D&D 4E Reconsidering Pathfinder over 4E

[dmccoy1693]

A few things have the same name as before but work differently in Pathfinder that you'll have to watch out for. A few examples:

Power Attack: Instead of it being a question of "How much BAB do I want to give over to my strength? Do I want to do 6 or 7? Maybe just 2?" Now its a question of "Do I want to use Power Attack or not?" Its a straight level-based attack penalty for a straight level-based damage bonus. Makes life alot easier.

Dispel Magic: 3.5 had dispel magic capped the caster level at 10. Now its a just caster level while greater dispel gets a bonus on top of that.

Save or Die Spells: Most of them now do alot of damage and if they kill you, something worse happens. Disintegrate is a prime example. It does alot of damage if you fail the save. If you die, you turn into dust. Or if you make the save, you sustain less damage.

Permanent Level Damage: no one liked monsters that did level damage. If you failed your save, you were screwed. Now a restoration fixes that. Even dying when you permanently lose a level. Its only permanent until you get a restoration spell. I have no problem breaking out the level damage now.

Other things were added to make them more user-friendly.

Broken Condition: The rust monster no longer rusts the item automatically. If a metal weapon gets rusted, it gains the broken condition. Meaning it can be repaired sometime out of combat. But its out for the rest of the combat. But their favorite weapon is no longer forever gone.

 

[concerro]

There is a conversion document on the website. You can download it for free to help you with the conversions.

 

[Stormrazor2000]

I also like many things in 4E, but due to pretty closed minded groups I don't get much of a chance to play it. So I was faced with the choice of 3.5 or Pathfinder.

The things I liked and hated in 3.5 are still there in Pathfinder, though Pathfinder lessened some of the pain points a bit. Honestly the main reason I switched to Pathfinder is because I am enamored with the Paizo APs and they are now all Pathfinder native. The second reason is that it gave me a chance to make a clean break from the splat book madness that my group had grown used to with 3.5. Sure you can still use old material if you want with Pathfinder, but there was a lot of old material that I hated with a passion. ymmv.

 

[Anguish]

Does Pathfinder have any way to make a druid that cast spells a little bit, Turns into goonish forms for battle and gains skill bonuses in certain forms for scouting and sneaking? Are wildshape forms just as complicated, involving math of multiple spread sheets to compute?

Wildshape now follows a unified, simplified polymorphing system. There's a whole family of spells like beast shape and dragon shape and plant shape that work the same. You take your character's stats, and you apply a couple bonuses and/or penalties (for instance due to size increases). So, just like having bull's strength cast on you, one of the shape shifting spells might give you a +4 bonus to Strength. They also give you increasingly more abilities from the creature you're selecting. So at low-levels, beast shape I doesn't give you much but stat changes. At higher levels something like beast shape IV gives you darkvision, pounce, rake, speed increases, blah, blah, blah if your new form is supposed to have them. It's easy.

That said, like a raging barbarian it's handy to drop a couple mini-statblocks that show the changes a shape might give you.

 

[cyderak]

I highly recommend Pathfinder.

Its basically what I expected 4th edition D&D to be.

Characters are easily converted with minimal tweaking.

Paizo, as a company, has their finger on the pulse of what gamers want.

Its playtested up the wazoo by players and Paizo R&D alike before they release the books.

I was skeptical about Pathfinder at first too but I can easily say now it was thee best move me and my group made.

 

[Icyshadowlord]

I am going to break the norm here and suggest you try a slightly house-ruled 3.5 game instead of the other two options. Also, instead of starting a flame war, I am going to be say my view as shortly as possible: "Do not blindly follow the words of others. Make a deeper analysis of all choices so you won't be surprised later...and probably disappointed as well."

Why did I say that? Well, because, like I said earlier, I do not want this to turn into a mess, and because I have played 3.5, Pathfinder and 4e, and my views on the latter two have changed as time has gone by (in the manner that I now dislike PF a bit and sort of like 4e instead of hating on it)

 

[IronWolf]

... I am going to be say my view as shortly as possible: "Do not blindly follow the words of others. Make a deeper analysis of all choices so you won't be surprised later...and probably disappointed as well."

Wise advice in a lot of cases!

 

[Celtavian]

Can I use 3.X characters with Pathfinder with no conversion? Or tiny amount of conversion? Can I use 3.X crunch materials (prestige classes especially) with Pathfinder with little conversion?

I think it would be a fairly large pain to convert 3.x to Pathfinder. The classes are very different now as are many of the powers and the little perks. Not impossible. But the material isn't fully interchangeable without work.

Every single class is very different from the old classes including many of the Prcs. And the disadvantages of multi-classing are substantial and not made up for with the perks in a PrC. There is a decided bias against Prcs in Pathfinder, very substantial if you use the Advanced Player's Guide.

Does Pathfinder keep skill points allocated level by level and some synergy bonuses?

No synergy bonuses any longer.

Skills are level by level. Flat amount. All skills are 1 point for one point. Only advantage class skills is +3 bonus.

Does Pathfinder have any way to make a druid that cast spells a little bit, Turns into goonish forms for battle and gains skill bonuses in certain forms for scouting and sneaking? Are wildshape forms just as complicated, involving math of multiple spread sheets to compute?

That's what a druid does.

Wild shaping is simpler now. It goes off your base stats. Everything is clearly defined and easy to adjudicated. You no longer need to look in the monster book to see what happens with your stats or define your powers except to see what the specific elemental power (like burn, vortex) gets.

I think it would be difficult to build a druid that does everything. But if you wanted to focus on wild shaping, you could make a pretty cool druid melee with more feats and a simpler understanding of how wild shaping works.

I hope you're ready for all the stuff that comes with 3E unless you plan to do 15 point standard point buy. The prep time is still insane if you want to challenge a party that is built on rolled stats or anything other than 15 point point buy, near exact gold for gear distribution and the like.

And the melee are worse monsters than they used to be. It will be hard for even an optimized melee druid to hold the jockstrap of an optimized fighter, barbarian, or paladin. They are sickeningly strong in terms of damage dealing if they wield two-handed weapons and incredibly hard to kill.

They gave physical damage classes a lot of power in Pathfinder. They are unbelievably beefy and dangerous. Certain choices are outstanding, the most notable being the following:

1. Invulnerable rager barbarian with beast totem, come and get me, and superstition.

2. Two-hander fighter. Nothing can withstand them for more than a few rounds if they hit.

3. The archer is now probably the king of killing. The average high level archter will end up with 6 attacks a round without haste. They now have the equivalent of power attack called Deadly Aim. And if you make a dedicated fighter archer, you will do damage at range like no other class. You'll be the elf archer in Hawk the Slayer.

4. The Inquisitor: This class gets too dang much.

Be ready for a 3.x like game. A lot of stuff going on at high level. It's epic fantasy of the most extreme kind. High level Pathfinder characters are more like super heroes, even the melees.

The wizard and priests could always do pretty epic stuff with magic at high level in D&D. But now the melees are beastly and can do as many things to mess up your encounters besides just damage.

For example, I have a two-handed fighter with whirlwind attack and 10 foot reach that has this feat called stunning assault which allows him to hit for 40 plus damage everything within 10 feet of him stunning it. There are quite a few vicious feat combinations like that.

So go into the change with eyes wide open. At high level, Pathfinder is as hard, if not more difficult, to run than 3.x was. You have to amp up the enemies to compete with the players insane capabilties.

Mind you, I still like Pathfinder. It's a fun game. The Paizo APs are the best adventures I've ever read, even better than old school D&D modules. But it's 3.x with amped up melee characters and not a great deal of reduced power for arcane and divine casters (though no Spell Compendium which helps a great deal...at least not yet). If you liked the narrative style and spell strategy of 3.x, then you'll enjoy Pathfinder.

 

[pawsplay]

Can I use 3.X characters with Pathfinder with no conversion?

Yes. As long as you know the skill list changes, you don't have to convert a single thing.

Or tiny amount of conversion?

Yes. It took about 15-30 minutes per character to convert some 18th level 3.5 characters in my last campaign.

Can I use 3.X crunch materials (prestige classes especially) with Pathfinder with little conversion?

Yes. In some cases the material is redunant, but where it's not, you can use it. My last campaign used the Archmage and Contemplative. The only issue with the latter was that one of the domains didn't have an exact correspondence. We also had a Scout (Complete Adventurer).

Does Pathfinder keep skill points allocated level by level and some synergy bonuses?

Skill points, yes. Also, easier to calculate, since cross-class skills work differently. Synergy bonuses are gone; related skills have mostly been rolled up.

Does Pathfinder have any way to make a druid that cast spells a little bit, Turns into goonish forms for battle and gains skill bonuses in certain forms for scouting and sneaking?

Pretty much.

Are wildshape forms just as complicated, involving math of multiple spread sheets to compute?

It's very easy. More complicated than Enlarge Person, but only barely.

Why don't you check out the rules yourself for free?

 

[pawsplay]

So go into the change with eyes wide open. At high level, Pathfinder is as hard, if not more difficult, to run than 3.x was. You have to amp up the enemies to compete with the players insane capabilties.

This is not my experience. At 18th through 20th level, it ran like a charm, and my prep time was cut substantially by the changes to skills, the feat list in the core books, and the tweaks to advanced monsters.

But it's 3.x with amped up melee characters and not a great deal of reduced power for arcane and divine casters (though no Spell Compendium which helps a great deal...at least not yet).

I wouldn't describe the Fighter as "amped up," just mathematically corrected, to not only be the best Fighter (which despite what others may say they were in 3.5, in their niche), but also a full partner in dealing with varied situations. The Barbarian has more changes, and more options, and has been adjusted to be equivalent to the Fighter in capabilites (in 3.5, the math was not on their side).