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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 4735931" data-attributes="member: 2020">I'm going to come off as completely out of line here.  I haven't played Pathfinder.  I don't know much about it, except that it seems to be heavily compatible with 3rd Edition D&D.  And it seems to be pretty popular, and Paizo is supporting it.  So my apologies beforehand.  3rd Edition D&D was a great game, and Paizo is a great company, so I'm betting Pathfinder is a great game.  But, in my opinion, 3rd Edition had a problem.  The problem was, the players did not have access to enough of the Goodness.  If this was a problem with 3rd Edition D&D, perhaps it will be a problem with Pathfinder?  This is strictly my personal take on the matter, and I honestly do not believe it is shared by anyone else (by that, I mean - literally - anyone else.  If I am proven wrong, I am proven wrong.)  In 3rd Edition D&D, there ended up being 110 pages of feats, as shown over on the Crystalkeep site, and the 3.5 OGL site.  But 3rd Edition only allowed 1 feat at the start, plus 1 if you were human, plus one at levels 3/6/9/etc., and the usual fighter and metamagic feats.  In *2nd Edition D&D*, a fighter could fight with a weapon in both hands at -2 / -4, and dexterity easily took care of those penalties.  If he specialized, he gained 3 attacks per round immediately.  All at full attack bonuses (THAC0.)  Ultimately, a 15th level fighter with a weapon in both hands and weapon specialization had 5 attacks per round (5/2, doubled.)  If a Haste was thrown on him, he aged a year, but now he had 10 attacks per round.  *At that time* amongst the groups I played with, nobody had any problem with this (or, fighting power even greater than this.)  This was Business as Usual.  Same with the other classes, at that time.  But in 3rd Edition, it would have taken a lot of feats to emulate this.  Two-Weapon Style Specialization, Ambidexterity, Off Hand Specialist, Improved Two-Weapon Style Specialization, Off Hand, Greater Two-Weapon Style Specialization.  It would have taken nearly all the feats a fighter was allowed, simply to emulate something he *already had* in 1st edition.    This is why, in other threads, I advocated a starting number of feats (quite a large number of them) + 3 feats per level.  Now the fighter could do what he did in the earlier editions, and try other things.  3rd Edition was about choice, so I wanted the fighter to have choice.  I didn't want him to spend all his feats on something he innately had in earlier editions.  Skill Points ... same thing.  I quadrupled the skill points for all classes.  There are 45 basic skills in the PHB.  Most are cross-class for most classes.  But I thought characters should be able to have a diversity of skills.  Why not?  They are Player Characters, and they are reasonably special people.  (Or they should be.)  Even if they are simply your average person who struck it rich, they have *become* special people by dint of hard work and luck and adventuring, and they should have the skill points to reflect that they have made themselves into special people.  You have feats and skill points in Pathfinder, so this is directly relevant to Pathfinder.  If I were to DM a Pathfinder game, based on what I'm hearing about Pathfinder, I would do the same thing:  grant a lot of starting feats + 3 feats per level, and quadruple skill points (if Pathfinder offers fewer skill points than 3E did, then more than quadruple.)  Why?  For the same reasons as in 3E:  choice.  Access to all the Good Stuff that has accumulated over the years, compliments of the hard work of the game designers.  Heck, the game designers went to the effort to create all this.  Why not honor their efforts, and grant greater access to their work, to the players?  Even *my* system is stingy, according to my own testing.  It still does not grant nearly enough feats or skill points, considering the vast array of what is available.  Even the Gestalt version of my system, which *doubles* feats and skill points *over and beyond* what I have described, is *still* stingy, compared to the enormous array of feats and skills available out there, in 3E.  I must assume Pathfinder offers this array to it's players.  I would - simply put - give them great access to it.  The players still won't have everything.  Even with the most generous concoction I ever came up with, they could not obtain - not even by 20th level - more than a fraction of what is available.  But they could obtain enough to very broadly generalize, fleshing out characters, giving them greater definition and life.  (Yes, they could min/max, and inevitably will, but monsters can min/max too, which balances out such approaches.  A character created with a broad array of skills and feats, is much more interesting to roleplay, in my opinion, than a one-trick pony.)  I'm not here to tell anyone how to play, or how Pathfinder should be.  I merely give my opinion, my philosophy, concerning how to approach the game and try to make it fun.  Yes, there will *always* be players who are loud, argumentative, rules-lawyers, and munchkins, but you'll have that in *any* situation where you interact with other people for long enough (don't we all know that!)  The challenge of dealing with other people is an extremely complex one, and it is a separate subject from the actual Game Theory I have been trying to discuss.  People Theory is another matter.    It may or may not be possible for the poor DM to overcome the People Theory problem.  He may be deluged and the game go under.  But I would blame that on the problems inherent with People Theory, not on Game Theory.  And it is Game Theory that I am trying to address here.  I appreciate that even 1 feat per level is considered extremely 'powerful.'  It was in the Book of Experimental Might (which implies 'power' if anything does.)  So 3 feats per level must seem pretty astonishing and over the top (I'm sure everyone will agree with that.)  But if you go to Crystalkeep, and look at the 110 pages of feats, you'll see that all those feats wouldn't stretch very far if you started taking Social and Skill and General Feats, would they?  In fact, by 20th level, you would still not even average a feat *per page* out of those 110 pages, even with my most generous Gestalt system.  If it applied to 3E, I'm betting it applies to Pathfinder.    I know Pathfinder is a fun game (or people wouldn't be playing it.)  I just think Pathfinder should be the funnest game possible.  This is up to the DMs and players of Pathfinder - *I do not presume to tell anyone how to play Pathfinder!!*  I merely comment that my approach *might* have merit, because it *might - just might* increase the fun for everyone.  Now, what do you think?  (if you wish to let me have it, please do have your say.  I want to hear your feedback - even if it is scathing or rebuking.  Or, just tell me I am just plain wrong.  But I *do* wish to hear what you have to say, concerning my approach.)  Yours Sincerely  Edena_of_Neith</blockquote>

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