My piazo problmes Forked Thread: Another Cease and Desist Letter: 4E Powercards

[GnomeWorks]

Lets say I want to play a Elan warlock/Swordmage...I need to make it up almost intirely...becuse all of the PHB stuff is diffrent...infact I might as well throw out my 3.5 book and just use the Pathfinder stuff...if I want a NEW game based on the old I will play 4e...not pathfinder...

Changes are necessary. If they didn't change anything, there would be no reason to go to Pathfinder.

There are also some who see a major disconnect between 3.5 and 4e. Pathfinder will not be 3.5 by a new name, but it will be closer to 3.5 than 4e is.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I have tried to like pathfinder I really have, but if I want to play 3.5 I have my own house rules...and I have books they can't even address...

This I sympathize with. Why should I spend money on what is essentially a bunch of house rule fixes when I fixed the game years before Paizo even announced PF? Many of their rules fix things where I don't see a problem, while many places where I see a problem they've ignored, so if I were to run PF I'd still have to house rule it.

The rest of your post is really hard to take seriously though, GMfPG. Rather play chutes & ladders than PF? That's nerd rage speaking. Or maybe it's the polio that's making your post so irritating to read.

Whatever dude, game on!

TS

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The rest of your post is really hard to take seriously though, GMfPG. Rather play chutes & ladders than PF? That's nerd rage speaking.

well maybe you don''t understand how cool D&D chutes and ladders can be...

think of a huge board as a dungeon, the path through has random omnster...top of that ladder an orc, bottom of that shoot a kobold...

nowbrave your way acrooss the board...

ok all jokeing aside I just don't like piazo...or AEG for that matter...or some others...I guess it is just my dislike coloring my arguements...

 

[Crothian]

Changes are necessary. If they didn't change anything, there would be no reason to go to Pathfinder.

Actually there would be as Pathfinder would be in print and still in use. That was one of the main first reasons that Pathfinder came to being so they could still have the core books in print.

There are also some who see a major disconnect between 3.5 and 4e. Pathfinder will not be 3.5 by a new name, but it will be closer to 3.5 than 4e is.

And 4e is closer to 3e then my toaster is, but that's not really helpful. Being closer then something else is not as important if it is still very different.

 

[phloog]

Changes are necessary. If they didn't change anything, there would be no reason to go to Pathfinder.
.

That's the problem with what they're doing...it doesn't give ME any reason to go to Pathfinder. It's the wrong solution to several problems, some of which people can disagree about whether they NEED fixing.

People who were heavily invested (time AND $$$$$) into 3.5 were reluctant to toss that all out and go 4e. Pathfinder doesn't help there because for all their talk of BC, it ISN'T really that backwards compatible.

I just still don't get their marketing angle:

"Not willing to make a radical change in your D&D game by moving to 4E? Then switch to Pathfinder, and make a radical-but-perhaps-somewhat less so change to your D&D game!"

The argument for me isn't whether or not the new rules thrown in by Paizo are inherently better, but that they are DIFFERENT enough as to constitute a new game system, and invalidate a rather enormous number of books I've bought over the years.

Honestly...I do not like what I've seen of 4e, but if I'm going to make that big a shift in my game, it would probably be to go all the way 4e and an 'official' and massively-popular product and not to PF. The differences PF to 3.5 to me are NOT small.

If Paizo wanted to keep 'core books in print', they could just print their own OGL Player's Handbook...but for all the good will they seem to get, it sure seems to me like the MAIN reason for Pathfinder is NOT to keep 3.5 style rules in print, but to make a product sufficiently different from 3.5 to allow Paizo to own/control it. Not in terms of violating OGL concepts, but still.

 

[Admiral Caine]

It's as fair to judge Pathfinder based on what we have seen so far as it is/was to judge 4e based on previews.

Totally fair game.

No lapse in judgment, however compounded upon another and another, justifies the first and subsquent ones to follow.

You once personally took me to task for crapping in a thread. You were right to do so, and you still have my thanks for it.

Having said that, now I'm saying that you can do better than "your side did it first".

And for the record, I'm supporting both the 4E and PFRPG product lines and GMing both games, so I have no "side" any longer.

 

[DaveMage]

but how much of cleric can you change before it becomes a new thing all togather???

I think the beta version of the cleric *is* a new thing all together. But then, I see it as a second type of cleric rather than a required replacement for my 3.5 cleric.

see I think they are trying to make a new thing and keep all the old and in doing it they are ripping themseves in half going in diffrent directions

I have no doubt that there will be things that are not 1:1 in usability with 3.5 and Pathfinder. However, one thing Paizo is doing is creating a conversion manual for those that want to use 3.5 and Pathfinder together. How useful that conversion manual is will likely go a long way towards convincing a lot of people whether to use Pathfinder or not.

Personally, while I'm excited about the new game, my biggest hope is that my 3.5 collection of rules/classes/races is usable with future Pathfinder adventures (with minimal work). If not, then I will be quite disappointed.

 

[Shemeska]

Ok it is an exaggeration, becuse[sic] I could always hope Piazo[sic] got there[sic] act togather[sic], but I feel at this time they do not...

I remember Dragon pre piazo[sic] and post piazo[sic]...infact the piazo [sic]days are when I let my subscription laps[sic]...I had one since the early 90's but have almost every issue from like 88 on... I just felt the writing wasn't as good.

Just a word of advice, but you might find people more receptive of your arguments if you bothered to use a spellchecker, or check for misused words before you submitted a post. Both here and over on other boards where I've seen you going more than a tad overboard at times in defense of what you like, the spelling and such tends to complicate finding your point.

 

[Starbuck_II]

Lets say I want to play a Elan warlock/Swordmage...I need to make it up almost intirely...becuse all of the PHB stuff is diffrent...infact I might as well throw out my 3.5 book and just use the Pathfinder stuff...if I want a NEW game based on the old I will play 4e...not pathfinder...

I don't agree. There is nothing saying a Warlock/SwordSAGE (Swordmage is 4.0) can't be used in Paizo.
Sure, a Warlock will be even weaker compared to Wizards as Wizards have been beefed up, but Warklocks can still be used.

Until they finally create a Psionics book: the Elan should still be useable in their games.

see I think they are trying to make a new thing and keep all the old and in doing it they are ripping themseves in half going in diffrent directions

This is a fair statement.
I keep worrying that if I ever play Paizo (who knows when I'll find another group at college, but you never know): they might change the Psionic classes to be sucky.
(I read that Psionics topic and cringe at some statements).

But old stuff should be fair game.

I can't think of any feats that are incompatible. Leap Attack should still work with Paizo's Nerfed Power Attack.

 

[Admiral Caine]

I just still don't get their marketing angle:

"Not willing to make a radical change in your D&D game by moving to 4E? Then switch to Pathfinder, and make a radical-but-perhaps-somewhat less so change to your D&D game!"

This is a really good point to reply to... I sincerely appreciate saying that you don't get it. Because it allows me to make a point that I think gets lost in all of this.

(However, just to be clear- what you have in quotation marks above is your interpretation, not Paizo's.)

What you're not understanding is why the PF RPG exists. Why it is being developed.

It exists to enable them to write and publish their Adventure Paths.

That is an important distinction to make.

Because when 3.0 and 3.5 were published, having a rule set in order to publish supplementary source material wasn't the goal. WOTC wanted to sell core books.

Paizo's strongest revenue stream (to my admittedly limited knowledge) is their Adventure Paths. It is also what garners them the most critical acclaim, and I don't think it would be unfair to say that is what they're best at.

The PF game exists to serve the APs.
The AP's do not exist to serve the PF game.

You need to understand that relationship, because it's backward to WOTC's original publishing strategy.

Having said that-
1.) Do they want the game to be great? Yes.
2.) Would they like to license it to other publishers? Probably yes.
3.) Would they like to make money from it? Sure.

Selling the APs and making some profit off the core rules doesn't have to be 100% mutually exclusive goals.

However, if Paizo really wanted to make a whole lot of money on the Core Game, they would invent a whole new game and not base it on 3.5. Because that would call for a lot more books to be published. However, they're aiming this for an audience that is happy to buy AP books and who do not want to buy thousands of dollars worth of new core books.

Hope this makes sense.

These are my words and if I'm incorrect then the error is mine. However I base what I've said upon things said by James Jacobs.