Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder Alpha "crunch" discussion

[Arnwyn]

The good news is that, as you say, with a relatively high degree of compatability, I could probably still continue to use my 3.5 books with subsequent Pathfinder products, but still; if I'm doing that, then the whole exercise of creating the Pathfinder RPG is a waste of time.

Aside: Paizo has stated the main reason for the Pathfinder RPG is to keep a copy of a ruleset in print; updating the rules (while important to them) is secondary.

 

[Desdichado]

Aside: Paizo has stated the main reason for the Pathfinder RPG is to keep a copy of a ruleset in print.

Eh. Considering the used market is likely to soon be flooded with copies of the 3.5 core books that's the least of my concerns. I mean, heck; it's not like it's hard to find copies of 1e for very little money if I want them today, and they've been out of print for decades.

 

[BryonD]

:shrug: I don't think you know to what proportion I'm blowing it.

You are exactly right. But if you think it is a problem then whatever proportion it is, I think it is overdone.

All I'm saying is that I think it's a bad idea.

And I've agreed with that. several times now.

I'm not threatening to drive out to Seattle, storm the Paizo offices and scalp Jason Buhlman for coming up with it,

Noted

I'm just suggesting that it makes the game less appealing because it makes non-core races (of which there are a lot) gimped to the point where hardly anyone would ever want to use one. I think that significantly defeats the purpose of moving to the Pathfinder RPG in the first place, so I advise against it.

Agreed

I think reducing "compatability" to such a vague term that questions of balance are completely "out of scope" for it means that compatability become meaningless and there's no longer any point in talking about it.

I completely disagree here. 4e is not compatible with 3e. If someone makes an attack against your 3e character's will defense, you don't have a will defense. There is no point in a PF game (so far) where you would be unable to use any element or mechanic from an existing 3X product.

Obviously the break points are different for everyone, but they exist; the point where it's too much trouble to adopt Pathfinder at all and you just stick with 3.5 instead. If all the core races are bumped up to the equivalent of LA +1, then I have to either 1) only allow the core races, 2) disallow the core races, and flip back and forth between 3.5 and Pathfinder, or 3) fiddle with things to make them fit; your LA +1 solution being one way to do that. At some point, if I have to make houserule changes like that too often, there's no point in adopting the Pathfinder RPG at all, unless I no longer care about using large chunks of my 3.5 books anymore.

I personally am looking for no more compatability issues (less, in fact) than between 3e and 3.5. To me, this is a major strike against Pathfinder and well on the verge of telling me that I'm not going to be interested in it after all.

The good news is that, as you say, with a relatively high degree of compatability, I could probably still continue to use my 3.5 books with subsequent Pathfinder products, but still; if I'm doing that, then the whole exercise of creating the Pathfinder RPG is a waste of time.

Again, I agree that balance issues are important.

 

[BryonD]

Sure, I agree with your technical definition of 'compatible'.

But, of course, if this is what Paizo meant when they said that they would make it backwards compatible with all your existing 3.5 material, it would - at best - be extremely misleading.

So no, I suggest that using the above technical definition of 'compatible' isn't very valuable in this conversation.

I greatly disagree with your assessment.
To the contrary, I think they said what they meant and it is unreasonable to try to force a different word on what they said.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Yeah, that's for sure, but there is a difference starting a new game of 3.5/Pathfinder telling your new players "No problem guys, you can get a load of used 3.5 core books from Ebay for this game" or telling them "No problem guys, you can get a fresh off-the-shelf core book from amazon/FLGS for this game", wouldn't you agree?

Apart from the difference in condition, it also conveys the image that the game is still "alive" and current, while asking them to get stuff from Ebay tells them "Sorry, this game is officially dead, you need to scrape the internet bins to find the rules for it". Except if they explicitly came to play an OOP game...stranger things have happened, or so I've heard.

 

[BryonD]

And with that how about we drop it?

I think the positions are clear. We can go back and forth for another hundred posts, but I don't see much being added to the discussion.

I agree that balance is important and hope that Paizo will significantly increase their sensitivity to that point before the final product is produced.

 

[Desdichado]

I agree; arguing over semantics isn't fruitful when really we seem to think the same thing. That said, some level of discussion over "how much can it vary from 3.5 and still reasonably call itself compatible" is good, though.

 

[Arnwyn]

Eh. Considering the used market is likely to soon be flooded with copies of the 3.5 core books that's the least of my concerns. I mean, heck; it's not like it's hard to find copies of 1e for very little money if I want them today, and they've been out of print for decades.

Oh, same with me.

I'm just repeating what Paizo has clearly stated (i.e. the exercise is not a "waste of time" to them, even if the rules are close to 3.5).

 

[Remus Lupin]

Well, perhaps it would be worthwhile to turn attention to the updated Alpha release 1.1. I haven't had much of a chance to look through it yet, but I'm curious as to folks' thoughts.

 

[Rauol_Duke]

I glanced through the updated Alpha last night and it looks like the biggest update is the revision of some of the Combat Feats. It looks as though they removed the "chaining" of feats... which was probably a good idea.