Pathfinder 1E Opinions on Pathfinder

[malkav666]

Or it could be that the system is great at accommodating groups like those you have, and is very poor at accommodating the groups other people have, and that many people consider this a serious flaw with the system.

Clearly, however, that's just wild and out there. After all, if it were a real possibility you probably wouldn't have just assumed that something else was the underlying cause.

The only issue I have with that is when those folks take their opinions of what they consider to be flaws and try and paint them as facts to me. I am ok with different folks liking different things. I like diversity.

I feel it is a fair counterpoint to offer someone who is trying to demonstrate a flaw by how it plays out in their group with my own groups experiences. I was not trying to offend.

love,

malkav

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I'm going to assume you've never played a full out point buy system like Hero, Mutants and Masterminds, or GURPS. It's possible to create characters of entirely divergent abilities, far more than in 3e D&D, even if you spend the exact same number of points.

You know what they say when you assume. Some of those systems have flatter power curves overall, so divergent abilities don't effect the ability to create challenges as much as a steep power curve system. Others don't focus on the same kind of challenges so that having divergent abilities is more useful. Others have clearer ways of delineating power levels of the opposition so that players can recognize who they should square off against. These things can be done in 3E, but they were not the kind of solutions I found easy to accomplish and/or satisfying.

This basically means that your options all have to be very small in scope and unable to form much synergy with anything else. That's not necessarily a bad idea, but it is a bit constraining because there are almost always elements that you miss when designing the options you're adding or you have to close the book on adding options pretty early.

1E & 4E D&D accomplish what I'm looking for by making some new options limited in scope as you say (4E Feats) or by making them relatively self-contained (new classes). Since cherry picking class features was my main problem, these solutions are more satisfying to me.

Emphasis mine. If you don't like that option then don't use that option. Or, add the parts you do like and disregard the parts you don't.

If you weren't addressing me I apologize for my reiteration. I LIKE NEW OPTIONS. And I find it too much trouble to try to pre-determine what to ban or for that matter to ban things mid-game. I don't want to create pages of house rules to fix what I find wrong, nor do I want to ban entire books worth of option due to problem issues. Plus, my basic issue wasn't that a particular prestige class was broken and needed to be banned, it was that Class A + Class B + Class C + Prestige Class D + Prestige Class E was a problem. I would have had to ban multiclassing altogether, limit it drastically, or ban options that I found balanced and interesting when they stood alone.

As much as I like 3.5 and as mucher )) as I like Pathfinder, I'm still going to run the game the way I think works best for me and my players (but especially for me). I don't particularly like prestige classes at all anymore. Of course, since I'm running Pathfinder E8, prestige classes won't factor in much at all. What's more, I don't particularly like attacks of opportunity, so I got rid of them. I like Action Points, so I'm using them.

So, you had problems with the system and you changed the system in a way that you find reasonable and satisfying. That doesn't discount that you didn't see problems and correct them, so you only help to support my claim of problems. I'm not saying my solution of switching to 4E would be a reasonable and satisfying solution for you or anyone else. But I can say that I have not had to ban a single item yet in almost 2 years of the game, nor do I experience the power gap I once did.

Kind of a weak argument, since doesn't the DM have final say over like, everything? Else what good are houserules? Rule 0 and all that?

Hear! Hear!

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

What was being described as an intrinsic flaw by the poster I quoted, is something that my group thinks is one of the best features of the system. It has nothing to do with the system and everything to do with the group. Whether or not a group finds something to be a feature or a flaw has nothing to do with them being awful. But it also does not have much to do with the system either. It has to do with preference.

Wher did I call it an intrinsic flaw? I said Multiclassing is intrinsic to 3E and 3E only. I said that I and others have a problem with Cherry Picking via Multiclassing. I said numerous times I don't think everyone has this same problem. So where did I even get close to calling this an intrinsic flaw?

I was arguing that the systemic flaws that were being reported in his post had to do with preference. I am sorry you interpreted the above quoted sentiment from my argument. It was not my intent to paint his group as sucking, but rather to point out that the issue was one of opinions and not one of facts.

The only issue I have with that is when those folks take their opinions of what they consider to be flaws and try and paint them as facts to me. I am ok with different folks liking different things. I like diversity.

The only fact I've tried to support is that other share my problem and that people find flaws in the optional material and thus find the need to ban them. I'm not trying to state as a fact that 3E suxxor which is what you seem to be reading into my comments, all the while making thinly veiled insults against a system you don't like.

I feel it is a fair counterpoint to offer someone who is trying to demonstrate a flaw by how it plays out in their group with my own groups experiences. I was not trying to offend.

Your group's experience matched what I posted as a way the system works for some groups before you chimed in on the topic. I had already recognized that some groups can avoid the problem I encountered. I also said that every person in my current group would gladly still play 3E if someone would step up to run a campaign, but none of us wants to run it because of the problem I encountered as DM.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Well, to be honest, multi-classing was part & parcel of 1E and 2E - it was why so many people played elves in the first place. Why be a Human Fighter 6 or a Human Wizard 6 when you can be an Elf Fighter/Wizard 5/5 with just about the same overall XP? 3E made the option available to humans and balanced it out a lot more than prior editions. Yes, there were certainly abuses and broken stuff in 3E, but just the base classes and races in 1E and 2E were broken.

And, if you talk about the "splat" books for 3E and too many PrCs, you would also have to include the 2E equivalent of "kits" for the various classes, as they were often just as broken.

 

[Voadam]

My main problem was class dipping. One level of this plus a dash of that plus prestige class A. All three classes on their own could be equal in power level, but 1+1+1=5. Multiclassing in 3E seemed to make sense and I liked it for a long time. Maybe my players pushed too far into system mastery and power gaming to make it fun for me anymore. Or I should say some of my players. I don't really care if the whole table is running at "5", that's easy to provide a good challenge. It's when the system masters produced "5's" and the other players produced "1's" that challenging the group became more of a chore and at times too overwhelming a task. Since we all had been playing 3E from Day 1 to its "final day" (actually a couple weeks past the release of 4E just to finish our current campaign) there really wasn't much hope that the non-system masters would ever catch up.

Not "odd" because there have been many discussions regarding this very issue.

Most of the imbalance arguments I usually see go the other way.

Usually along the lines of:

1 Spellcasting is more powerful than non magical classes.

2 Spellcasters who multiclass seriously dilute their power and can become seriously underpowered for their level. Dipping for a level or two and remain fairly competitive but the loss of the top spell level seriously hurts power.

3 multiclassing can really screw up your power level in multiple ways by gaining more weak low level powers while missing out on high level powers, losing out on BAB, having powers that don't synergize, conflicting class benefits and restrictions (arcane casting and fighter armor), and wierd save progressions.

Could you give me an example of class dipping that was imbalancingly powerful?

In 3e for example I played a rgr1/mnk1/wiz5 who got tremendous benefits from dipping into both ranger (hp and sword and ranger wands 2 good saves) and mnk (unarmed, evasion, three good saves). He was much more resilient and capable close up than a wiz 7 . . . but a wizard 7 can throw around 4th level spells, has more spell slots, and has 2 more levels for caster level effects in spells (fireball damage, SR, durations).

I was working every power angle I could and it was a good combo for the two PC game I was in, but I knew it was not as strong as a straight caster would have been.

Magic specialization trumps multiclass dipping in 3e power IME.

 

[nightwyrm]

The problem with multiclassing isn't multiclassing itself. As it's been stated already, if you don't know what you're doing, you can totally screw up your character (which is another problem, but not an overpower issue). Melee characters can get a lot from cherry picking, but casters (who are the real power anyways) don't.

The problem are the PrCs which are either crap or really, really good. Extensive dipping almost always refers to PrCs. The really broken PrCs are the ones which gives you extra stuff on top of full casting.

The problem with a lot of the 3e classes (especially the PrCs) are that they were mostly designed as self contained classes instead of being building blocks that interacts a great deal with other classes, which is what the 3e class system really is.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Well, to be honest, multi-classing was part & parcel of 1E and 2E - it was why so many people played elves in the first place. Why be a Human Fighter 6 or a Human Wizard 6 when you can be an Elf Fighter/Wizard 5/5 with just about the same overall XP? 3E made the option available to humans and balanced it out a lot more than prior editions. Yes, there were certainly abuses and broken stuff in 3E, but just the base classes and races in 1E and 2E were broken.

But the power gap wasn't there. I played that "Human Fighter 6" alongside the Elf Fighter/Magic-User 5/4 and was no more or less challenged than the multiclass PC.

And, if you talk about the "splat" books for 3E and too many PrCs, you would also have to include the 2E equivalent of "kits" for the various classes, as they were often just as broken.

Agreed.

Most of the imbalance arguments I usually see go the other way.

Could you give me an example of class dipping that was imbalancingly powerful?

A simle example which only scratches the surface of my issue was the high level druid wildshaped into a dire bear who already outstripped the party fighter in raw combat power covered his one weakness, AC, with a single level dip into Monk. His big Wis bonus went straight to AC and made him better in the last remaining edge the fighter had over him.

Like I said, it's not a matter of broken high power or broken low power, it was differential between individual character power that made things difficult to balance as DM. Made my job hell, so I wasn't having fun anymore.

 

[Votan]

Well, to be honest, multi-classing was part & parcel of 1E and 2E - it was why so many people played elves in the first place. Why be a Human Fighter 6 or a Human Wizard 6 when you can be an Elf Fighter/Wizard 5/5 with just about the same overall XP? 3E made the option available to humans and balanced it out a lot more than prior editions. Yes, there were certainly abuses and broken stuff in 3E, but just the base classes and races in 1E and 2E were broken.

And, if you talk about the "splat" books for 3E and too many PrCs, you would also have to include the 2E equivalent of "kits" for the various classes, as they were often just as broken.

One feature that is interesting to consider, when you look back at the 1E and 2E books, is that they specifically list the multi-class combinations that are allowed. They also introduce which sets of restrictions apply to these combinations (at least in 2E). Since you could not switch classes after starting as a mutli-class character (we'll ignore dual classing for the moment as they balanced it in an odd way), the whole class could be evaluated over 1,000,000 XP in comparison to other classes.

That vastly reduced the ability to use odd mixes to cause troubles (and any especially annoying mix could be removed from the list).

Now this varied after core (in some good and bad ways) but the basic ideas was pretty sound and easy to balance. Sure, there were a lot of elf fighter/magic-users but they had insane XP limits, low hit points in melee and (in 2E) questionable armor classes. A nice option in some ways but not the way to become massively powerful (as once you reached the fixed XP to increase in level you fell behind everyone else rather fast, even barring the level limits).

This is not to say that the previous systems had no flaws (they had many, some of of which 3E introduced solid fixes for). But the ability to swap back and forth between classes (picking up abilities and perhaps even advancing spellcasting fully) was always going to be complicated to balance.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

The problem with multiclassing isn't multiclassing itself. As it's been stated already, if you don't know what you're doing, you can totally screw up your character (which is another problem, but not an overpower issue). Melee characters can get a lot from cherry picking, but casters (who are the real power anyways) don't.

The problem are the PrCs which are either crap or really, really good. Extensive dipping almost always refers to PrCs. The really broken PrCs are the ones which gives you extra stuff on top of full casting.

The problem with a lot of the 3e classes (especially the PrCs) are that they were mostly designed as self contained classes instead of being building blocks that interacts a great deal with other classes, which is what the 3e class system really is.

And in 4E the corralting Paragon Paths are self-contained and thus can add the flavor Prestife Classes were meant to without cherry picking abilities from multiple classes.

 

[Votan]

And in 4E the corralting Paragon Paths are self-contained and thus can add the flavor Prestife Classes were meant to without cherry picking abilities from multiple classes.

In the same sense, a lot can be accomplished with a "only 1 prestige class" rule.