Sadrik
First Post
It appears that I am unable to post on the Paizo website so I will post here. The first time it ate my post, the second attempt I wrote in word and tried to paste it into a post and it didn't post so here it is.
PF Beta just got released and the game is pretty good. Several 3e issues have been dealt with. They still need to tackle multi-classing which is not in the book. Beyond that there are several niggles that I have with some of the things. Some of them are long standing 3.5 problems and others are newly created. So here we go…
Races
Races with the small size racial feature should also have their CMB modifier listed there as well.
Half-Elf should have a +2 to Dex or +2 to Int, and not +2 to any
Half-Orc should have a +2 Str, and not +2 Str, +2 Wis, -2 Int
Classes
Bard songs should be selectable similar to the rogue talents or barbarian rages. If that means that some of the more powerful ones need to have scaling in them so be it. Every 10th level bard should have had choices in which songs they invested in.
Monk class features also need to be selected from a monk talents list just like the rogue and barbarian.
Paladin class features need to be selected from just like rogue and barbarian, finding a theme here?
Cleric should not have a static number of channel energy from first through 20th level. I suggest something like Cha + 1 and then +1 more every 4 levels or something. Also, the cleric’s channel energy powers should be removed from the combat section and placed in the class features section. It is no longer overly long and complicated and can easily be accommodated in that section.
Skills
Overall I concur with many of the skill combinations. However I think more can be done.
Some of the skills are capital letters and others are not. Reason???
Craft skills should be made trained only and when looking at them they could stand to be merged a bit. For instance, I think that the various craft skills should be broken out on table 5-4 and different craft skills should be assigned to the various classes. I don’t think every class should have access to craft alchemy for instance. The following is how I would merge the craft skills:
Craft (Alchemy) (same)
Craft (Arms and Armor) (combines armorer, weaponsmith, and boyer)
Craft (Building) (building structures, siege engines etc.)
Craft (Devices) (traps, clockworks and other engineering feats)
Craft (Finery) (art objects, gems, wands, forgery, and other forms of finery)
Appraise skill, this is a more controversial change but one that I personally like very much. I would axe the appraise skill and combine that skill to each of the various craft skills. Want to appraise art objects? Finery check. Want to appraise armor and weapons? Arms and Armor check.
Profession skill should be removed. What it actually does by the rules is allow a character to earn a living (a few gold a week) with his “other” skills, too often this skill is confused to be so much more. It is often used to be sort of a yeah I know how to sail a ship or do some other thing that is not covered in the rules. Get rid of this skill and use fair market value for what ever profession a character wants to do and don’t use this meta-crutch skill to accomplish that end.
Pilot skill, a new skill, would take care of any vehicles that pop up in a D&D game. The most important one would be pilot(ship). This would give the game system to use a skill to do that rather than wrongly using profession skill in this capacity. Again, profession skill allows you to use your *other* skills to make money on a weekly basis.
Escape artist needs to be combined with Acrobatics. This is one of the most sub par skills that I have almost never seen taken and even less called for.
Fly, Climb and Swim need to be combined together for game mechanic reasons. I know that there is an idea floating around that all of the “modes” of movement need to be a separate skill. Hogwash, this needs to be done because there are characters that have 2 skill points.
Bluff skill is a skill that allows your character to: lie, cheat, con, and maybe seduce. But one of my long standing dislikes that could get addressed with this skill is the create diversion. This should not be a bluff check. Possibly make it a CMB check, but not a bluff check. Also, feinting in combat is a little odd too, but a little more believable than using bluff to create a distraction.
Feats
Improved and greater feats should be in the format: Two-weapon fighting, greater. That way you are not flipping back and forth looking at feats that should have been right next to each other.
The +2 to two skills feats need to be removed they were a waste of space in 3.5 and they are a waste of space in PF. Make a side bar note on how to convert the feat from other books (not they were selected by anybody – even in other books with sub-par characters) then create a feat called Skill Synergy that gives +2 to two chosen skills.
Arcane strike is this feat meant to replace the overly powerful complete warrior feat? This underpowered feat does not do that. Some middle ground could be found?
Table 6-1 seems to be using the format of: weapons focus gives +1 to hit, greater weapon focus gives +1 to hit which is meant to stack to give +2 total. This is not always consistent. Greater weapon specialization is meant to be +4 or +6?
Combat
Concealment, Stabilize, and Arcane Spell Failure are all percentile rolls. These could be easily cleaned up to be d20 rolls. It is a d20 game after all. This will actually speed up the game by a tiny fraction on these rolls. No searching for/fishing out the little used % dice just roll the d20 that is already in your hand.
Make Coupe de Grace a standard action so that it will actually be better to use that action than just doing a full attack.
Remove the “critical failure” roll a “1” on a save item destruction rules. Table 10-1 “the funky chart” needs to just be removed along with its corresponding rule. I have rarely seen the rule in play but when it is the players often feal cheated when it happens to them. There are no critical misses for a reason and this is a hidden critical miss rule that is just antiquated game design at its best. Please remove this rule.
One last thing about what has not been tackled yet
I really like the 3e multi-classing system (about a billion times better than 4e) it gives an almost limitless number of possibilities. However, it does have several problems. Primarily saves, BAB and spell casting progression could use the fix. In addition to spell casting progression there are a lot of other progressions (familiars, animal companions, unarmed strike, sneak attack etc.) that could do with a general rule to keep them competitive as a character levels up. Some attempt at dealing with this would make the game better as a whole.
This is pretty much a deal breaker for me. If PF is creative enough to put some thought into how to address the 3e multi-classing problem I will be pleased but if it is left to stand as is I won’t. The 3e band aids such as Eldritch Knight and other similar PrCs. I don’t want to wait until 6th level to actually do what I want with my character. I want to wait until 2nd level and be a fighter 1/wizard 1 and not be completely sub-par until I can place the band aid on my character. Anyway, here are a couple of ideas on how to address the most glaring multi-class problems.
Caster level and class feature progression fix
Caster level is equal to the spell casting class level plus 1/2 of all your other levels up to a max of double. This would also cover all of the scalable class features such as animal companions. The class features that would scale by half your other levels would have to be written into the class features themselves.
Saves fix
your saves are 1/2 your overall character level. Classes give a non-stackable +2 bonus in certain saves (Fighter FORT, Rogue REF, Wizard WILL, Cleric FORT and WILL etc.)
It might be nice to give everyone a +3 total rather than have some with a +4 and others with a +2 and only a few with +6.
BAB fix
Full gets BAB +4/level
3/4 gets BAB +3/level
1/2 gets BAB +2/level
Add all your BABs up and divide by 4. This is simpler than adding fractions.
Put it all together
So, if you had a fighter 2/cleric 8/wizard 4
BAB +10 ((8+24+8)/4=10)
Base FORT would be +9 (14/2=7 fighter gives +2 cleric gives +2 -> don't stack)
Base REF would be +7 (14/2=7)
Base WILL would be +9 (14/2=7 cleric gives +2, wizard gives +2 -> don't stack)
Wizard Caster level would be 8 (4+(10/2)=9 but can only get a max of double original level so 8)
Cleric Caster level would be 11 (8+(6/2)=11)
PF Beta just got released and the game is pretty good. Several 3e issues have been dealt with. They still need to tackle multi-classing which is not in the book. Beyond that there are several niggles that I have with some of the things. Some of them are long standing 3.5 problems and others are newly created. So here we go…
Races
Races with the small size racial feature should also have their CMB modifier listed there as well.
Half-Elf should have a +2 to Dex or +2 to Int, and not +2 to any
Half-Orc should have a +2 Str, and not +2 Str, +2 Wis, -2 Int
Classes
Bard songs should be selectable similar to the rogue talents or barbarian rages. If that means that some of the more powerful ones need to have scaling in them so be it. Every 10th level bard should have had choices in which songs they invested in.
Monk class features also need to be selected from a monk talents list just like the rogue and barbarian.
Paladin class features need to be selected from just like rogue and barbarian, finding a theme here?
Cleric should not have a static number of channel energy from first through 20th level. I suggest something like Cha + 1 and then +1 more every 4 levels or something. Also, the cleric’s channel energy powers should be removed from the combat section and placed in the class features section. It is no longer overly long and complicated and can easily be accommodated in that section.
Skills
Overall I concur with many of the skill combinations. However I think more can be done.
Some of the skills are capital letters and others are not. Reason???
Craft skills should be made trained only and when looking at them they could stand to be merged a bit. For instance, I think that the various craft skills should be broken out on table 5-4 and different craft skills should be assigned to the various classes. I don’t think every class should have access to craft alchemy for instance. The following is how I would merge the craft skills:
Craft (Alchemy) (same)
Craft (Arms and Armor) (combines armorer, weaponsmith, and boyer)
Craft (Building) (building structures, siege engines etc.)
Craft (Devices) (traps, clockworks and other engineering feats)
Craft (Finery) (art objects, gems, wands, forgery, and other forms of finery)
Appraise skill, this is a more controversial change but one that I personally like very much. I would axe the appraise skill and combine that skill to each of the various craft skills. Want to appraise art objects? Finery check. Want to appraise armor and weapons? Arms and Armor check.
Profession skill should be removed. What it actually does by the rules is allow a character to earn a living (a few gold a week) with his “other” skills, too often this skill is confused to be so much more. It is often used to be sort of a yeah I know how to sail a ship or do some other thing that is not covered in the rules. Get rid of this skill and use fair market value for what ever profession a character wants to do and don’t use this meta-crutch skill to accomplish that end.
Pilot skill, a new skill, would take care of any vehicles that pop up in a D&D game. The most important one would be pilot(ship). This would give the game system to use a skill to do that rather than wrongly using profession skill in this capacity. Again, profession skill allows you to use your *other* skills to make money on a weekly basis.
Escape artist needs to be combined with Acrobatics. This is one of the most sub par skills that I have almost never seen taken and even less called for.
Fly, Climb and Swim need to be combined together for game mechanic reasons. I know that there is an idea floating around that all of the “modes” of movement need to be a separate skill. Hogwash, this needs to be done because there are characters that have 2 skill points.
Bluff skill is a skill that allows your character to: lie, cheat, con, and maybe seduce. But one of my long standing dislikes that could get addressed with this skill is the create diversion. This should not be a bluff check. Possibly make it a CMB check, but not a bluff check. Also, feinting in combat is a little odd too, but a little more believable than using bluff to create a distraction.
Feats
Improved and greater feats should be in the format: Two-weapon fighting, greater. That way you are not flipping back and forth looking at feats that should have been right next to each other.
The +2 to two skills feats need to be removed they were a waste of space in 3.5 and they are a waste of space in PF. Make a side bar note on how to convert the feat from other books (not they were selected by anybody – even in other books with sub-par characters) then create a feat called Skill Synergy that gives +2 to two chosen skills.
Arcane strike is this feat meant to replace the overly powerful complete warrior feat? This underpowered feat does not do that. Some middle ground could be found?
Table 6-1 seems to be using the format of: weapons focus gives +1 to hit, greater weapon focus gives +1 to hit which is meant to stack to give +2 total. This is not always consistent. Greater weapon specialization is meant to be +4 or +6?
Combat
Concealment, Stabilize, and Arcane Spell Failure are all percentile rolls. These could be easily cleaned up to be d20 rolls. It is a d20 game after all. This will actually speed up the game by a tiny fraction on these rolls. No searching for/fishing out the little used % dice just roll the d20 that is already in your hand.
Make Coupe de Grace a standard action so that it will actually be better to use that action than just doing a full attack.
Remove the “critical failure” roll a “1” on a save item destruction rules. Table 10-1 “the funky chart” needs to just be removed along with its corresponding rule. I have rarely seen the rule in play but when it is the players often feal cheated when it happens to them. There are no critical misses for a reason and this is a hidden critical miss rule that is just antiquated game design at its best. Please remove this rule.
One last thing about what has not been tackled yet
I really like the 3e multi-classing system (about a billion times better than 4e) it gives an almost limitless number of possibilities. However, it does have several problems. Primarily saves, BAB and spell casting progression could use the fix. In addition to spell casting progression there are a lot of other progressions (familiars, animal companions, unarmed strike, sneak attack etc.) that could do with a general rule to keep them competitive as a character levels up. Some attempt at dealing with this would make the game better as a whole.
This is pretty much a deal breaker for me. If PF is creative enough to put some thought into how to address the 3e multi-classing problem I will be pleased but if it is left to stand as is I won’t. The 3e band aids such as Eldritch Knight and other similar PrCs. I don’t want to wait until 6th level to actually do what I want with my character. I want to wait until 2nd level and be a fighter 1/wizard 1 and not be completely sub-par until I can place the band aid on my character. Anyway, here are a couple of ideas on how to address the most glaring multi-class problems.
Caster level and class feature progression fix
Caster level is equal to the spell casting class level plus 1/2 of all your other levels up to a max of double. This would also cover all of the scalable class features such as animal companions. The class features that would scale by half your other levels would have to be written into the class features themselves.
Saves fix
your saves are 1/2 your overall character level. Classes give a non-stackable +2 bonus in certain saves (Fighter FORT, Rogue REF, Wizard WILL, Cleric FORT and WILL etc.)
It might be nice to give everyone a +3 total rather than have some with a +4 and others with a +2 and only a few with +6.
BAB fix
Full gets BAB +4/level
3/4 gets BAB +3/level
1/2 gets BAB +2/level
Add all your BABs up and divide by 4. This is simpler than adding fractions.
Put it all together
So, if you had a fighter 2/cleric 8/wizard 4
BAB +10 ((8+24+8)/4=10)
Base FORT would be +9 (14/2=7 fighter gives +2 cleric gives +2 -> don't stack)
Base REF would be +7 (14/2=7)
Base WILL would be +9 (14/2=7 cleric gives +2, wizard gives +2 -> don't stack)
Wizard Caster level would be 8 (4+(10/2)=9 but can only get a max of double original level so 8)
Cleric Caster level would be 11 (8+(6/2)=11)
