Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder Lesson? Is one big honkin book intimidating?

[foolish_mortals]

ok guys,

I want people to think before they bought the 1rst Pathfinder book. Did they ever find it's length a negative in wanting to purchase it? For me who's planning on getting it in the future I have to buy it when there's time to digest it. That's why I thought about this, not slamming the game in any way. I need to buy it to *really* speak negatively about it. But size of the book is something I think about.

foolish_mortals

 

[nnms]

A friend of mine got the basic set and we've been playing that. At least every session someone brings up adding more material to our game. We end up with an even mix of people who don't want to go from the basic game with its small books to suddenly having to deal with the entirety of a 500 page book and others who like the idea of playing the "full" game. And then there are the magic books and the advanced players guide and whatnot.

I kind of wish there was a book that would be a useful halfway between the basic set and the full rulebook. It could have different content than the full book, so it would be useful to the entire customer base. Different monsters, different spells, different traps, different feats, different class options, but just a little bit of everything, so it expands the basic game nicely while still being appealing to a completist.

People who previously played and liked 3.5 have no problem with the Pathfinder core book though, as it is pretty much just the same amount of content that they are used to.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Yes it is.

Pathfinder has done a lot that I like, I guess, and captures the 'feel' of D&D but a 600 page book is just too much in my view.

Honestly, I believe that a 200 page book is about ideal, and anything over 300 pages gets offputting.

Now this becomes tricky, because where Pathfinder did get it right was the notion of having a complete game in one book (even though you still have to get a Bestiary to be truly complete!). They got a lot closer to what I'd like with the Beginner box - which amounted to about 150 pages of text, including a good list of monsters - but of course there was a significant abbreviation of Races, Classes and Levels involved.

Castles and Crusades, and older versions of AD&D had much slimmer rule books, with a full compliment of Races, Classes and Levels to choose from. Of course these games are much more rules light - with Abilities listed in Class descriptions, rather than Skills and Feats, and so on. If we want a slimmer, more accessible core rule book - sacrifices are going to have to be made somewhere.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I dislike buying any book that has fewer than 200 pages, at least at the price of current hard-covers.

I feel that the Pathfinder books are some of the greatest values I've ever seen, and some of the few books that I've never had at least some buyers remorse about.

Is the core book too big? Yes, only in that the core rules of D&D are too big. I'm glad that Pathfinder put them all in one book. I hope 5e does the same.

 

[foolish_mortals]

I agree that is a good deal. You can get a 500-600 page book for 30$(in some places). That's quite cheap when I look at other books that size.

foolish_mortals

 

[MichaelSomething]

It is foolish to think that new players have the ability to figure out which parts of the book are vital to read in order to play the game and which are parts that can be skipped until later?

 

[Traken]

I'd say you could put it in the introduction to only look at X and Y sections if you are going to play...

... But no one ever reads introductions in RPG books. This gets incredibly awkward when the developers hide actual rules in the introductions (4e starting gold comes to mind).

 

[Hassassin]

I think the lesson from both PF and 4e is that the game you want new players to pick up is not the same that you sell to experienced players. (In retrospect this is something they should have known from earlier editions.)

 

[SeRiAlExPeRiMeNtS]

I think that d&d needs to start with a box with everything a group needs to play for 5 levels, including miniatures, dice e etc (and for less than us$ 60) .

 

[billd91]

I don't find it intimidating, I just find it kind of heavy. Fortunately, the pdf of it was cheap ($9.99 for most of you, free for me because of my product line subscription) so I can have it on my iPad along with a couple different versions of the OGL content of Pathfinder in easily reviewed formats.

You hear that WotC? Inexpensive electronic copies and most of the rules available for 3rd party producers to build into apps. If you come to the conclusion that this is one of the reasons (of several) Paizo is eating your lunch, do something positive about it.