Pathfinder vs. 3.5E?

[Kristian Serrano]

Erik Mona and Co. have made it clear that backwards compatibility is now a secondary consideration. Effectively, Paizo is taking the SRD, using the OGL to rewrite it, and creating a new RPG game of their own.

It's one of the problems with the SRD and OGL. There are a significant number of "forks" that have all been attempts to fix 3.5. What we get instead is a bunch of variant systems that are essentially competing with one another and partitioning the community.

Personally, I lost interest in Pathfinder when I saw how different the classes became. Now non-SRD classes (and psionics despite being a part of the SRD) are becoming difficult to use with a Pathfinder campaign, which cripples the effort to support 3.5. In actuality, they are putting one more nail in the coffin by saying, "We don't care about all of your other 3.5 supplements. Our Pathfinder stuff is all you need."

 

[Erik Mona]

Not really. Look, it's all subjective, but the goal is not to make a game that looks "a lot different" than 3.5. Nor is the goal to spend tens of thousands of dollars reprinting 3.5 with all of its clunky bits intact.

This is a work in progress, and the Open Playtest is one of the things that will keep us on track. I encourage everyone to participate over on the Paizo boards.

--Erik

 

[I'm A Banana]

Now non-SRD classes (and psionics despite being a part of the SRD) are becoming difficult to use with a Pathfinder campaign, which cripples the effort to support 3.5.

How?

In actuality, they are putting one more nail in the coffin by saying, "We don't care about all of your other 3.5 supplements. Our Pathfinder stuff is all you need."

I'm not sure I see them saying this anywhere?

 

[Erik Mona]

Personally, I lost interest in Pathfinder when I saw how different the classes became. Now non-SRD classes (and psionics despite being a part of the SRD) are becoming difficult to use with a Pathfinder campaign, which cripples the effort to support 3.5. In actuality, they are putting one more nail in the coffin by saying, "We don't care about all of your other 3.5 supplements. Our Pathfinder stuff is all you need."

I'd love to hear examples of non-SRD classes that are now "difficult to use" because of the changes to the core classes in the Pathfinder rules. I do understand that rolling Concentration into Spellcraft creates some difficulty for established psionics rules and am encouraging Jason to take another look, but this is the first time I've heard the criticism about non-SRD classes in general.

The late-era WotC class material is WAY up-gunned from the core classes. You could argue effectively that the scout made the ranger "difficult to use" because it did the same schtick better than the rander. Ditto the warblade and the fighter.

My take on the "Complete" classes, in general, is that they invalidated and devalued the core classes. A slight across the board powerup of the core classes brings them back up to par with non-SRD classes from Wizards, and also serves the role of making the classes fun over a variety of levels.

Could you please be more specific about this criticism?

Thanks,

Erik

 

[Erik Mona]

I'm not sure I see them saying this anywhere?

Of course we're not saying that.

--Erik

 

[Festivus]

Adventures aren't the issue. Its trying to mesh Pathfinder with the Complete Series, Expanded Psionics, Book of 9 Swords and the rest and manage 3.5E style multiclassing.

That I'm not looking forward to.

That was mainly what swayed me away from Pathfinder RPG. I have a library of 3.5 books I'd like to continue to use as a player.

Edit to clarify my position: Is stuff from the various splat books classes considered for balance purposes when writing up the base Pathfinder PG classes? If I want to play a Book of Nine Swords class it might mesh up well given they have daily powers, but what if I wanted to play a Swashbuckler from Complete Adventurer? Would I be underpowered in relation to the rest of the group? I get the feeling many classes will become far less viable compared to the PFRPG classes.

I don't wish to participate in edition wars, between 3.5 and PFRPG or 4E or whatever. I have made my choices, but keep an open eye on the free PFRPG alpha. If my friends pick up the beta or published book I will take another look at it, and certainly something I would be open to playing as a player, but I have zero interest in DMing unless it really addresses high level play in a way I could manage.

 

[Alzrius]

So if we were sharing my fanboy-ish enthusiasm you would agree with my spamming?

I think it's more important that we both agree that you're spamming at all.

Still I disagree with you and find you negative. I do not know if you think it is because of fanboy-ism but IMO the reason is that my logic tells me that happen to be more than one solutions to 3.5's problems and this creates its own problematic. So what you are asking here is nonsensical by definition of Pathfinder's problematic and so your message can only be sentimental and I perceive a feeling of negativity -if I misunderstand your sentiments here and above I am sorry.

I'm having a very hard time understanding what you wrote. I'm simply saying that Pathfinder needs to adopt a "less is more" approach to changing the 3.5 rules for it to be successful. Why you think that's unfairly negative of me is beyond my understanding.

And people bitched and complained because 3.5 was, overall, such a small change that it didn't really warrant an entirely new set of books. What did they change, really? The ranger got an upgrade, some spells got nerfed, and... they got rid of partial actions and facing.

It had enough changes to create a sense that 3.0 books were obsolete; whether or not that sense was warranted, there were enough to create that impression, and it hurt the market. I don't want Pathfinder to go down that route, since that'd make it harder for it to make inroads with the 3.5 crowd.

You'll never be able to answer "yes" to that question, because you'll never be able to get "everyone" to agree that something is broken. It's just like people were talking about with the "Mearls on the OGL" thread - everyone's got their own ideas of what works and what doesn't, and that's why there was never a serious, sweeping upgrade to d20.

Pathfinder isn't going to be the great cure-all for D&D; it's just one company's vision (with input from the masses) of changes that "should" be made.

No kidding. That's why I think the open playtest part of Pathfinder is groaning under the weight of people chiming in with what they think are necessary changes, but which no one else cares about. An open playtest is great for feedback on changes the Paizo people do make, but it should be limited to that.

You'll never get everyone to agree on what needs to be changed. So instead they should use A) their own best judgment as industry professionals regarding what needs changing, and B) a sense of what most of the people think are the rules that most need changing.

The level of changes made so far, however, seem to be reflective of more changes than are strictly necessary to "fix" the parts of 3.5 that are truly "clunky," as Erik called them. And I think that's going to hurt Pathfinder over time, unless they scale back the changes for the Beta and the final release.

 

[The Cardinal]

Well, around here people seem to like a lot of what they see in the Pathfinder Alpha release - not so much, however, when it comes to D&D4.

The simple fact that Pathfinder allows all players, including those with half-orc barbarians, gnome druids, and monks, to keep their beloved PCs with just a minimum of updating, is only one point - albeit an important one - for those guys.

 

[drothgery]

My take on the "Complete" classes, in general, is that they invalidated and devalued the core classes. A slight across the board powerup of the core classes brings them back up to par with non-SRD classes from Wizards, and also serves the role of making the classes fun over a variety of levels.

Huh? The 'complete' classes, with very few exceptions, were substantially less powerful than the 3.5 PHB classes and often kind of dull to boot. Only the scout and warmage weren't strictly inferior in anything but flavor to their closest analog in core. And even they weren't exactly CoDzilla.

Now, the classes in PHB2, the XPH, and ToB (and a few others) are another story (though again, a core-only cleric or druid is quite competive with any of them). But the Complete series base classes were hardly bastions of powergaming.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It had enough changes to create a sense that 3.0 books were obsolete;

Weird. I did not get this sense at all with 3.5. I would expect PF to at LEAST make as many changes as 3.5 made.

I guess maybe some people have a very stringent definition of "compatible."

You'll never get everyone to agree on what needs to be changed. So instead they should use A) their own best judgment as industry professionals regarding what needs changing, and B) a sense of what most of the people think are the rules that most need changing.

I thought this was what they were doing? Certainly not everything that gets piped up on the Paizo boards is shoveled onto PF.

The level of changes made so far, however, seem to be reflective of more changes than are strictly necessary to "fix" the parts of 3.5 that are truly "clunky," as Erik called them. And I think that's going to hurt Pathfinder over time, unless they scale back the changes for the Beta and the final release.

So let's get specific: Where?