D&D 4E [4E Players, mainly] Ever thought of defecting to Pathfinder?

[Madaxemat]

Defect thats a bit emotive, I don't owe my loyalty to one game or another I just play whatever I feel like, if a company choses not to support what i like then I just continue on regardless.

As for stopping doing something I enjoy to switch to something that I might not enjoy (before allowing the former to come to full term) would stink of cutting my nose of to spite my face.

Admittedly I haven't played PF but if it is anything like 3.5 I'm gonna have to say no. I tried to play 3.5 before it was fun when we did the RP bits but as soon as combat started too much of it decended into arguing about rules to the point where I was so confused about how certain action worked that I stopped enjoying it and I was always stuck playing the fighter (still am but it is more fun now).

Watching my fellow players take 5+ minutes to complete their turn (usually involving putting everybody to sleep or summoning half of London zoo) whilst I got little more than 1 minute (So Samuel grasp his tighlty sword and thrust it into the circling hellspawn*) was also a bit of a downer.

From what I've heard PF fixed alot of 3.5 problems, so maybe those type of problems are gone. But with things as they are I pretty much have to run the game to play (though I have been lucky enough to find a game) and I don't think I would be able to master the game especally NPC creation.

Regardless of how the company treats its customers it isn't enough to stop me having fun with my freinds. When I've had enough with Dnd I'm very tempted to take a break and look for a CoC game but thats not because of any thing that WotC is doing just because it looks intresting and not too taxing to learn.

(*there is only so many ways to say I hit it with my sword/axe/ect especally when descriptions had to be 100% accurate to what you where doing, though that could have been a group thing).

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The "Dancey Death Spiral" was made over a year ago. You can't really quote it years later and go "See he was right after all!"

It's a prophecy alright - a hopeless claim that might potentially occur out of coincidence long after it was ever relevant. Of course, his "Death Spiral" statement was only the latest of his claims that tabletop games were dying that have been going on for even longer.

Plus it was made on the Pundit's blog. That more or less destroys any credibility imaginable.

 

[Dumnbunny]

Nah.

I stopped buying 4e books around the release of Psionic Power, as WotC was releasing books in which I have no interest. I also canceled my DDI subscription as I found I wasn't getting any value from it. This recent announcement canceled the one book I was going to buy, leaving me nothing from WotC on which to spend my money for the foreseeable future. I'm also deeply leery of what WotC means by "digital offerings." But hey, I'm happy playing 4e, and have plenty of material to keep me going.

But I won't play Pathfinder. I didn't like 3.5 (or 2e for that matter), and I have no interested in 3.75. If I want to play an older edition of D&D, I'll go back to 1e or earlier. I also have Dresden Files, Legends of Anglere, Barbarians of Lemuria, Burning Wheel, Ars Magica and several other games I'd love to play or run.

The choice isn't 4e or Pathfinder.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Now to you. Have you thought seriously about "defecting" to Pathfinder or another edition of D&D or game altogether? (I have also considered Savage Worlds or Star Wars Saga or numerous other games, but my group and I are all a bit hooked on D&D, at least at the moment). Have you been questioning WotC and thought of switching to a different game in order to support a company that you respect more? What is your experience?

No, because I don't pay much attention to PR. I go to Borders or B&N once in a while, and if I see something that looks fun, I buy it. If nothing interests me, as is the case with Essentials, I don't buy anything.

I don't understand the "if I can't buy something every month, it's not worth playing" attitude. I have more 4e material than I'll likely ever use, and I'm happy with it.

Now if one of my group's DMs wanted to run PF, I'd play because it means I don't have to DM. But I'll never run PF; whatever improvements it's made on 3e are too little too late. If I ever want to run 3e again, I'm confident that my fixes are better than Paizo's.

 

[MerricB]

I've been buying the Pathfinder adventure paths since the third one (Second Darkness), and they haven't been making me want to play Pathfinder. Although I'm quite disaffected with high (10th+) level 3E play, which is where I prefer my campaigns to run, possibly a greater reason that I don't want to run Pathfinder is that I don't like the style Paizo uses in their adventures, campaign setting and art direction.

The world (Golarion) they're creating just doesn't interest me. In comparison, the Nentir Vale 4e world, and especially its mythology, grabbed me from the beginning and I now use the Primordial/God mythology in my Greyhawk game.

There are things that irritate me about 4e, and I can't really express the depth of my frustration with Wizards at the moment, but I can't see myself moving to Pathfinder if Wizards stops producing D&D.

To an older edition of D&D, or one of the other RPGs I've been looking at recently - Doctor Who, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller or BattleTech - certainly. But it's unlikely to be Pathfinder.

I think the team working on Pathfinder are supremely talented - they're just not making something I want to play.

Cheers!

 

[Crazy Jerome]

So much in my initial response that is better off not said. Let's just note that here and leave it unsaid ...

As for Pathfinder, they are about the last choice I would pick, out of the reasonably decent, or better, games available to me. (Again, leaving unsaid that list of games that don't make that minimum criteria.)

I finally dropped my long-running subscription to Dungeon because of Pazio. I gave them a fair shot, and as near as I could tell, they continued down the road that I had already seen previously, one I had no interest in. With them, it finally reached the point where I didn't even want to read an adventure, much less run it.

When and if 4E becomes something I don't want to do, I'll be spending more time with, in no particular order: D&D Rules Cyclopedia, Arcana Evolved running Ptolus (the only reason I will bother with any d20 ruleset), Burning Wheel, Runequest, Dragon Quest, Fantasy Hero, GURPS, and/or Mouse Guard. In extremis, I might even go with some version of Rolemaster.

If all that falls through for some bizarre reasons, and I don't merely throw up my hands and switch to MMORPG and give up roleplaying, then I might play PF. Maybe. More likely, I'll write my own system and play that, or someone else will have written something that catches my eye by then. Or I'll be in the nursing home, and it won't matter.

If that seems harsh, well, I really did cut out a lot more that was stronger.

 

[Evenglare]

I play Dragonlance exclusively , and since it doesnt look like wizards plan on converting it to 4e anytime soon or for that matter wizards doesnt seem to know what they are doing with anything lately(IMO). They also have jerked around one of the oldest and most cherished settings ever, i switched to pathfinder and havnt looked back. Fantastic game imo and i can run all my old DL stuff no problem.

 

[GreyLord]

I play Dragonlance exclusively , and since it doesnt look like wizards plan on converting it to 4e anytime soon or for that matter wizards doesnt seem to know what they are doing with anything lately(IMO). They also have jerked around one of the oldest and most cherished settings ever, i switched to pathfinder and havnt looked back. Fantastic game imo and i can run all my old DL stuff no problem.

You can play a Dragonlance Campaign in 4e currently. No set class or paragon path for Knights of Solamnia however, but other things are easy enough.

Warlords could fit pretty easy as the Knights however...they have Draconians and some of the more important dragons. Just depends on whether you need official stuff told to you or not...such as whether to use Dragonborn as Draconians...or whether to even allow dragonborn and tieflings in your campaign.

 

[fanboy2000]

No, I haven't thought of going over to Pathfinder. I've kept the 3.5 books I liked the most and I'm more than happy to play that game (or run it) if the mood strikes me and any potential victims. The reason is pretty simple, Pathfinder is to close to 3.5 for me to justify buying the game books. Adventures are nice, but if I were to go to 3.5, I'd probably homebrew.

To your larger point, to me voting with my dollars means two things: not buying what I don't want and actually buying what I do want. Generally speaking, I don't not buy from a company because they make decisions I disapprove of.

Let's take McDonalds. Bob disapproves of eating meat that was raised inhumanely, so he doesn't eat at McDonalds because of where their meat comes from. So far, so good. But what about their salads? If Bob agrees with me, then it might make sense to buy a salad there, or a meat free entree. Why? Because buying a meat free item would encourage to McDonalds to provide more such offerings, possibly reducing the amount of meat they buy.

Consider Chipotle. They wanted chicken that was raised humanly, but it cost more money. So they upped the price of a chicken burrito. I read in an article that the owner was told someone that no one would pay $5 for chicken. But people do.

I'm applying the same strategy to Wizards. I don't like fortune cards, so I'm not buying them. But I like the Gamma World boxed sets, so I bought them, and I'll buy the next one.

It's like training a dog.

 

[mattcolville]

Now to you. Have you thought seriously about "defecting" to Pathfinder or another edition of D&D or game altogether? (I have also considered Savage Worlds or Star Wars Saga or numerous other games, but my group and I are all a bit hooked on D&D, at least at the moment). Have you been questioning WotC and thought of switching to a different game in order to support a company that you respect more? What is your experience?

Nah. I like 4E. WotC has already produced more content than I could exhaust in a lifetime of play.

I sometimes think about the things I feel 4E either does badly or not at all, and in these times I think about going back to D&D1 or D&D2. I'd play D&D0 again.

But no, I burned out on 3E. It's a solution to something I don't consider a problem at this point.