Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder Lite?

[Thotas]

Tand as far as 'combat is taking a ridiculous amount of time', I've found that the more your group plays, the faster combat gets. Ease of use comes over time with any given character.

I've only played Pathfinder itself once, I was running a demo at International Table Top Day and there was limited time for us to play at all. But there's a follow-up point to this that I feel confident making because it has been applicable to every single rpg I have ever played, from D&D (1e, 2e, 3e and 3.5, 4e), Top Secret (original and SI), Mayfair's DC Heroes game, Green Ronin's Mutants & Masterminds, what have you -- I assume it will apply in 5e or Next or whatever you want to call it, it's universal as far as I can tell. And that point is the game goes fast enough if players are focused on the game. I find that on the average, my turn takes about half of the time most of the other players' turns do. That's because I don't disengage from the game when my turn is over and then reengage when my turn comes around again. I keep playing, planning my next turn when one ends, watching to see if my plans get foiled or made superfluous by intervening events and changing my tactics if that happens. It doesn't mean I can't participate in joking around or snacking or what have you, it's just that I'm always aware enough of what's going on at the battle board to be ready to roll when it's my turn to roll (or describe my actions, anyway). I've seen cases where to many people weren't ready to play when their turn came around, and blamed the rule system when their game was a mess. Again, I can't say that this is happening at your table. But I would take a look if I were you to see it it isn't a factor.

 

[gamerprinter]

There's no reason you can't limit the scope of the game to the Core Pathfinder rules (Player's Handbook, Bestiary)...

I actually have interest in keeping the Core rules, but excising all the Core classes and only allowing the classes offerred in the APG, UM and UC. Thus no cleric, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, sorcerer, wizard. I think the new classes have more spice and can easily fit the jobs the Core classes do.

 

[EvilDwarf]

FWIW, our group was testing Next and got "update weary" and took a break. About half our group is in love with PF (I actually stopped play for a while because I got tired of 3.5 over the "system mastery" issue), but they insisted that PF had was "3.5 fixed." So we've been playing PF for the last 9 weeks. This is just personal opinion, and this is as close as I ever want to come to an edition wars statement (as in, distance measured in light years), but combat has taken _forever_, people forget their +this or +that until about two turns after their own, at which point they beg the DM to reconsider whether they actually hit, etc. People stop all the time to look up a spell, a condition, etc. We have a druid whose AC is so high, and within the rules, that monsters of his CR need a natural 20 to hit him, and his "animal companion" has better to hit, attacks, and damage output than our best fighter.

Well, I apologize because it sounds like I'm hammering PF, which was not my intent. It IS an excellent adaptation of 3.5, but IMHO it still carries the system mastery problem because of the 3.5 chasis. I was so frustrated I even bought the boxed basic PF game to look for stripping it down hints; it's better, but still has the 3.5 engine in it.

All this to say, well, I would definitely explore some ways to strip down lots of PF, and I completely agree that Next (which is the best packet? 4 or 5 maybe?? or 1 and 4 or 5, lol??) is the thing to try. I can't tell you how many times we were playing PF and I wanted to steal some Next mechanics.

So, yeah, Next, I guess. Sorry for rambling.

(Can I add something else? I've thought, after this experience and our "update weariness" that I could strip out the fleshed out material from PF, take some of the Next engine and mechanics, and make a hybrid. I've having a really hard time hitting the "sweet spot" though, the biggest problem being AC, to hit bonuses, damage output, and HP. Anyone else thought about or tried making an "Ultimate Next" system to carry us through to the release??)

 

[gamerprinter]

No need to apologize, a 3.5 derivative sounds like it's not for you, and Pathfinder is definitely a 3.5 derivative. Anyone believing PF was supposed to be something greatly different from 3x was mistaken. And not to oppose you in any way, however, if PF had not been a 3.5 derivative, I probably wouldn't be playing it myself, and consider PF the best version of the game, at least for my own gaming group. Play the version you want that gives you the most fun - that's the only important thing.

 

[Mallus]

I've just started running a Pathfinder campaign -- 3 sessions so far, just set up the campaign message board, 3rd level PCs, homebrew setting & custom adventures.

Here's how I'm making Pathfinder more palatable (after running a much-rules-lighter AD&D campaign for almost 2 years).

First, acknowledge the Pathfinder rules are mostly for the players, not the DM. Let them spend hours building their builds. Don't try to compete with them in that arena.

Grab pre-built NPCs from published adventures and supplements like the NPC Codex. Reskin as needed. If you need to up the challenge level, add more monsters per encounter, increase the level of classed opponents, and/or slap one or more simple templates onto them, ie break the XP budget for a given encounter when necessary.

Second, realize that speed is better than accuracy at the table. Don't spend a lot of time looking up rules. Make judgment calls. Eyeball DCs. Don't make each session an exercise in rules-research. So long as these calls don't all go against the players, they should thank you (because no one really enjoys watching people flip through rule books/Google stuff).

The thing about Pathfinder's (and 3e's) complexity (and rules/options-bloat) is that it's why a lot of people like the game in the first place. The trick is to let the players have that complexity, while the DM uses every trick & shortcut in the book to speed up play and reduce prep-time, ie judiciously ignore the rule specifics when they're not really needed.

My aim is to run a Pathfinder campaign like it was AD&D. We'll see how that works out...

 

[am181d]

I visit the Paizo boards often, and there are threads where people trade builds, sure, but that isn't the majority of members of that forum. There are all kinds of gamers in any RPG forum including optimizers, power builders, those heavy on role playing, those not.

I really appreciate those threads, because I'm *not* someone interested in spending a ton of time optimizing, and I find it really helpful if someone tells me "these feats work well together," "this feat isn't as good as it looks," etc.

Those threads give me some good ideas and let me make the *conscious* decision to make sub-optimal choices.

 

[Drabix]

What helped me a lot with combat burnout was actually tossing the Pathfinder monster and NPC systems, replacing them with something more lightweight. For me, it was really just that running multiple PC-complexity opponents was dragging on combat and burning me out.

Cheers!
Kinak

This sums up my issue and I'd like to hear more about it. My players enjoy Pathfinder, but I'm burning out with DM prep and running the monsters. I don't need all the detail for a creature that lives for 4 or 5 rounds.

 

[Kinak]

This sums up my issue and I'd like to hear more about it. My players enjoy Pathfinder, but I'm burning out with DM prep and running the monsters. I don't need all the detail for a creature that lives for 4 or 5 rounds.

I'm working on getting it to the point where people can use it out of the box, but what I started out doing is looking at monster/NPC blocks and pulling out what I cared about:

Name (any Size, Movement, and Reach info)
AC, HP
Fort, Ref, Will, CMD
Attack Bonus Damage

For the attacks, unless the monster is a centerpiece of an encounter, I try really hard to not use multiple attacks. Vital Strike is very helpful there and I use a similar technique to collapse down attacks like claws. Sticking to standard actions also creates the possibility of a more mobile battle.

I handle flat-footed and touch ACs on the fly, which declutters the block.

Sometimes I'll need to add a little extra information (like Stealth or Perception) in the encounter header, but that's all I've really missed.

The other thing I've found makes things stupidly faster is giving enemies static initiative (10 + score). I have no idea why, though, so no guarantees.

I'll put up a post once I've got things stable, but that's what I've been doing in my head to streamline things.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[timASW]

This sums up my issue and I'd like to hear more about it. My players enjoy Pathfinder, but I'm burning out with DM prep and running the monsters. I don't need all the detail for a creature that lives for 4 or 5 rounds.

Put your monsters on an excel spreadsheet. Especially the humanoid ones as such; Fast warrior, 2 weapon warrior, sword and board warrior, great weapon warrior, back stab rogue, stealth rogue, talking rogue, ranged rogue, etc etc.

Make them about level 4 if your starting a campaign out at 1st or 2nd level. Then you can very easily adjust on the fly.

If lower level monters are called for you reduce HP and BAB by so much and take out a couple of feats*, learn your feat chains so that you know how far a 1st level great weapon fighter has gotten along this power attack chain, etc, etc.

Make all their equipment bog standard. If better baddies are called for its very easy to add a few small bonuses to numbers on the fly.

I started doing this towards the middle of the 3X cycle and it sped my game up so much its hard to describe, and it let me have a huge list of potential allies and enemies to improvise into in any situation. All you really have to do to make it work is what I did. You spend about an hour before each game session filling out your excel with specific foes you expect them to encounter because of how you've written it up. After a few weeks you'll find yourself adding at most a half dozen special individuals (give them their own spreadsheet so you dont clog up your quick sheet) and your prep time just goes down and down from there.

When the campaign hits a certain point you copy and paste your baddies to a new sheet, spend a little time adding a few levels to them and call the sheet "mid level baddies" then in a few levels "high level baddies" yadda yadda.

At this point I never spend more then a half hour prepping actual enemies. I might labor over a map or a story but thats because i want to, not because I have to.

Try it, between that and a program called combat manager my prep time and combats are flying by.

 

[Gundark]

I had a similar journey with 3.5. I had issues with the game and at first ignored them or tried to house rule them, but quickly realized that the game was very inflexible to the type of changes that I wanted to make (which honestly weren't that big). I started exploring other games which required me to de-program myself from d20, but eventually found games that fit what I was looking for. IMHO 3.5/Pathfinder/4e would have been better games if they were lighter rule wise. Again IMHO less is more.

So my advice? Look at other games. Be open minded.

Also D&Dnext was suggested, and that might be what you are looking for.