibly a feat or two) but magic items and/or simple spells will equal or better that ability every time.

Which is one of the gripes with 3.5 model, and time will tell whether Paizo are inexorably sucked down the same black hole due to player pressure. In 3.5, take a class feature like Track. Who gets it: only the Ranger, and it is his *thing*. Somewhere, accompanied by a string quartet of the world's tiniest violins, a player of a wizard has said 'but I should be able to do that with a spell!'. An enterprising soul at WotC has thought 'hmm, if we write one up in a splatbook somewhere then the party will be able to compensate if nobody at the table plays a Ranger - everybody wins'. Well, except the player of the Ranger, who sees one of his core abilities eroded, turning him into an even more useless warrior - because, yes, people can whine about the rogue's inability to sneak some things, whereas the Ranger is a featless fighter, whose class ability is a whopping +2 damage (and +2 on a load of skills, some of which he's not very good at anyway) vs 1 type of creature. Got a great idea for a character whose favoured enemy is outsiders of the Earth subtype? Good luck getting much us out of that in the game, buddy... Oh, and let's not forget a combat style that's not only perfectly accessible to any other class, but which he SOMEHOW FORGETS HOW TO USE IN A SET OF PLATE MAIL!

So I guess I lean towards "make the class fun" and see the sneak attack revisions as helping to accomplish this goal. It still won;t make the rogue better in melee than a tricked out warrior nor will careful class design ever replace careful adventure design. But I think it is fun to enjoy tweaking an element of a class that seemed to work poorly (especially when the current tweak is actually included in Pathfinder and removing it would be a house-rule).

Again, to be as fair as I can to Paizo, they said they wanted backward compatibility with 3.5 so they were kind of stuck with a number of millstones/albatrosses round their neck. The sneak attack tweak was simple and easy to implement so it was kind of a no-brainer - for the record it's the way sneak attack is implemented that bugs me more than anything. But I'm afraid there is an element of 'the emperor's new clothes' about some of the supposed balancing that has gone on with the class tweaks in PF. The 'weak' classes have had a new paint job but under the hood their basic function and the way the rules support them is fundamentally the same - you can't polish a turd as they say.

Personally, I'd have had my cleaver out and made shoes and stew out of some of the supposed sacred cows of 3.5.

 

[BryonD]

Also, here's the standard video response that sums ups how a team dynamic can be wrecked when there's large power differences between players.

YouTube- Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit

And that standard video response is really fun and entertaining.

And when considering it, one must first keep in mind the hyperbole of the power discrepancy presented in the example. Are you claiming that the Fighter / Rogue disconnect is on this level? If so, then I'd strongly encourage you to find another system because the gap between PF and you will never be bridged. No offense, tastes differ and that is cool. But you are shopping in the wrong store.

If you are not claiming that this is a fair example, but is just a fun absurdity, the cool, lets talk about the point presented.

You will note that the video consists entirely of frontal assault combats.
My gaming sessions sometimes involve frontal assault combats. And when they do, the rogues expect to be support for the fighters. (And if anything, they do too good a job of it in PF).

But there are other events as well. And, just as often, the fighter is either supporting the rogue, or relying on the rogue to make the fighter's job a lot easier.

If you are looking for adventures, I won't be a lot of help. I run my own stuff 95% of the time. I currently started running Council of Thieves, but the party is now on a small island off the coast helping a band a anti-Cheliaxian pirates beat back a serpentfolk scheme, while a small skum invasion accidentally brought about by the serpentfolk's actions is making things more difficult for both sides. If you are at all familiar with CoT, you will know that I'm way off the rails.

So, if you want to play a very different game, then cool. This isn't it. No problem.

If you WANT to play the kind of game I play, then what is the relevant point of the video? (It is amusing.)

 

[MichaelSomething]

what is the relevant point of the video? (It is amusing.)

Honestly, that video doesn't really apply to the Rouge/Fighter debate. It's more of a defense of character balance in general, with a focus on the high level Wizard/Fighter dynamic; which I think we should avoid discussing.

As for the issue of character balance, generally it's looked at largely in the basis of combat. If you want to discuss how classes would be useful/balanced in various non combat situations, that's a completely different set of fish.

As for adventures, if you make your own, you'll probably working with goals/objectives/mindset that is different from published adventures. I bet you could create situations where the BMX Bandit really isn't always out shined by the horde of angels if you wanted to.

If I really wanted a 3.5 game that truly attempted to balance things, I would go buy Trailblazer.