Pathfinder 1E Paizo Annoucement!

[Relique du Madde]

GenCon 2009 does seem like a long way off. By that point we'll all have had 4E in our hands for a year and the system will likely have built a good amount of traction. I wonder if a 3.75 can really have a lot of luster that late in the game?

If you think about it, the one group of people that benefits from Paizo's 3.5/3.75 book (besides themselves) are those small OGL publishers that could not afford a $5,000 check to allow them to produce games for 4e before the end of the year and those who have ongoing campaigns and do not want to end them just yet.

This announcement wasn't about screwing over WoTC but instead was about keeping hope in those who are affected by WoTC's foot dragging.

 

[baberg]

I still have my heart set on some day getting a Paizo adventure path done with 4E rules. Some day....

I think you will, if 4e catches on with gamers. Paizo aren't stupid, and they're a company. Companies go where the money is. Right now the money is on 3.5, and after 4e hits (for a while at least) there will still be a large amount of money in 3.5. But if the early adopters of 4e give highly positive reviews and it becomes the new standard, Paizo will have no choice but to develop for 4e even if they keep going with their Pathfinder RPG.

It all depends on how 4e is accepted by gamers.

 

[Connorsrpg]

Woah. Sorry, but that probably ends my purchaing too

I love Paizo products, but unlike many over there, it doesn't mean I hate WotC.

4E looks like the game for me. Oh and regarding the boards - those Paizo posts regarding their new direction will certainly NOT encourage people to be posting 4E on their boards at all. 'This is the best way forward and suits our game best, etc'.

If I was to do 4E conversions of Pathfinder (which I plan to) I certainly won;t be posting them on the Paizo boards....far too much hate there.

I feel for Paizo, but I also feel for Necromancer...given the amount of 4E hate many Paizo board followers have posted...well they got their way and now their wallets will have to do the talking.

For me I would simply love if all the best minds in dnd were working on the one edition. So I am glad Paizo has left the door open, but for now, I guess I will have to stick to converting or maybe letting subscriptions slip.

 

[Agamon]

Even if it fails, I'm proud to support a company that is doing what most of us believe in our heart of hearts is the right thing.

Who are the "us" you refer to? The people that still want to play 3.5? Then yeah, it certainly wouldn't look like the wrong thing to those individuals.

I won't speak for the rest of us, but from me it's a shrug. A year ago, Paizo was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Good luck to them in their endeavors, but I personally really don't care anymore.

 

[Lord Fyre]

Paizo Publishing® Announces the Pathfinder RPG™
Pathfinder™ to continue under the 3.5 rules.

Tuesday, March 19th, 2008

I am just SHOCKED that no one has pointed out that . . .

March 19th, 2008 is a Wednesday!

 

[Treebore]

Possibly true mouse, I would say, after all this how sucessful would they be in courting back the 4e crowd?

Uh, very successful, unless 4E people are just bitter people and have low IQ's. Quality sells, right? Well PAIZO has proven they are top quality. They will sell very successfully as long as the consumers buy it.

So the real question is how big will the 3E market be, and how long will it stay big enough?

That will be how long PAIZO stays with 3E.

PAIZO is not led by business idiots. They will ride the 3E wave as long as it keeps them afloat. If the wave dies out too much they will just jump to the 4E wave.

Simple. Smart. Keeps them viable.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Has anyone noticed the oddity in the cover rules?

Let's say there's a 5' wide blank corridor. Well-lit, white-washed walls.

There's a guard in the corridor. I move up the corridor towards him, stopping 10 feet away.

Per the ranged cover rules, I have a +2 Cover bonus to AC (no matter which corner of his square the guard uses, lines to two of my corners run along the wall)... which means I can use Stealth to hide from him. In the well-lit, white, 5' wide empty corridor, 10 feet away.

But at least when I try to shoot him, he gets the +2 Cover bonus to AC as well!

-Hyp.

 

[Lizard]

This is going to be interesting.

The OGL mean 3x cannot die; people will always produce new, commercial quality, material for it. The main issue is, would this be a smattering of random supplements sold mostly on the net, or would someone decide to support the sizeable fraction of people not planning to immediately switch to 4e? In the past, 'edition resistance' faded because there was no support for old games and people eventualy felt they HAD to switch, except for an insignificant minority of die-hards. This has now changed.

By providing a stable, high-quality 'core' for 3x to continue, Paizo has done something which has only happened once before -- with Hackmaster effectively catering to the 1/2x market with a new, upgraded, system that still had the 'flavor' of the old. People 'on the cusp' of 4e now have a real choice, with the promise of high-quality support for 3x and very easy conversion of their existing 3x campaigns to Pathfinder-compatible campaigns. The huge mass of OGL material -- including classic TSR monsters opened due to the Tome Of Horrors -- gives Pathfinder an incredible well to draw from.

From my brief skim of the rules, the only thing I don't like is, once again, no skill points -- but I'm "Getting" that I'm the only person on the planet which DID like them.

This hurts WOTC, though by how much, I'm not certain. Most people aren't either 100% pro- or anti- 4e. Most are somewhere in the great grey middle, and which way they fall is going to depend on how much they gain from 4e vs. how much they lose by abandoning 3e. If 3e is guaranteed quality support going forward, a good chunk of the uncertain will stick with 3e just a little bit longer...maybe until 4e has bards, or druids, or psionics, or gnomes...and of course the larger the 3e remnant market is, the more publishers will choose to support it, extending its lifespan.

It will be amusing to see how this plays out.

 

[Simplicity]

I have to say, I'm not happy with this path for Pathfinder. Just as 4e starts to win me over, Paizo is knocking the wind out of my sails. 4e is going for revolution in the ruleset, and Paizo is going for evolution... Okay, might work, but...

I've looked over the ruleset. It's 3.5+ (3.5 + 0.15 + a little bit of broken). There's just not a whole lot there that makes me go: "WOW, you've solved it!" It's also clearly *not* going to be backwards compatible, regardless of how it's advertised. The skill names have changed, the races are stronger, the classes are stronger. If you're writing adventures for level X characters in the Pathfinder RPG, level X 3.5 characters are going to be underpowered.

The 15 minute adventuring day cannot be solved by simply giving the cleric more healing. And using TURNING (1d6 healing to everyone)? That's essentially giving the cleric mass cure spells in the early levels. Why bother with cure light wounds at all? Massively overpowered.
Not to mention the fact the undead just won't stand a chance. Do damage to them and heal your party at the same time? Gee, that's a good option.

Wizard get d6 hps/level. And essentially domain spells. Which takes away from the cleric's flavor and makes wizards overpowered as well.

Fighters get more plusses, and weapon groups (the lack of weapon groups in 3.5 was idiocy, so that at least was a good change, if an obvious one). But it doesn't nearly make up for wiz and cleric.

Barbarians get... wait what? No barbarians? So, the cleric gets like 6x more healing, and the barbarians get nothing? Same for ranger, druid, monk, bard...

Keeping +2/+2 skill feats? Really? Lame.

Do we really need taste/touch/smell modifiers codified? Does ANYBODY actually care what the DC is of tracking 4 people when it snowed yesterday? Or the DC of seeing someone 200 feet away? Here's an idea: Obvious - DC 5. Noticeable - DC 10. Faint - DC 15. Subtle - DC 20. Deliberately obscured - DC +10. It's these sort of anal details in the 3.5 rules that make some DMs drool over the reports of 4e.

The Pathfinder RPG can replace the core rulebooks, sure. But now consider all of those other splat books you have. Want to take a prestige class? Well, think again because there's a good chance that the now more powerful base classes are going to be a better choice.

The main positives changes I see are: attempts to fix hp/level, weapon groups, skill merging, and attempts at fixing grapple (CMB). But it's all very house rulesy. Most of the changes are things that could be individually done with simple house rules in 3.5.

If you're going for the bazaar vs. cathedral, you could wikify your alpha'ed ruleset, but you'd really be counting on the wisdom of crowds. Iffy, but hey if you're going to shoot for the stars it's one way to get buy in, and potentially good rules.

 

[Terramotus]

I'm so happy I could weep. I just bought the alpha and the beta rules sets. And canceled my order of D&D 4.0 over at Amazon. Even if it fails, I'm proud to support a company that is doing what most of us believe in our heart of hearts is the right thing. ¡Que viva Pathfinder!

You know, I don't mean to pick on you, but by what possible moral standard is sticking with an older rules iteration for a game about pretending to hack up monsters the "right thing"? What about producing a new iteration of those rules is, by implication, the "wrong thing"? And not only that, but you feel strongly enough to believe in WotC's wrongness in your "heart of hearts"? Dude, I don't understand that at all. It's just a ruleset for the game. Even if you've got emotional attachment to an older version, you must realize that said attachment is not enough to declare something to be morally wrong. It's like saying that Chevy is morally wrong for releasing a new version of the Camaro.