3E? 4E? PF? Trailblazer.

[Wulf Ratbane]

I wasn't trying to say you copied anything explicitly, more that both rulesets cover similar ground in similar ways. I should have phrased it to make it clear that my statement was based on Trailblazer's Section 15.

Don't worry-- I didn't take it that way. I am not hesitant to use Open Content nor to give the sources their due. That's what it's there for: moving the best ideas forward.

(It's also why 3e will be forever superior to 4e as far as I am concerned.)

Mostly I see it in the Action Point rules, primarily the exploding dice and a number of the Enhancements.

I think the Open Content progression probably goes something like Spycraft/d20 Modern > Grim Tales > Mythic Heroes (specifically those enhancements) > Trailblazer.

At any rate, I am in the habit of including my own works in my own Section 15, just as a general rule; as a result of that, you'll often see a lot of those upstream copyright references.

Perhaps to address the issue another way: Spycraft was never open as a reference work while I was working on Trailblazer. But Grim Tales, Unearthed Arcana (WotC) and Arcana Unearthed (Monte) were often close at hand during development.

 

[Nikosandros]

I like Trailblazer a lot. I might not agree with several of the design decisions, but it is a very well thought product and the fact that out goes out of its way to provide the reasoning behind its choices makes it an invaluable source of ideas... I wish more gaming products were written like this.

I have a question about the interaction between TB and Pathfinder. PF is rather similar to 3.5, but there are a number of changes, like the increased feat progression for characters. Would you apply TB "as is" to a Pathfinder game, do you see it as more or less a complete alternative, or would you tweak some of the design choices in TB?

One last question. Why are climb and swim separated in a game that has a broad skills such as perception and stealth?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I have a question about the interaction between TB and Pathfinder. PF is rather similar to 3.5, but there are a number of changes, like the increased feat progression for characters. Would you apply TB "as is" to a Pathfinder game, do you see it as more or less a complete alternative, or would you tweak some of the design choices in TB?

Here's another question I have answered so often, it would behoove me to write down some boilerplate.

I would answer briefly by asking what it is you want to get from your 3e game. If you consider yourself primarily a 3e fan, and you are looking for Pathfinder to "fix" your 3e game, then you might find the fixes in Trailblazer work better. That's personally where I find myself-- with a 3e/Trailblazer "core ruleset" I can pick up any 3e source material, including Pathfinder settings and modules, and run just fine.

On the other hand, if you are a Paizo/Pathfinder fan, and the setting appeals to you on its own merits (and they are many!) beyond the "fixes" you are looking for, then you should adopt Pathfinder wholesale, and only then perhaps look at the more modular fixes from Trailblazer to patch any remaining holes. Indeed you might find most of those "patches" addressed in any one of the free previews we put out for Trailblazer along the way, so there's no need to spend a dime.

One last question. Why are climb and swim separated in a game that has a broad skills such as perception and stealth?

During development we discussed the skills that would be combined and those that would not. While one could certainly roll Climb and Swim into Athletics, our "standard" was for skills that accomplished the same player intent (or activity). The intent behind Hide and Move Silently is, "I want to sneak around..." and the intent behind Spot and Listen is, "I want to notice something." What this often means is that the player is called upon to make two skill checks to accomplish one activity.

You can't quite make that same distinction with Climb and Swim; these two skills are not nearly as directly analogous to each other.

 

[Mark]

I would answer briefly by asking what it is you want to get from your 3e game. If you consider yourself primarily a 3e fan, and you are looking for Pathfinder to "fix" your 3e game, then you might find the fixes in Trailblazer work better. That's personally where I find myself-- with a 3e/Trailblazer "core ruleset" I can pick up any 3e source material, including Pathfinder settings and modules, and run just fine.

On the other hand, if you are a Paizo/Pathfinder fan, and the setting appeals to you on its own merits (and they are many!) beyond the "fixes" you are looking for, then you should adopt Pathfinder wholesale, and only then perhaps look at the more modular fixes from Trailblazer to patch any remaining holes. Indeed you might find most of those "patches" addressed in any one of the free previews we put out for Trailblazer along the way, so there's no need to spend a dime.

I think this still sells this effort short. I would counter that even if you are absolutely sure that you are not going to use any changes from Trailblazer, it is one of those books worth buying and reading just to understand the design process of RPGs a bit better. Brilliant work by all involved. I cannot say enough about this project.

 

[Nikosandros]

Here's another question I have answered so often, it would behoove me to write down some boilerplate.

I would answer briefly by asking what it is you want to get from your 3e game. If you consider yourself primarily a 3e fan, and you are looking for Pathfinder to "fix" your 3e game, then you might find the fixes in Trailblazer work better. That's personally where I find myself-- with a 3e/Trailblazer "core ruleset" I can pick up any 3e source material, including Pathfinder settings and modules, and run just fine.

On the other hand, if you are a Paizo/Pathfinder fan, and the setting appeals to you on its own merits (and they are many!) beyond the "fixes" you are looking for, then you should adopt Pathfinder wholesale, and only then perhaps look at the more modular fixes from Trailblazer to patch any remaining holes. Indeed you might find most of those "patches" addressed in any one of the free previews we put out for Trailblazer along the way, so there's no need to spend a dime.

Well, I had already purchased TB and I certainly don't regret it!

I'm currently running PF (with a bunch of personal house rules), so my question (at least for the current game) came from the angle of using PF as a baseline and importing stuff from TB. In the future, I might try something different... I like variety in my games and I don't feel tied to a single system.

During development we discussed the skills that would be combined and those that would not. While one could certainly roll Climb and Swim into Athletics, our "standard" was for skills that accomplished the same player intent (or activity). The intent behind Hide and Move Silently is, "I want to sneak around..." and the intent behind Spot and Listen is, "I want to notice something." What this often means is that the player is called upon to make two skill checks to accomplish one activity.

You can't quite make that same distinction with Climb and Swim; these two skills are not nearly as directly analogous to each other.

Understood, it's certainly a very reasonable decision.

 

[Nikosandros]

I think this still sells this effort short. I would counter that even if you are absolutely sure that you are not going to use any changes from Trailblazer, it is one of those books worth buying and reading just to understand the design process of RPGs a bit better. Brilliant work by all involved. I cannot say enough about this project.

Indeed. As I had previously posted, reading TB has been an extremely worthwhile investment.

 

[Stalker0]

As promised, here's the review: http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...lblazer-system-bad-axe-games.html#post5044515

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

As promised, here's the review: http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...lblazer-system-bad-axe-games.html#post5044515

Thanks for taking the time to review this.

Off to read it now. Will update this post if I have any comments.

EDIT:

Good, fair review. No "rebuttal" forthcoming but I do have a couple of questions/comments:

Attacks of Opportunity
Trailblazer changes a few rules to make engaging and moving around a target easier without provoking so many AOOs. However, they make very little change to streamlining the AOO system, which I consider one of the biggest headaches of 3rd edition. The new rules are good, but I don’t think they make a major dent in the problem.

Can you elucidate? What additional streamlining are you looking for?

Combat Reactions
This system is probably the biggest boost martial classes get with Trailblazer. Combat reactions allow them to strike harder, work better as a team, and take punishment much more than their normal 3.5 counterparts….especially at high level. It also has the interesting side effect of boosting sword/board and TWF styles, which has traditionally lagged behind two handed style. It also increases the threat of hoards of guys, as opposed to a single big guy.

This is one of my favorite subsystems in the Trailblazer book, definitely worth a look.

Glad you liked this section; it is also one of my favorites. I think it improves the melee classes-- and the full BAB monsters like dragons and outsiders-- more than is apparent. Not only does high BAB give the melee classes more combat reactions to use, the quality of those reactions scales as well. A CR11 dragon with a +18 BAB can use a Combat Reaction to dodge a ray (disintegrate, etc.) or touch attack (harm, etc.) and add another +9 to his AC against that attack.

This boost to the melee classes is also a subtle nerf of spellcasters. (You can add Action Points to that list as well-- saving throw boosts and re-rolls.)

 

[Stalker0]

Thanks for taking the time to review this.

Off to read it now. Will update this post if I have any comments.

EDIT:

Good, fair review. No "rebuttal" forthcoming but I do have a couple of questions/comments:



Can you elucidate? What additional streamlining are you looking for?



Glad you liked this section; it is also one of my favorites. I think it improves the melee classes-- and the full BAB monsters like dragons and outsiders-- more than is apparent.

The combat tables are full of actions that do and do not provoke AOOs. Standing up does not, but picking up a weapon does...casting does, but X does not etc. One thing I think 4e did a really good job with is it made the actions that cause AOOs small and standard. Everyone can quickly learn what provokes an AOO. To this day I still have to look at the 3e tables to determine if certain actions provoke AOOs.


I'm curious what your experience has been with monsters using combat reactions. I was thinking about it from a player's point of view, but when you include monsters it gets more interesting. For example, if a high level dragon can simply use the block or dodge reaction everytime a fighter swings at him...doesn't that basically shut down the fighter?

One question I also wanted to ask and forgot to ask it before the review. With action points and spell recall, one thing I'm confused about. If spells are no longer "assigned" to a slot, then when a spellcaster gets spell slots back (based on rote vs ritual for example) how do you determine which slots they get back?

Do I have to keep track of every spell I cast so I know which slots to recover?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

The combat tables are full of actions that do and do not provoke AOOs. Standing up does not, but picking up a weapon does...casting does, but X does not etc. One thing I think 4e did a really good job with is it made the actions that cause AOOs small and standard. Everyone can quickly learn what provokes an AOO. To this day I still have to look at the 3e tables to determine if certain actions provoke AOOs.

There's a short design note in there:

Basically, if what you're doing doesn't require you to shift your concentration off your opponent (keep at least one eye on him) or stick something into his space, it doesn't provoke an AoO. That was my working standard going over the actions and reclassifying them. If anything stands out as a major exception to that, change it.

I'm curious what your experience has been with monsters using combat reactions. I was thinking about it from a player's point of view, but when you include monsters it gets more interesting. For example, if a high level dragon can simply use the block or dodge reaction everytime a fighter swings at him...doesn't that basically shut down the fighter?

Yes and no (and no).

Remember that you have a limited number of Combat Reactions each round. It is certainly a viable strategy to send in the fighter to "suck" a few reactions off the BBEG. The dragon has to make an important choice whether or not to use his Combat Reactions to dodge the fighter-- or save it for the wizard's action.

Prior to this change, a fighter was really only able to ablate the monsters on the hit point axis-- a role that grew more and more meaningless as level increased. It is part of the fighter's vital and expanded role to suck Combat Reactions and Action Points off the BBEGs so that the wizard can more reliably do his thing. Speaking as a player-- and certainly not as a designer trying to toot his own horn-- I love this.

And just speaking in general terms, Trailblazer sort of assumes that the players aren't trying to completely kill the fun for the DM and vice versa. I have zero interest in building an A-hole-proof ruleset.

(Removing the item creation feats was about as close to A-hole-proofing the rules as I was willing to go. Okay, that and the spiked chain. You get my point.)

One question I also wanted to ask and forgot to ask it before the review. With action points and spell recall, one thing I'm confused about. If spells are no longer "assigned" to a slot, then when a spellcaster gets spell slots back, how do you determine which slots they get back?

Do I have to keep track of every spell I cast so I know which slots to recover?

Yes, you do-- but the book-keeping is not as complicated as you might think. If each "box" represents a spell slot, put one slash (/) in the box when you use it to cast a rote spell, two slashes (X) for restricted spells, and an (R) in the box for rituals (which are really pretty rare and easy to remember anyhow). When you rest, erase all the (/) marks and refresh those slots (for free). If you spend 1 Action Point, you can also erase all the (X) marks as well. You'll need to spend 1 AP for each (R) you used.