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

[GMforPowergamers]

I suspect that those who have trouble understanding the goals of Paizo are simply not the target audience. Which Paizo has been upfront in admitting is just fine with them. They want as many customers as possible but no single choice will please everyone.

your most likely right...and as a Happy 4e customer who is only in 1 3.5 game right now I most likely am not in the target audiance...

So, while I expect folks to give us feedback based on the Beta, it is my hope that you will not judge the final game based on its earlier incarnations. The final game comes out this August. I would hope that you take a look then and judge it based on its merits alone.

In any case, thanks for the feedback. Every bit helps us make this a better game.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

(If I missed your feedback on these fine boards in the past, I do apologize. Some days it is hard just to keep up with our playtest boards)

Jason, first let me say I hope you the best, but I again don't think it is quite what I am looking for...I really just don't like it...sorry

Is English your second language or something?

no it is my first, and the one I butcher the most...although I butcher spanish and french sometimes too...(atleast then I can say they are not my native lang)

PS: As another stated, when trying to make a point, it's important to make a point. "I don't like it" is not a point. "I don't like it because..." is. Work on that and have the paper on my desk by tomorrow.

see that is where this thread is being miss read, I am just explaining I don't like most of what I have seen from piazo...not in dragon not in Pathfinder...you know what I thought they did great...Dungeon Magazine...and if they every do a 4e adventure path sign me up...but I do not like there rules and balance...

that is the only point here...I am answering why I made a sarcastic comment in another thread, I forked it to not derail the other one...I can't belive I went to my friday afternoon team meeting, got back to my desk and it was still being posted in...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

There is no useful direction.

This thread was started for the sheer purpose of saying "I HATE PAIZO SO MUCH. SOOOOOOOOOOOO MUUUUUUUUUUUCH." And that's all it said. It didn't say why they hated Paizo. It didn't say why we should hate Paizo. It didn't even give us anything vile or horrible about Paizo. This entire thread exists for no reason other then the OP bragging about how much he hates Paizo. That sounds useful.

I was answering from another thread...and you got it in one I don't like them...that doesn't mean you shouldn't...Heck I don't like every band in the world that doesn't mean that music isn't good for you...

 

[Piratecat]

I was answering from another thread...and you got it in one I don't like them...that doesn't mean you shouldn't...Heck I don't like every band in the world that doesn't mean that music isn't good for you...

It's been addressed by a mod. Move on, please.

 

[Zil]

ok...but part of (the part with facts instead of opionions) my problem with pathfinder is the lack of backwards compatbility...

by redesigning the classes and races they make the game HARDER for 3.5 fans...

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...

It's not that difficult to mix and match 3.5 and Pathfinder characters and a lot can be done on the fly. I know I do that all the time for the Pathfinder games I run and it's not too much of a chore. The main thing I adjust is hit dice type/hit points and the odd skill (spot/listen become perception, etc) and I might add the odd feat if this is an NPC of higher level.

Why not just create said Elan warlock/swordmage using the various WoTC 3.5 books? The only things you need to adjust away from 3.5 are the number of feats (you'll have a few more over the life of the character than in straight 3.5) and skill selection.

I really dislike the change to feats (Becuse that means more work if I want a feat from complete _______)

I don't quite understand what you mean by the change to feats that would make it more difficult to use one from one of the Complete splat books.

They have not fixed save or die, and there is still a HUGE power jump between martial and spellcaster classes...

Hey, you can't always have it both ways. ;-) You are faulting them for changing Pathfinder too much from 3.5, and then you fault them for not changing it enough.

I'm one of those people who never found spell casters to be over-powered. In most of our games, it has been the straight-up fighters who steal the show at higher levels. Granted, our games never seem to get past 15th level or so, so your experience may be different.

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

The new cleric is certainly quite a bit different in play. I rather like the changes, but there is no reason you couldn't still use the old cleric alongside the new cleric in the same game.

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 think the main goal of Pathfinder is to keep OGL 3.5 games alive so that existing and new players can continue to play 3.5 style games into the future (and hopefully buy Paizo adventures and adventure paths). They've also decided to try and address some complaints about the 3.x game, but for the most part this is still the 3.5 game that so many of us are familiar with.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

My hat of Piazo know no limit.

 

[Caliber]

You can play stock 3.5e alternate base classes, take (most) 3.5e prestige classes, use (most) 3.5e feats, use 3.5e spells... You can use stock 3.5e monsters and adventures. It's as compatible as 3.0 to 3.5e, and way more so than 2e->3e or 3.5e->4e.

And that right there is the rub for me and my group. When we switched from 3.0 to 3.5 there was a lot of grumbling and grousing, even though I think most of us accepted the reasons for the switch. But even to this day we still find odd rules changes tucked away in subheading and side paragraphs from that switch. Argle!

The one guy in my group who was interested in Pathfinder (and not 4E) promptly changed his mind when he was reminded of having to switch from 3.0 to 3.5. Why go through that again? If I wasn't going to play 4E, I'd play 3.5 so ... why is Pathfinder needed? (For those saying to support the AP, why make changes? Want your main rulebook in print? OGL PHB anyone?)

 

[BryonD]

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.

Lots of people were saying that to me a year ago.
It turned out that not a single "prejudgment" was wrong.

The problem was that the whole argument wasn't that I didn't know what I was talking about. The argument that was that I didn't have the complete picture and there was going to be some magic solution in the missing pieces. But that turned out not to be the case. In more than 90% of the examples we did in fact have the full context. And when there was something else, it was pretty negligible in terms of mitigation of the concerns. Quite simply it was not a matter of insufficient data. It was a matter of you either liked the 4e design approach or you did not.

And the same applies to PF. I believe that a perfectly open-minded person who does not like PF now, has a 99% chance of not liking PF in August. Yes, there are still changes coming. As I understand it, major re-tooling of the bard and monk are still waiting to be unveiled. But the design approach of the game is not changing.

I think Golarion is the best campaign setting I have seen in 20 years.
I think the PF ruleset is a decent re-tooling of 3.5 that has more going for it on the basis of being a fresh spin than it does on actually being a mechanical improvement.

My biggest concern is that the open design approach seems to be going not toward constant refinement of ideas nearly so much as toward giving in to the loudest screams for whatever makes the screamers feel their alter-ego reach the quickest route to maximum "leet"ness.

PF is good. I like it. Right now I play beta. Ultimately I expect to play 3.5 with PF influences.

But I like PF now. If you don't like PF now, you probably won't like it later. That is reasonable and a fair judgment.

 

[EATherrian]

Paizo means more to me as a company than Wizards does now. They drew me back to Dragon and Dungeon with their beautiful Greyhawk poster maps. They talked the language I did and I've been a subscriber to most of their lines since my beloved magazines were drawn to the digital ether. Even unemployed and barely enough money to survive I maintained those subscriptions because they were the kind of company I hoped to see last for a long time. When I saw Golarion I knew there were many kindred spirits there, something I've not felt once from the Wizards people I've read. Will I play Pathfinder, I don't know. I think this last edition change has tainted the game for me, but I can still get great fluff to enjoy from the boys at Paizo, what I feel is the last bastion of Gygaxian D&D.

 

[Jason Bulmahn]

Jason, first let me say I hope you the best, but I again don't think it is quite what I am looking for...I really just don't like it...sorry

No worries. I don't think anyone expects a game to be a perfect fit for everyone, and I know that I certainly do not. Pathfinder has a rather sizable audience, and that is all that I, or any designer, could ask for.

This industry is just too small for the sort of anger we have seen over the past months. If you have a game that you like, then by all means, play it. I think that everyone should play more games, even if I did not design them...

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

 

[Festivus]

Speaking as one who has Pathfinder on preorder, and who more than once moved his finger to hovering over the cancel order button, you just moved my finger away a bit Jason. The Pathfinder beta rather turned me off a bit, probably from the envelope pushing.

My friends and I never understood the confusion about basic things like dispel magic and grapple... those were all easy for us to understand how they work, it was the cascading problems from things like dispel magic and sunder... and how the stacking of magical effects and their sudden removal that has been our thorn. At high levels you almost need a computer running with all the buffs programmed into it.

Thus, it is likely that we will run a core only 3.5 game for the next few months until you folks release, and then make our final decision as details about the final product come out. I wish Paizo luck... I still wish for Pathfinder 4E