Pathfinder 1E Opinions on Pathfinder

[catsclaw227]

If somehow 4e disappeared or I wasn't able to play 4e ever again, and I had to chose between 3.x and Pathfinder, there would be little doubt. Pathfinder seems to fix a lot of the issues with 3.x, especially if you consider class imbalance a feature rather than a bug.

This is absolutely the case for me and my group.

 

[Votan]

I look forward to see how Paizo handles this (via errata, reprints, edition revision, etc). For some reason, I can't see Mona and crew being sheepish about admitting "OK, after 2 yrs and a million games, X wasn't such a good mechanic. We're taking it into the shop for an update. We're not sure how it's gonna work yet, but we admit it's messy. Check back later."

I would appreciate that kind of honest self assessment in a company that writes game rules. I wish WOTC could be that way.

To be fair, WotC admitted to the massive problems with polymorph by the end. It was very logical extension of their underlying attribute-run mechanics but it clearly became unbalanced with time. I see =m to remember whole editorials admitting this and trying to find appropriate fixes.

SO both companies have shown signs of this ability.

 

[catsclaw227]

To be fair, WotC admitted to the massive problems with polymorph by the end. It was very logical extension of their underlying attribute-run mechanics but it clearly became unbalanced with time. I see =m to remember whole editorials admitting this and trying to find appropriate fixes.

SO both companies have shown signs of this ability.

Yep, I recall the dialog when the polymorph modifications were being made.

It's great when a company can be both Rah-Rah-Rah! and constructively self-critical at the same time, but unfortunately some people seem to only focus on the Rah-Rah-Rah part and criticize WOTC for it.

 

[jaerdaph]

To be fair, WotC admitted to the massive problems with polymorph by the end.

You mean when they had a new edition coming out to sell...

Alright, now I'll say something nice about 4e: I've always liked the whole Points of Light approach/philosophy.

Okay that wasn't so hard to do or hurt a bit.

 

[Dannager]

When it came down to it, the guys in my group don't want anything to do with 4E. It's not about play balance, broken spells or power level. Oh you can make an argument about it, but that's not really it (for us). I believe the essence of it is far more emotional and visceral than those arguments could ever capture; the play balance issues become excuses as much as they are actual reasons.

This is probably the most honest I've ever seen someone be about their reasons for not adopting 4e. It's tiresome to see the same handful of refuted arguments on why 4e sucks repeated over and over again by people who don't actually know enough about the system to have any real complaints.

It's just unfortunate that there are gamers out there that take the above "WotC kicked my puppy and I hate them for it" position. Not only are they setting themselves against a game they otherwise might enjoy, but they're choosing to see the company as evil or antagonistic for having to make difficult business decisions (like the decision to drop print magazines in the face of the death of print periodicals, or the decision to produce a new edition in order to provide them the revenue they need to continue making new D&D products). It's not like these are uniquely diabolical actions on the part of WotC. They're simply decisions that companies must make, and it's frankly silly to hate a company for doing something they consider necessary, especially if you can't come up with a good reason for why it wasn't necessary.

Now, the real fly in the ointment, as far as this topic is concerned, is that a lot of these gamers have taken to Paizo like they once took to WotC. That's great for Paizo, but they need to understand that the way these gamers react isn't going to change. When Paizo is eventually forced to make a tough call on a well-liked but unprofitable product line, I think they'll start to see that same attitude bubbling up to the surface.

 

[Windjammer]

Paizo and I parted company when they went all Pathfinder - by which I don't mean the point in time at which they started to playtest it but when they switched the rest of their product line to Pathfinder.* I'm extremely fiddly when it comes to backwards compatibility and think that the Paizo classes work best with Paizo spells and Paizo monsters. As a result, I never wanted to pick up PF just to mish and mash it with my ongoing 3.5 campaign. Otoh, I'm a 3.5 die hard fan, and more happily run the massive amount of material from Paizo I have from 2004 up to early 2009 than switch systems to enjoy their current offerings.

So onto why I didn't switch system. I couldn't see the fixes. I mean that literally. I still can't. Take combat maneuvers. I'd like these to run smoothly at the table and to be good options for characters to take. Now, not only has PF skewered the % chance of succeeding at the maneuvers (all committed in the name of fixing a "balance" issue I never had) by loading two stat bonuses on the opposed defense roll (STR and DEX go into CMD). Also, the formating in the book doesn't make the rules any easier to handle. To be precise, the rules needed not just a simplification in their actual wording, but in how it's presented. Some time last year I created a combat maneuver "cheat sheet" which gave people a handier table reference than the overly long entry in the 3.5 PHB on Grapple e.g. That sheet borrows heavily from the 4E layout devices, and I regret that Paizo didn't make heavier use of goal-driven layout (you don't need to be a fan of 4E layout to think this btw). Secondly, the reason some maneuvers slowed down play wasn't just that the rule was badly presented in the rule book - so badly as to be impossible to quickly glance over at a session. No, the reason it stopped sessions - apart from being impossible to absorb at a glance - was that it was unclear about how it reacted with a lot of other circumstances. Just earlier today I read a Pathfinder rules thread in which someone asked whether a guy who escapes from the Pinned condition using the Escape Artist skill is still considered Grappled, or whether it takes a follow up check to liberate oneself from Grappled. Even with the PRD the thread (a day later) hasn't progressed. So apparently Grapple is just as unclear as ever, because how the combat conditions interact is apparently unclear (it's a two-step maneuver, moving the guy from condition 1 to 2, so freeing oneself from condition 2 would logically invite the reverse sequence; yet it's also stated that the conditions don't stack, so it seems as if condition 2 replaces condition 1).

I've gone into quite some length with this example, but not with the intention to convey that it's the only one. It's just one of several cases where PF didn't convince me that it was a step up from 3.5. Yet it needed to convince me of that since, as stated earlier, for me it's really a question of playing only one of the two systems - 3.5 or Pathfinder. I appreciate that PF does a lot of good things for a lot of people who've jumped onto that system (e.g. active product support, base classes viable up to level 20). It's just not for me, and I don't begrude people who switched systems. I just hope PF won't contribute to the trend of less and less new blood coming to 3.5. For, alas, the time is gone when 3.5 PHBs for new players were an affordable option, and I fear that having an affordable approximation (i.e. PF) it will be even harder to get people into 3.5.

My whole post so far, though, only concerns the 3.5 campaign I DM. A friend of mine is going to run Legacy of Fire using the Pathfinder ruleset, and I'm quite excited about that, as I'll want to try out the reworked Paladin class. Aaand I'm superexcited about the adventure path.


* (That said, I'd buy the first instalment of Kingmaker even if it was published for a non-D&D-ish RPG, to see if it matches the high hopes I have for it.)

 

[Turjan]

It's just unfortunate that there are gamers out there that take the above "WotC kicked my puppy and I hate them for it" position. Not only are they setting themselves against a game they otherwise might enjoy, but they're choosing to see the company as evil or antagonistic for having to make difficult business decisions (like the decision to drop print magazines in the face of the death of print periodicals, or the decision to produce a new edition in order to provide them the revenue they need to continue making new D&D products). It's not like these are uniquely diabolical actions on the part of WotC. They're simply decisions that companies must make, and it's frankly silly to hate a company for doing something they consider necessary, especially if you can't come up with a good reason for why it wasn't necessary.

You know, gaming is mostly about having fun. It doesn't really matter what the reasons are why gamers play one game or the other, and I don't see why this is "unfortunate" or "silly", as long as they have fun with what they are doing.

Even though I see the situation of people who stop gaming over matters like this a bit different, it's in most cases just the straw that broke the camel's neck, and the end of gaming was in the air for other reasons, anyway.

Personally, I'm not playing anything at the moment, which really _is_ unfortunate . I have the Pathfinder book, though, and it definitely looks like a commendable effort to fix some of 3.5 shortcomings without changing the general feel of the game. I quite like it.

 

[Steel_Wind]

It's not like these are uniquely diabolical actions on the part of WotC. They're simply decisions that companies must make, and it's frankly silly to hate a company for doing something they consider necessary, especially if you can't come up with a good reason for why it wasn't necessary.

This is apologia. Paizo made money off of publishing Dragon and Dungeon, as did WotC. Paizo continues to make money off of selling the paper version of Pathfinder Chronicles.

The suggestion that the decision was necessary is plainly untruthful. It was a marketing decision by WotC which appears, in all of the circumstances, to have proved unwise at this stage. Whether that estimation continues to be the conclusion another eight years from now is unknown.

But necessary? As in "no other option?" Demonstrably, that is simply untrue.

I don't think there are many who have been touting the decision by WotC to have been one that has been particularly successful to date. In any event - WotC can do whatever it is that it wants to do. Apart from gripe or bitch privately or online, I don't get to do much about it other than vote with my dollars. I'll either decide to buy their products or not, as I see fit, in my sole and absolute discretion.

In the specific instance being discussed in this thread, I've made it clear for both logical and emotional reasons that my group has been happy to give Paizo our business as a consequence. Does that goodwill saddle Paizo with potentially unreasonable customer expectations in the future? Sure it does. We're gamers. When you hitch your company's financial performance, in whole or in part, to the pedantic obsession of gamers, that comes with the gig. It's an inherent factor at work in both a good way and in a potentially negative one, too.

To date, Paizo has been remarkably responsive to their customer base. Should that change in the future, I expect their customers will let them know.

Right now, Paizo appears to understand what their customer niche wants in a way that threatens to make Paizo an actual real competitor in the marketplace for WotC's own customers. That did not have to be; nevertheless, that's where all of this has ended up.

While I'm not pleased that it all transpired in the manner that it did, I'm very pleased to have a company like Paizo understand our needs and want to make stuff to sell that I want to buy. In terms of my loyalty in the current marketplace, Paizo has certainly earned it.

It's not easy to turn a license and the businss of being a niche publisher into a brand. It takes skill, financial wherewithal and testicles the size of grapefruits -- and an occasional bit of luck.

That Paizo has managed to do all of that with Pathfinder in a manner which is successful enough that other companies wish to use and sublicense the brand demonstrates how far Paizo has come. It also demonstrates, perhaps, how genuinely imprudent it was to license out the publishing of Dragon and Dungeon to Paizo in the first place. Trademarks can be licensed for a limited time, but the credibility and goodwill that comes with that time-limited license can be leveraged to last a lot longer than any license -- or royalties payable thereunder, too.

Food for thought.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

To all those who think I'm waxing like a country singer, I'm not. I shared my experience and opinion. What I didn't do was "take a crap all over 3E." I explained how it became I system I would only enjoy playing and the problem that arose for myself and the rest of my group regarding DMing it. If you can't take some opinionated discussion on why I left 3.5, too bad.

This is apologia. Paizo made money off of publishing Dragon and Dungeon, as did WotC. Paizo continues to make money off of selling the paper version of Pathfinder Chronicles.
The suggestion that the decision was necessary is plainly untruthful. It was a marketing decision by WotC which appears, in all of the circumstances, to have proved unwise at this stage. Whether that estimation continues to be the conclusion another eight years from now is unknown.

Proved to be unwise? By who's estimation? Your own personal taste obviously. The sales of a product can be sufficient for one size of company, while inadequate for others. WotC made their decision based on the needs of their company. That is a fact, otherwise they would not have gone in that direction. Whether the move is unwise or not is a matter of opinion. If WotC is meeting its targets relative to the current economy then they made a wise decision. If they are falling short, then they made a mistake. But it's not as black & white as you make it out to be.

 

[BryonD]

It's tiresome to see the same handful of refuted arguments on why 4e sucks repeated over and over again by people who don't actually know enough about the system to have any real complaints.

Its also tiresome to see implications that there are only a handful of complaints, that they've all been refuted, and that the people offering them don't know enough to have an informed opinion.