Pathfinder 1E Does pathfinder strike anyone as too gamey?

[Starfox]

Personal spells do not target creatures. They target "You".

Genuinely interested here - do you have a source on this?

(And back from gym, btw)

 

[Warbringer]

Ignore... Didn't read post, comment did not make. Sense

 

[Starfox]

Also in the news: Bones II

Ok, sorry, completely off-topic.

 

[billd91]

Genuinely interested here - do you have a source on this?

(And back from gym, btw)

Page 551 of the Pathfinder Core Rules includes the statement, under the Creating Potions header, that spells with the range of personal cannot be made into potions.

 

[Starfox]

Page 551 of the Pathfinder Core Rules includes the statement, under the Creating Potions header, that spells with the range of personal cannot be made into potions.

Ok, thanks, found it in the d20pfsrd.com too, third paragraph.

Will have to alert my players to this. Interesting how it differs from an alchemist's infusions.

 

[Argyle King]

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I've had similar experiences - with a fighter in 4E.

What all this shows is that each of us have a VERY different take on all of this.

I had problems with 4E too, but they weren't the same problems. The thing with my 3E example I gave is that I wasn't even trying to optimize.

One thing I've found that seems like a minor detail, but it seems to help 3E (and Pathfinder) a lot is using fractional base saves from 3rd Edition's Unearthed Arcana. There are a lot of fractions that get rounded along the way during save progression through the levels. If you take the extra step to actually keep track of them, some classes end up with better saves than they might otherwise have. In particular, it helps to fix some of the problems with saves when it comes to multiclassing.

Also, I've found that a lot of other groups complain about the wizard without actually following some of the game's rules. In particular, ignoring encumbrance helps the wizard carry the hundreds upon hundreds of scrolls and magic items which I see people talking about a wizard having. With a (usually) low STR, how is he carrying all of that stuff. Likewise, it seems to me that choosing to sunder the cleric's holy symbol is a valid tactic.

There still are things about 3rd I feel are broken though. One of the biggest things which bothers me is how touch AC works. Thematically, it makes sense. In actually play (and combined with how D&D levels work,) it makes a lot of low level spells more powerful than they should be. I'm not a fan of D&D style HP either. You're right in saying the fighter is really good at damaging an opponent's HP. The problem is that a lot of D&D spells don't even require me to harm your body to kill you. What level of spell is sleep? It's been a while since I've played 3rd, so I forget. I do remember there being a few levels in PF where it stops being useful, but eventually you just replace it with Deep Slumber.

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It seems to me that there are two very different viewpoints about what D&D should be. I think a lot of people who like things like Book of 9 Swords and 4th Edition want something which is closer to what I'd call "mythic fantasy." Though, I wonder if that desire is born of wanting that style or born of a desire for balance.

Personally, I prefer a more gritty and grounded fantasy experience. I don't view "realism" as something which gets in the way of my elves and dragons and magic; I view it as something which goes hand-in-hand with it and creates a better experience by giving texture and substance to the illusion. However, I don't believe I can use D&D if that's the experience I want. That's what prompted me to try other games. I can certainly enjoy a more mythic experience; I grew up reading the various myths of our world, but -all things being equal- I vastly prefer a style of fantasy which is closer to R. Howard's Conan, Game of Thrones, Spartacus (both the new show and the classic movie,) and a lot of 80s Sword & Sorcery movies as opposed to a style of fantasy which is closer to mythology, wuxia movies, super hero stories, and DBZ. Neither style is more right or more wrong, but I do believe there are people who want a style that is closer to what I like, but are trying to use editions of D&D (or possibly other games) which are closer to the other end of the spectrum.

If the game isn't giving you what you want, it seems to me that you're better off playing a different game. That's not a knock toward D&D or those people; it's just something which makes sense to me. I do understand it can be daunting to try something else. I've been there. When all of your friends play a certain way or you're only accustomed to one way of doing things, it can be hard to change. Brand loyalty might impact some as well. I guess I just find it odd to fret over why a screwdriver doesn't work very well as a steak knife.

Where I think 3rd Edition sometimes causes problems is in trying to be more than one game at the same time without actually being a modular system. While I do have find faults with 4th Edition, I think it did something good in that it tried to give D&D a coherent vision. I may not have agreed with the choice for that vision, but the personality which the game already had was made into a real and tangible thing. I have a lot of fond memories when it comes to 3rd Edition, but there are times when I think 3rd wasn't entirely sure of what it wanted to be. There seemed to be a lot of conflicting visions built into the game. I think where that causes problems for the fanbase is that different groups latched on to different parts of 3rd, and, when 4th became a more codified version of D&D, ze game did not remain ze same.

Anyway... do I find Pathfinder gamey? To an extent, I do. However, I think some of the conversation in this thread which pits the amount of gaminess of 3rd Edition against some of the aspects of 4th is a somewhat flawed argument if you ignore that the way HP and levels work in D&D are intended to be "gamey." I think the modern D&D editions (by that I mean 3rd and 4th; I'm not familiar enough with 1st or 2nd to have an educated opinion on them) and games that have grown from the D&D D20 family are by their very nature gamey to varying extents. One of the biggest reasons why is because the structure is so heavily vertical when it comes to gaining levels; getting better magic items, and a variety of other things. I'd vastly prefer a game system which offers more breadth of play rather than continued stacking of numbers for no other reason than to create bigger numbers.

 

[Ahnehnois]

How about being able to do non-amazing things? Taking someone's limb off with an axe blow, stunning them with a mace to the head, slicing a tendon in their leg to make it useless, taking up an Iron Door defensive stance to be temporarily unassailable, parrying into a riposte... Anyone wanting to say they think D&D Fighters should have "realistic" capabilities needs to explain why they don't get those things. It's not because the game doesn't support severing limbs, stunning, disabling, because it does. It's just that they're required to be done by magic no matter how unrealistic that is. And frankly, a mundane Fighter being able to do those things would be amazing by D&D's standards, even if reality wouldn't agree.

Hey, I'd go for that. But any rational approach to this topic requires eliminating/replacing hit points, and introducing a so-called "death spiral" for the victim. Some people really dislike that stuff. I'm not one of those people. If you want to ask why D&D doesn't let you decapitate someone with a sword or parry or stun, etc., you'll have to ask someone other than me.

All of that stuff falls under general combat mechanics rather than specific class abilities, but there's every reason to make a martial character very good at doing those things if the system describes those things in the first place.

at what level? because at level 5+ not only are druids better, but there animal compainion is close enough to equal to the fighter that you need to look real close to see the fighter being any better.

I think the highest level druid I played was around level 8 or so. He had a respectable animal companion, but it certainly was no substitute for whatever martial characters we had. Nor were his wild shape forms good enough to use for combat purposes. I spent a lot of spells buffing my crocodile.

I did run a druid/shifter once who did own in melee, but that was in my early days and I admittedly mangled the RAI and probably the RAW to do it.

Druids for other players in my group have gone 1-20 and well into epic, (as have members of several other classes). In my game at level 37-38 or so, the fighter was probably the most effective character and was the focal point of a group that had at least a druid and a sorcerer IIRC. The last extended campaign I ran had a druid, a ranger, and a wizard, and went to level 8, and again, the ranger was the focal point, and the casters were useful but hardly dominant support characters.

I'm aware that spellcasters stand to gain more stuff on their character sheet from advancing than martial characters, but you're way overstating how it plays out.

lets turn that around That makes the warrior pretty worthless. the warrior devoted years of his life to learning, petitioned master to train for it, is exusted after a fight and gets an outcome any mortal man could have gotten out of a book? that no very heroic is it?

But not a fair analogy. If any mortal man could cast spells, they wouldn't be very magical. Any player can choose a spellcaster, but the classes are always written with in-game barriers to access (training, bloodlines, divine patrons, etc.).

But what if it does make the warrior worthless in some circumstances? So what? I'm thinking of the famous Indiana Jones scene where the sword fighter makes his huge display and gets gunned down in a single shot. Technology simply beats skill in this circumstance. It doesn't matter how long that warrior trains, he doesn't "earn" the right to dodge a bullet. And I sincerely hope that wizardry offers more powerful outcomes that firearms do!

(Quick check, how would that scene play out using the PF firearm rules? Uh, not so well. PF is way too "game-y" in this regard.)

And yes, I would say that a fighter who faces supernatural forces that are beyond his capabilities and fails when measured against them is very heroic.

The measure of the fighter class is how good of a fighter it is, not how it compares to a fundamentally different class.

What I want is a PC that can be as extraordinary as I want with out being a spell caster.

In that case, what you want is unreasonable. Magic is by definition beyond what is normal. If things that aren't magic are as extraordinary as things that are magic, then the magic isn't magic.

if the wizard never had more then a few spells per day that would work... but instead you get the best of both worlds out of wizard.

This is at least somewhat fair. The spells per day expand way too much, and they should be a more meaningful limitation than they are.

in myth and magic figters start at +5/+5/+4

Don't know what that is, but okay.
Certainly, any fighter that is as vulnerable to fear as a noncombatant commoner needs some revision on that count.

ok, lets start here then... educate me, show me what your lets say 12th level fighter can do.

Fall from the sky, reach terminal velocity, hit the ground, and survive. Kill a thousand orcs by himself. Smash a lich's adamantine phylactery with one blow. Defeat a golem without using cheesy noncore spells that ignore SR. Be revered as a war hero.

These things are not nothing!

***

Is there room to revise the classes? Sure. I rewrote the fighter myself for my game, based on the PF version, adding new mechanics (to some extent along the lines of what [MENTION=49017]Bluenose[/MENTION] was getting at). I just don't think the Bo9S version is the way to go.

 

[Ahnehnois]

One thing I've found that seems like a minor detail, but it seems to help 3E (and Pathfinder) a lot is using fractional base saves from 3rd Edition's Unearthed Arcana. There are a lot of fractions that get rounded along the way during save progression through the levels. If you take the extra step to actually keep track of them, some classes end up with better saves than they might otherwise have. In particular, it helps to fix some of the problems with saves when it comes to multiclassing.

Sure. That's a big one. Save math in the RAW has its problems.

Also, I've found that a lot of other groups complain about the wizard without actually following some of the game's rules. In particular, ignoring encumbrance helps the wizard carry the hundreds upon hundreds of scrolls and magic items which I see people talking about a wizard having.

Many wizards would struggle to carry a bag of holding even after they found the money for it.

One of the biggest things which bothers me is how touch AC works. Thematically, it makes sense. In actually play (and combined with how D&D levels work,) it makes a lot of low level spells more powerful than they should be. I'm not a fan of D&D style HP either.

This is really a consequence of one of the basic oddities of D&D: attacks advance with level and defense doesn't. Adding any kind of dodging/parrying mechanic or base defense bonus helps enormously. It is a big issue; AC is largely determined by magic items, which are very campaign-dependent (and which often do not increase touch AC).

You're right in saying the fighter is really good at damaging an opponent's HP. The problem is that a lot of D&D spells don't even require me to harm your body to kill you. What level of spell is sleep? It's been a while since I've played 3rd, so I forget. I do remember there being a few levels in PF where it stops being useful, but eventually you just replace it with Deep Slumber.

Sleep is a first level spell. It is weird that it's easier to cast a sleep spell on someone than to knock out someone with your fist (how generic of a movie trope is that?).

 

[pemerton]

I don't think the monk has ever been non-magical. Vague? Sure. But always mystical.

Mysticism isn't equivalent to magic. For instance, it includes auto-hypnosis. (And a troll's regeneration is non-magical. So why should I infer that a monk's mystical abilities are magical?)

So you're suggesting that breath weapons are as natural as bashing someone over the head? I don't think so.

They are natural to the dragon. They certainly don't resemble spell-casting. In AD&D, and in 3E, the game draws a marked distinction between a dragon's breath weapon and a dragon's spellcasting.

If any mortal man could cast spells, they wouldn't be very magical.

I don't see any reason why this should be so. Exclusivity and magic have no particular connection - for instance, most mortals can't run 4 minute miles, nor run 10s 100m, but the ability to do so isn't magical.

In Runequest all PCs can use magic, but one thing I've never seen said about RQ is that it's magic is non-magical.

AFAIK, fighters are better at melee combat and wrestling. If they weren't it would be a problem.

My understanding is the same as that of [MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION] - that a druid, by polymorphing into a bear or something similar and getting stat and grapple buffs, is a better wrestler than a fighter.

And for someone who seems so interested in citing fringe examples as precedent, I don't see you coming up with any examples through the editions of how martial characters ever had epic powers of this nature (particularly not at the levels we're talking about; Polymorph is a 4th level spell).

Here is a link to an actual play report from my game in which a fighter defeated a water weird. (Though not by wrestling it - the character is a polearm fighter, not a grappling fighter).

 

[pemerton]

So.... what can a 2nd edition fighter do that a 3e one can't?

Be toughter relative to comparable HD monsters, because (i) they use d8s, (ii) they don't get CON to hp, (iii) they don't get STR to damage (nor to hit, but at least through mid levels they have a slightly better to hit matrix) and (iv) they don't get DEX to AC or magic armour to saves.

These are all in addition to the "better saving throws in AD&D than 3E" that you conceded to [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] upthread.

I didn't mean gritty as in realistic, I meant gritty as in bothering with minor details. I find it a bit hard to combine a fighter being able to wrestle a river (per an example above) and still having to keep track of arrows.

A 3E spell caster has a "spell component pouch". Why can't a 3E archer have a "quiver"?

In other words, it's not inherent in the rules that all these matters of detail be dealt with.

DnD is a hp game. There are some abilities that bypasses hp as a defense (save or die, some combat maneuvers, sneak attack to a degree) and these have always been problematic. The fighter is the class built most around the hp mechanic - both dealing and taking hp very well. Other classes have to "cheat" and use workarounds because they don't have the fighters very good base numbers. If we give fighters ways to cheat too, we have to reduce those base numbers, and all classes become more or less the same.

Even if all a wizard could do was Spider Climb, Hold Portals, turn Invisible, Fly etc they would still be pretty potent. (Arguably as potent as a classic D&D thief.) The ability to do area damage on top of that is gravy. The unique ability to deliver status effects and debuffs isn't needed to balance their numbers, in my experience. It pushes them in the other direction.

Part of the pride of being a fighter is to say "Me and My Sword Only" and be the equal of other heroes with supernatural abilities

In my view this is purely a function of system. For instance, in Runequest or Rolemaster "me and my sword only" still includes debuffs and status effects, via the crit rules. In HARP or Burning Wheel, "me and my sword only" includes using Fate Points to boost your attack roll. In 2nd ed AD&D, "Me and My Sword Only" includes 3/2 attacks at 1st level, which is unattainable for a (pre-UA) 1st ed AD&D fighter.

The notion that one of these system conceits is the basis for a point of pride, and that the other is like doping (to use the analogy from upthread) is something I just find ridiculous. Is the HD increase for fighters between earlier D&D and AD&D (from d8 to d10 - and the d8 itself was a systematisation, I'm guessing in the Greyhawk supplement, of the weird d6 rules in Men & Magic) a form of cheating? It's fetishising mechanics that have no inherent meaning.

This was a big problem in 4E. Because there were so few effects to build powers from, and a constant influx of new powers, all classes ended up with all sorts of powers. Nothing was unique or special. All classes having all powers means the only real difference between classes are the base numbers - which fighters were still the best at. Hence the 4E fighter ended up horribly overpowered.

Seriously? In the 4e PHB, to find a fighter power that dazes I have to go to 13th level (Anvil of Doom, single target attack vs AC for 2W & dazed (stunned if the weapon is a hammer or mace). (There's also a Pit Fighter power at 11th, that dazes on a successful secondary attack; and the warlord gets a 3W power otherwise similar to the fighter's at 17th.) The wizard, at 3rd level, gets colour spray - a close blast 5 vs Will for 1d6 and dazed. There's no comparison.

I don't have a strong view on whether fighters or wizards are better in combat in 4e (though I would hope that fighters are, given that - between skills and rituals - wizards are noticably better out of combat). But I just don't understand how you can say that a fighter and a wizard are no different except in base numbers, given their radically different abilitites to impose status and debuff effects (of which I've just given one example).

I've found that a lot of other groups complain about the wizard without actually following some of the game's rules. In particular, ignoring encumbrance helps the wizard carry the hundreds upon hundreds of scrolls and magic items which I see people talking about a wizard having. With a (usually) low STR, how is he carrying all of that stuff.

I think the general idea is that you use a bag of holding, or Heward's Haversack, or some other self-crafted item that enables you to easily call desired objects to hand while making sure those objects don't count against your encumbrance.

(Also, encumbrance is a tedious rule to have to bring to bear to rein a character in.)

I prefer a more gritty and grounded fantasy experience.

I don't mind that sort of game but would never use D&D for it.

Where I think 3rd Edition sometimes causes problems is in trying to be more than one game at the same time without actually being a modular system.

This is why 3E has never really appealed to me. It's a mixture of gonzo (eg hit points) and gritty (eg skill rules) that strikes me as inherently unstable for a wide range of approaches. And recurring threads like these don't dissuade me from that impression!