Pathfinder 1E So what do you think is wrong with Pathfinder? Post your problems and we will fix it.

[The Crimson Binome]

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and my conclusion is that it boils down to two points:

1) System Mastery: Even if you ignore the broken combos that rely on generous interpretations from the DM, the difference between a play-as-you-go character and a decently optimized one is so large that the casual player might as well not show up, for what little difference it will make. And while I, personally, am capable of putting in the effort to make a semi-optimized character, it takes a lot of work to dig through all of the junk in order to find something that synergizes effectively.

2) Fiddly Little Bits: You gain a +1 bonus to save against fear effects. You gain a +1 bonus to Reflex save against trample attacks. You gain a +1 bonus to hit once per rage, and you have to call it beforehand. There are just too many trivial bonuses that will never come up, but they come from everywhere! Very rarely, this contributes to System Mastery (above), but mostly it just adds to bookkeeping for something that will never matter (or will only have a very small chance of mattering throughout the entire campaign).

Or to sum it up: There are too many mechanics getting in the way of the game.

 

[MerricB]

Must say: Seeing a lot of problems, and not a lot of solutions.

Cheers!

 

[Greg K]

Pathfinder did make a few good changes. However, there are several things that I dislike. Off of the top of my head

Classes: I dislike the majority of Paizo classes. Some of my issues are the same as with default 3e. Others are new to Pathfinder. The only reason that I gave Pathfinder a second look is Owen K.C. Stephens and his Genius Guide to the Talented (X) class books. Outside of Steve Kenson, he is one of the few people that seems able to regularly produce class material for 3e/Pathfinder that I enjoy. So far, he has fixed the Cavalier, Fighter, Monk, and Rogue. I am looking forward the Sorcerer, Oracle and, possibly, several others.

For my tastes, the designers went in the wrong direction with the majority of classes. Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Wizard need to be nerfed (for starters, gaining spells at the bard's progression would be my preference). Other issues

1.Barbarian: I am not a fan of barbarian== raging wilderness fighter. Movies, myth and literature do have ragering fighters from urban environments (Barbarian== raging wilderness warrior was an issue in 3e for me as well). Furthermore, in many stories, "barbarian" does not equal rager In 1e, the class had nothing to do with raging, but was a wilderness warrior from a less technological wilderness society. Thankfully, UA had the crafty hunter which was a non-raging/non-spellcasting wilderness warrior that can be an alternative to the rager.
Another thing that I dislike is that unlike 1e, there is no tailoring the barbarian to his home culture/environment. In the culture gave extra proficiencies and bonuses in the home terrain and determined starting weapon proficiencies. The former in 3e could be covered by using the Favored Terrain variant from UA. If a DM is willing to allow alternate ranger fighting styles to be substituted for the archery style- it allowed even more cultural tailoring.

As I understand it, The Genius Guide to the Talented Barbarian from Rogue Genius Games addresses the "urban barbarian" and the cultural aspect. So, I am looking forward to seeing what Owen did in that book.

Another issue that i have is the Barbarian rage powers- especially, the energy powers. The majority of Paizo's powers are a major turn off to me and my friends. It is not what we want in a barbarian class.

2. Bard: Personally, I don't care for the Pathfinder bard. Then again, I don't care for the 3e PHB Bard either. The jack of all trades never did it for me. The only D&D bard that I liked was an alternate bard from Dragon Magazine for 1e. There are, however, a few bard archetypes that I do like.

3. Cleric: The best D&D cleric to me was, hands down, the 2e specialty priests. Any other version that I have seen for D&D/Pathfinder is a just a disappointment. Among my issues
a. Class armor proficiency (even clerics of non-martial deities gain medium and heavy armor and clerics of completely non-martial deities or of, completely, non-martial archetypes still gain Light armor (looking at Pathfinder's Cloistered Cleric in comparison to the 3e Cloistered Cleric from Unearthed Arcana)
b. Spells lists are not tied closely enough to deity domains (an issue with default 3e)
c. channel energy; Why does every cleric get healing or harm if it has nothing to do with their deity's domains?
d. spontaneous casting: same issue with channel energy. The abilities should be based upon the domains of one's deity, in my opinion
e. Clerics not being spontaneous divine casters (Unearthed Arcana). My personal preference is clerics to pray and receive spells as needed. However, I can accept the default method if spells were learned rites since, in some cultures priests. learn secret rites tied to the deity they serve.
f. Planar ally's not limited to being a unique specific creature/avatar or class of creature serving a specific deity.

4. Druid: Personally, for 3e, I dropped the druid in favor of Green Ronin's Shaman (which I find far superior to the playtest version of the Shaman which, in turn, I found better than the Druid Shaman archetypes). Among my issues with the druid
a. Dinosaur animal companions. Giant insect animal companions, goblin dogs, etc. Personally, I would prefer the choices closer to the ranger list
b. Wild shaping into any of the above
c. Changing into elementals, plant creatures
d. immunity to all poisons (for reasons discussed in SKR's Fewer Absolutes)
e. Druids not being spontaneous divine casters (Unearthed Arcana)

5. Monk
a. Purity of Body and Diamond Body granting immunity (for reasons stated in SKR's Fewer Absolutes). I don't mind a big bonus to save, but leaving some chance of failure, in my opinion, is more interesting and allows for things like the character in Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon dying of poison.
b. Tongue of Sun and Moon, Empty Body,
c. When I think of monk's using ki, in addition to more rapid strikes, increasing AC and more rapid movement pace, I want:
* making one's self temporarily stronger including for lifting objects
* making the body as hard as steel
* making one's body heavy: rooting one's self to be harder to move, knockback, trip
* making one's body light to leap even greater distances (High Jump) and reduce/negate falling damage being thrown/tripped.


6. Paladin: When I think of "Paladins" channeling faith: I want things like focusing their faith into the "strength of ten men" in addition to laying hands to both heal and remove status effects (e.g., fatigue, blindness) and smiting evil. Off the top of my head, I don't recall a strength of ten men ability. Other issues:
a. immunity to fear and disease (for reasons discussedin SKR's Fewer Absolutes). A chance of failure, again, makes things more interesting (in my opinion). This holds true for the other Paladin abilities listed below that grant immunity
b. Aura of resolve
c. Aura of Justice
d. Channel positive energy
e. Aura of Righteousness: immunity to compulsions
f. spells not gained until 4th level. Personally, I wish there was an option that I preferred to the Warrior of the Holy Light archetype for non-spellcasting paladins. I prefer the non-spellcasting paladin from 3e's Complete Champion. However, if Paladin's are going to cast spells, I would prefer there being a level to do so at first level beginning with 0-level spells.


7. Ranger: my issue is spells not gained until 4th level. I wish there was an option that I preferred to the Skirmisher and Trapper archetypes for non-spellcasting rangers. I prefer the non-spellcasting ranger from Complete Champion.However, if Ranger's are going to cast spells, I would prefer there being a level to do so at first level beginning with 0-level spells.

8. Sorcerer
I like that they get Eschew Materials at level 1. However, I dislike the bloodlines. The nice thing about 3e's heritage feats was that becoming more like the bloodline was optional- in many stories such an ancestry is simply why spells are, innately, cast. I prefer a common 3e rules of choosing a bonus metamagic feats. Furthermore, many of the bonus feats and spells seem arbitrary to me. As a player, I dislike being forced into the designer's choice for many of the class features and ,as a DM, many are just inappropriate for the campaign.

9. Wizards. I like the d6 boost and the arcane bond. however, I want some pre-3e limitations reinstated.


Skills: My issues:
a) I dislike the +3 bonus for taking a rank in class skills- especially after first level.
b) I dislike Pathfinder's rank limit by level
c) I prefer 3e's x4 skill points at first level and bonus simply determined by ranks purchased
d) Clerics, Fighters, Paladins, and Sorcerers still only receiving 2+INT skill points per level.

Feats
I dislike the names for many of the combat feats. Not everyone runs Golorian or uses everything from the Monster Manual. For this reason, I want more generic names not Gorgon's Fist or Medusa's Wrath as a home brew campaign setting may not have Gorgon's or Medusa. Generic names (e.g., staggering strike) don't require telling players to rename something and hope they remember. Plus, Gorgon's strike and Medusa's Wrath feats have nothing that resembles a Gorgon or Medusa's attack.

Combat:
Martial types not making full attacks as standard action.

I have more issues with Pathfinder and may list them later. However, as for running it, I, probably, will not consider doing so until Owen finishes covering the core classes in his Genius Guide to the Talented (X) line of books. Then again, I may just use the books for 3e and bring in a few other things (e.g., some Pathfinder spell changes) into my house ruled 3e.

 

[Remathilis]

Its biggest failing is that its still 3.x.

Because of this, it still has "legacy" issues: poor saves scale too slow to be useful, wealth-per-level means a constant treadmill of magic items, monsters and NPCs are hard to build, combat is fiddly, and spellcasters still outshine martials (though martials did get new toys to play with). Additionally, counting rounds of rage/bardsong is a tedious, unneeded change. They did get some things right, but overall I sometimes wish PF had did more basic mechanical fixing rather than just rewire some sub-systems and slap on fresh paint.

I play Pathfinder because it legitimately IS better than 3.5 (and much closer to my playstyle than 4e) but a part of me hopes D&D N5xt can be the panacea to the problems that I've had with 3.X since 2006...

 

[pickin_grinnin]

I avoided Pathfinder for a very long time, for many reasons. I had such a hard time finding games in my area with reliable, mature players who would play anything BUT Pathfinder that I finally decided to give it a shot.

It's not a bad game, but neither was 3.5. Others have pointed out a lot of technical issues with it, so I won't bother repeating those things.

The following things tend to irritate me:

1) It's time to do away with classes. They're just too limiting, and unnecessarily so. If they simply must use them, there need to be a lot more classes available, and the archetypes for them need to have a more decent tradeoff between benefits and drawbacks.

2) They throw a few new feats and a class or two into virtually every splatbook. I understand the sales strategy there, but I would rather buy "the big book of feats" than ten splatbooks that have nothing I want except for a couple of new feats. I do like that you can eventually find all that information on line, though.

3) The prices they charge for the splatbooks are too high for what you get, whether you buy them in PDF or print form. Some of them are pretty thin, yet priced as if they were a much larger book. Either lower the prices or flesh them out a bit more.

4) The Pathfinder Society folks have done a very poor job of indicating what is and is not "legal" for play. The official "additional resources" page is a mess, very poorly formatted, and (for some weird reason) lists both what you can and can't use in some places, when they could simply say "out of this book you can't use X." It's not hard to organize a document like that, and it's not hard to keep it updated if you organize it well from the beginning. There are a number of things I don't care for when it comes to the Pathfinder Society, which is a shame. I was initially excited about getting into it.

 

[EnglishLanguage]

Its biggest failing is that its still 3.x.

+1

And this is partly the reason I don't see Pathfinder having much of a successful 2.0. Even their entire marketing campaign was based around "It's just like 3.5, so you never have to switch to 4e!", and that kind of drove them into a corner where they can't release a new improved system without alienating a chunk of their fanbase, or at least ensuring they wouldn't switch to the new edition.

 

[EnglishLanguage]

Oh, and before I forget, another failing of Pathfinder is making fairly derp design choices at times. For example...

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/alt...archetypes/seal-breaker-antipaladin-archetype

...one of the new Anti-Paladin archetypes.

For those who don't see it.

Aura of the Grave- Mindless undead within 10 feet can't attack you unless they pass a Will save.

Which is great....and then 5 levels later...

Aura of Death- Undead creatures within 10 feet get a +2 profane bonus to saving throws.

So yep, Seal Breaker gets an aura that makes one of his aura others harder to use. Outstanding.

 

[DaveMage]

Keep in mind that this is a thread about what we don't like about Pathfinder - not what we do like. For most Pathfinder fans, what we do like far, far outweighs what we don't like. All systems have issues.

Having gripes with Pathfinder does not mean most fans want Pathfinder 2.0. Not even a little (for many).

 

[billd91]

+1

And this is partly the reason I don't see Pathfinder having much of a successful 2.0. Even their entire marketing campaign was based around "It's just like 3.5, so you never have to switch to 4e!", and that kind of drove them into a corner where they can't release a new improved system without alienating a chunk of their fanbase, or at least ensuring they wouldn't switch to the new edition.

This is a bit of an overreaching argument. If there's a corner, they're in a corner in which change should be relatively modest or evolutionary in nature compared to the jump from D&D 3e to 4e. I think the success of Pathfinder and the changes it has brought to the 3e family of games indicates that the fan base isn't hostile to change, rather it didn't embrace 4e's changes.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Its biggest failing is that its still 3.x.

This.

I was able to keep our Kingmaker campaign running for about four months before giving up to the amount of things I had to keep track of - and I'm not talking about the kingdom rules. I decided to join the Pathfinder crowd thinking that the quality of the adventures would compensate the burden of the rules system. While the adventure paths are great, they were not that good. After that, I've come back to run 2E and eventually started running Next. Some of my friends are playing Dungeon World. I see no solution for Pathfinder besides a new edition. The engine it's running on is almost 15 years old now, and full of "you have a +1 competence bonus on attack rolls with spears against black mountain orcs".

I like Paizo. I love the fact that they foster some of the most creative and talented people on the industry, but it's a pity that they're using those great resources to further support 3.X instead of investing in a faster/simpler game that I actually want to run/play.