Hey James!Completely understandable. In short, they use a real big chart to select things quickly.
We do have a revised and streamlined method for generating NPCs in the book, in any event, including a lot of advice on what feats and skills to give them. The fact that skills themselves work a bit more simply (max rank = HD, not max rank = HD +3, and so on) goes a long way toward making NPCs easier to build; that's for sure!
Some people note that 3.x plays very different at high level. Also, some people note that the CR system isn't always accurate [cakewalk or TPK]. Can you discuss at this time how pathfinder addresses either of these issues?
We've done a lot of little things to address making high level play easier, but we haven't made it simple. While a lot of folks cite high-level play as "too complex," there's a fair amount who enjoy that complexity, and stripping the complexity out needlessly is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, to use a cliche. Nevertheless, we have made a lot of changes to needlessly complex rules. Many of those are changes to how spells work; dispel magic, in particular, was good at single-handedly disrupting high level play because it got used ALL the time and it took forever to sift through its results, especially when there's a lot of spell effects to go through.
The CR system is a bit more complex. It's value, in my opinion, is more of a way to measure monsters against each other, really, than against the PCs, especially since the power level of a PC depends on house rules, the skill of the player, the skill of the GM at running monsters, the choices made at character creation, and how many beyond-core rules are allowed in the character's creation. That's a lot of impossible-to-quantify variables. As a result, CR can only REALLY be a measure of how a monster balances out against other monsters, or against cookie-cutter strictly-by-the-book PCs. We've done a lot of research and investigation into determining what a specific CR can do, say, in terms of average damage per round, what its average hp and AC should be, what its saves and save DCs should be, and so on, all associated against the standard PC. The
Pathfinder Bestiary will have the results of this rebalancing and rebuilding, and the RPG will have a new XP table and method of awarding XP that's a LOT simpler and more straightforward than 3.5's version, I think.
Anyway, I can't go into exact details about how high level play, CR, and other things work in Pathfinder RPG yet... although I believe we'll start doing preview stuff in May over at paizo.com...
I'm okay if it's not 100% compatible. In fact, the more improved the game is in my very subjective opinion, the more forgiving I will be concerning compatibility.
The game is different, but from what I've seen personally as a GM and a player, the ease of using 3.5 (or even 3.0) mechanics in a Pathfinder game (or vice versa) is something that a GM can handle at the table. My current Pathfinder GM is running a 3.5 Necromancer Games module in a Pathfinder game, and with the exception of periodically having to calculate a creature's Combat Maneuver Bonus and Defense in game when we tackle a creature that he wasn't prepared for us to fight, it's going pretty seamlessly. (And calculating those values only takes like 10 or 15 seconds anyway... less time than it took to look up the different rules for the various combat moves like grapple and trip and disarm did!).
. BTW, when is trailblazer being released? Will it be offered in print or POD?
. Looking forward to a print version.
