Pathfinder 1E Opinions on Pathfinder

[Votan]

Magic specialization trumps multiclass dipping in 3e power IME.

Later on, prestige classes showed up (focused specialist, abjurant champion) with cool abilities and full spellcasting progression. Adding new cool powers to your pure spellcaster at high levels seemed to move away from balance.

 

[BryonD]

Can you give an actual example of three perfectly fine classes with 1 + 1 + 1 = 5.

You present this as something that happened continuously to you. So I assume that 8 or 12 examples should be easy to provide.

I find the claim bizarre and would like to see something to actually consider rather than hand-waving multiclassing kicked my dog statements.

 

[BryonD]

Later on, prestige classes showed up (focused specialist, abjurant champion) with cool abilities and full spellcasting progression. Adding new cool powers to your pure spellcaster at high levels seemed to move away from balance.

THIS is definitely a real problem.

However, it is very easy to solve amongst players who want a fun experience for everyone. In my group it rarely came up because a lot of the broken classes are easy to spot. But even with that, there were maybe two or three occasions in which something turned out to be much more potent than expected. Each time we tweaked things to an agreeable level and everyone went on having a blast.

Even with that, it is very different than class dipping.
I've seen a few cases of class dipping, but nothing that remotely broke the game. My experience with dipping has had vastly more to do with character modeling than max-min.

 

[NewJeffCT]

es.

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.

Well, we'll have to disagree on that then, as somebody who started gaming in the late 70s and saw lots of different gamers & gaming groups in the 70s, 80s and into the late 90s, the multi-classed demi-humans were inherently more powerful than humans in 1E and 2E. You gave up a few hit points to be almost the best fighter and almost the best wizard in the group.

When 3E came out in 2000, one of the selling points was that it was finally cool to play a human, from the extra skill point & feat you got, as well as being able to choose any favored class.

While I found 3E/3.5 more work than fun as a DM once my just-ended campaign got past level 10 or so, I think it would have been far less balanced at level 18 if it was 1E or 2E. I had a large group of players (eight) and nobody really took a back seat down the stretch in the campaign.

 

[Coldwyn]

I´m not that much of a pathfinder fan, rather being part of the 4E crowd, but I´ve got to admit that they fixed part of the multiclass problem, especially the prestige class dipping.
Best example were the old cleric, fighter and sorcerer. Beyond 1st level, they were so bland and featureless, there was no sense in not taking a prestige class.
With PF spreading some abilieties and specials along the 20 levels of the base class, Paizo encourages to stay single class.

 

[The Ghost]

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.

You specifically? No. I just find that too many people complain about "Option A" being broken when "Option A" is just that - an option. If you don't like that option then don't use that option. This applies to 3.5 certainly, but also 1e, 2e, 4e, M&M, Pathfinder, SW Saga, etc.

 

[Votan]

Well, we'll have to disagree on that then, as somebody who started gaming in the late 70s and saw lots of different gamers & gaming groups in the 70s, 80s and into the late 90s, the multi-classed demi-humans were inherently more powerful than humans in 1E and 2E. You gave up a few hit points to be almost the best fighter and almost the best wizard in the group.

I certainly agree that it could work out that way; the most overpowered characters that I ever saw were demi-human multi-classed. But usually at least one rule was being overlooked to make that possible.

So I don't want to defend the 1E/2E multi-classing system as perfect, by any means.

Still, many powerful characters that were famous from 1E/2E (Mordenkainen, Elminster, Tensor, Bigby) tended to be single classed (or dual classed in one case) human wizards.

 

[gamerprinter]

Its different for every group I am sure...

I am definitely in the Pathfinder is good camp, however, all the 3e hate, while not necessarily misplaced does not exist in our group.

We're still playing a 3.5 campaign that has gone past 3 years now. All the players are multi-class, all the players are either epic or will soon be epic with class A + Class B + Class C, where two of the classes sit at 20th level, if not higher. We have a few house rules, and have largely banned many spells from the Spell Compendium, but haven't banned that book altogether. Almost none of the characters chose Prestige classes, most are just core classes and multiclass in two or three core classes. Its not that we don't want PrC, so far no one has gone all out into the PrC - oh, we have one full level Black Guard, but he was a single class Paladin, until he "fell."

We all share the DM chair, except for two (one, we banned from DMing as he plays his own broken version of the game, not playing core at all, the other doesn't want to), but five people switch around as DM, usually running 4 or 5 sessions before switching. We've encountered no real problems, even with one part-time DM as DMing for the first time in his life.

Most of us had fun with every version of D&D since 1e. As a group we don't care for what we've seen in 4e (we even have the books, so its not based on an uneducated opinion) - but that's just our group. Its not WotC hate, just that 4e is not our game.

I am slowly but surely interjecting pieces of Pathfinder into our game, mostly with skills and some imported class features from PF to 3e, as well as use of CMB/CMD.

Because I am developing a commercial setting for Pathfinder (Kaidan: a Japanese Ghost Story setting), I have developed a Samurai class for my setting that I've nerfed in the feats area, so it fits better into our 3e group, but two players are already multiclassing with my Samurai and they love it.

So we're basically enjoying PF, like we enjoyed every previous edition. Problems exist, but by and large we work around it. Lucky for our group, unlike the OP's we share in DMming and it works great for us, minimizes DM burn-out and everyone is happy.

I feel sorry for all those who thought to quit RPGing for one reason or another, our group has been having fun for over 20 years.

GP

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

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

Which is a solution some found satisfying, but my group did not.

Can you give an actual example of three perfectly fine classes with 1 + 1 + 1 = 5.

You present this as something that happened continuously to you. So I assume that 8 or 12 examples should be easy to provide.

I find the claim bizarre and would like to see something to actually consider rather than hand-waving multiclassing kicked my dog statements.

Easy to provide 8 to 12 samples from 2 years ago after selling all my books? What are you on man? Cause I need some of that! I have trouble remembering what I did yesterday.

Seriously though, no, I don't feel like digging up old examples. I gave one simple example upthread. I've moved past that particular point to the real crux of the matter for me. The power level of the characters in my group were spread so far apart (due to superior multiclassing, weak multiclassing and spellcasters in general) that I found creating fun challenges for the whole group to be a chore. And I can't blame the new shiny devil that people make 4E out to be, because before the announcement of a new edition I was contemplating giving up roleplaying for the first time since I started over 25 years ago. The system I embraced from day 1 (3E) had let me down too much and no one else in our group wanted to deal with Dming it either when I was about to announce an end to my hobby life. It may sound dramatic, but that is how little fun I was having with the problem at hand.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

If I may request the current talk of how 3.5 destroyed your life to be moved...elsewhere? It doesn't really have much to do with opinions on Pathfinder. If you really, really hate 3.5, you won't like Pathfinder. Really kinda that simple.