Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder BETA - Some Sizzle, Not Much Steak

[Cadfan]

The real problem for Pathfinder, from a marketing perspective, is the question of who its trying to appeal to.

The people who tend to go for "official D&D" already go for 4e, and 4e has already presented a coherent ruleset for those who want lots of changes.

People who didn't like 4e because they didn't really want change aren't going to be that enthusiastic about a new game. Winning them over will be tough when 3e is still so fresh. Plus, a lot of them weren't the types who buy lots of new material anyways.

People who want change but who don't like the changes that 4e made tend to be people who are relatively specific about what they want changed. And unfortunately lots of them disagree with each other about what changes actually matter. Some of these disagreements are quite... volatile.

They've got some customers under their belt- the Paizo loyalists.

Disclaimer: I've got no idea what this means for Paizo as a company because I have no idea how many people fall into any of these categories. I'm not forecasting doom. Maybe there's enough Paizo loyalists that they don't even need new customers. I've honestly got no clue.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Jason is a good Designer, but he needs a good Developer to keep him on track.

Hopefully this is the role that SKR will provide.

SKR is involved? Eesh, shows how much I know of who's on that team.

Still, that's awesome to hear. Great 3e designer/developer/whatever.

 

[Derren]

the 15-minute adventuring day

That isn't really a problem with the rules but with the DM. The only things the rules can do is to regenerate the PCs to 100% effectivity after every combat and that would be kinda boring.
Instead the DM has to write adventures where resting after 15 minutes is not feasible.

 

[superlurker]

I tend to agree with the original poster's assessment.

Did Cleave need to be fixed? No. Does the change make it more useful? Sure. Making changes like that isn't necessarily a good thing, though, especially if "backwards compatibility" is a goal. You'll get a lot of "huh?" moments from players used to things being different; this was also one of the flaws with the 3e to 3.5 transition -- making lots of little changes that weren't always easily "visible" at a glance. The more such changes that are made, the less useful Pathfinder will be for the goal of maintaining backwards compatibility.

More than that, a lot of the new mechanics introduced are clunky or not very sound from a mathematical perspective. The barbarian rage point mechanic is an excellent example -- it makes the class a tad more complex and requires a lot more bookkeeping than before. More options for a class like this might be good, but the way they did it will just be likely to slow down play, when the goal should be to make things play faster. The same is true with some of the feats, such as Backswing, which allows a character to add double Str bonus on the first attack when making a full attack -- while in itself that might not be the cause of huge slowdowns, options like that are poorly designed in the sense that they accumulate very quickly to slow down the game's flow, especially for players that aren't too math-savvy. This is precisely the opposite of what a revision to the 3.5 rules should aim for, especially with high-level play in mind.

Another thing is the math. Let's take a feat like Devastating Blow; make a single attack as a standard action at a -5 penalty, automatically score a critical hit. The flaw here is pretty obvious in that it's a much better option for weapons with high multipliers than for weapons with high threat ranges. Those weapons are balanced against each other in terms of what damage they dish out in the long term; swords get to inflict double their damage twice over the same series that axes get to inflict three times their damage once. Another example would be the fighter's 20th level weapon mastery ability -- automatically confirm criticals and increase critical multipliers by 1. This very obviously favors high threat range, low multiplier weapons. Effects like this completely changes the balance between weapons. There might be something I'm missing here, due to some other changes I haven't seen, of course. If it stems from a desire to keep things "simple" rather than not getting the math, I think that's a bad idea as well -- especially in the light of the other things they're doing, that makes things more complex anyway.

That's not to say there aren't lots of things that are good and very good about this -- but to me, some of bad ideas stick out like a sore thumb, because they look just like some of the bad designs of yesteryear (i.e. WotC's Power Critical feat in 3e).

 

[timbannock]

I think there is a sizeable faction that seem to think that that Pathfinder is striving to be an alternate 4th edition of D&D instead of being essentially the next progression of 3rd and 3.5.

A lot of things people seem to be expecting, (I.e. changing Multi-classing, changing Spell Progression, Changing Crunch Overload,) is not and probably never will be on Pathfinder's agenda. It is essentially a revision of the ruleset for people who do not think areas of it are fundamentally broken.

It reminds me of the variant PHB games/books like Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, Iron Heroes, Game of Thrones d20, etc. They've made tons of little niggling tweaks that make it play differently, but I don't see hardly anything that makes the system overall play better.

Heck, one look at the changes to certain spells made me go "what?! I have MORE to keep track of now? That's a step backwards."

 

[amethal]

Did Cleave need to be fixed? No. Does the change make it more useful? Sure. Making changes like that isn't necessarily a good thing, though, especially if "backwards compatibility" is a goal. You'll get a lot of "huh?" moments from players used to things being different; this was also one of the flaws with the 3e to 3.5 transition -- making lots of little changes that weren't always easily "visible" at a glance. The more such changes that are made, the less useful Pathfinder will be for the goal of maintaining backwards compatibility.

Hi superlurker. Welcome to life as a poster!

I think maybe you have a different definition of backwards compatible to that being used by Paizo. It doesn't mean "don't change anything unless you absolutely have to", rather it means "don't change things that invalidate previous products unless you absolutely have to".

By this definition, Cleave is backwards compatible. You can run the Sunless Citadel using the Pathfinder RPG, and those NPCs that had Cleave will still have it. It will just follow the new rules instead of the old ones.

On the other hand, a change that I would like to see - giving more skill points to fighters and sorcerers - has been ruled out on the grounds that this would not be backwards compatible. Old stat blocks would be incorrect; you'd have to give NPCs more skill points.

 

[Sollir Furryfoot]

Just to chime in, people who are wondering why there isn't a big change between the Alpha stages and this Beta release shouldn't be surprised. The point of Beta being put it out is for people like us to be actually testing out the system and see what works and what doesn't. I was reading a post by Lisa Stevens about this on the paizo boards (I'd quote it but it looks like they're down temporarily) and this is pretty much how playtesting is done-Alpha is (for the most part) what you're going to see in Beta but you get it in chunks. The real revision is done between Beta and the final release.

Instead of criticizing Paizo so much, gamers should be excited about having a chance to contribute to the final balance, flavor, etc... of this version of D&D. This isn't the final product people, you have to hang with it, give it a shot and then give your feedback to Paizo if you want to see a change-and the great thing is that they're encouraging you to do it!

That said, many people do not agree on several issues and so everyone's going to have to compromise at some point-even if it just means you're house-ruling it back in your games. For instance, a lot of people like Spot and Listen to be separate skills-some don't and both groups are fairly large. These are minor details, and I hate to sound like a fanboy but I have faith that the Paizo team will do really well with the *finished* product. We all know they're consistently good with their quality, after all

 

[Obryn]

By this definition, Cleave is backwards compatible. You can run the Sunless Citadel using the Pathfinder RPG, and those NPCs that had Cleave will still have it. It will just follow the new rules instead of the old ones.

While that's true, it ignores a very real domino effect you often find when revising 3e rules... If you change the bottom-level version of something (for example, Cleave), you end up also potentially changing everything else downstream. For example, feats that change or enhance the way Cleave works. Classes that work with Cleave and modify it (see: Samurai). Spells (if there are any) that temporarily grant Cleave to a character. When you take 3pp's into account, a small change like this could invalidate a whole lot of stuff.

Which is fine - but it isn't as backwards compatible as it looks on the surface.

I ran into something much like this when I was trying to excise Alignment from my 3.5 game. Seemed like it should be easy at first, but it has its tendrils in dozens of spells and even in the damage reduction system.

-O

 

[Caliber]

Hi superlurker. Welcome to life as a poster!

I think maybe you have a different definition of backwards compatible to that being used by Paizo. It doesn't mean "don't change anything unless you absolutely have to", rather it means "don't change things that invalidate previous products unless you absolutely have to".

By this definition, Cleave is backwards compatible. You can run the Sunless Citadel using the Pathfinder RPG, and those NPCs that had Cleave will still have it. It will just follow the new rules instead of the old ones.

On the other hand, a change that I would like to see - giving more skill points to fighters and sorcerers - has been ruled out on the grounds that this would not be backwards compatible. Old stat blocks would be incorrect; you'd have to give NPCs more skill points.

I'll admit I haven't watched Pathfinder's genesis, since I prefer 4E (especially after my initial review of the Alpha document) but I seriously hope that wasn't given as metric used to determine backwards compatability.

Changing the underlying functionality of something but retaining the same name is the epitome of totally breaking backwards compatibility (IMO). It's what drove me nuts going from 3.0 to 3.5, all the little niggling details that had changed but weren't apparent until you looked specifically for them and went "doh!".

 

[Wyrmshadows]

Instead of criticizing Paizo so much, gamers should be excited about having a chance to contribute to the final balance, flavor, etc... of this version of D&D. This isn't the final product people, you have to hang with it, give it a shot and then give your feedback to Paizo if you want to see a change-and the great thing is that they're encouraging you to do it!

QFT

For god's sake this is an excellent Beta edition of the game. Personally, I dumped 3.5e awhile back in favor of True20 (still my favorite) and Conan D20 but Pathfinder is bringing me back to the 3.5e fold. I'm testing it out, noting the good, the bad and the indifferent.

Then I will report my findings to Paizo for their consideration.

Interestingly enough, isn't this the point of the Beta Release, to test and perfect the system instead of acting as though this is the final release and complaining about it?

Give it a chance, tell Paizo what you like and what you don't and enjoy the game in the spirit with which it is intended....something to playtest and not something to grouse about.



Wyrmshadows