D&D 4E What was Paizo thinking? 3.75 the 4E clone?

[Scrollreader]

Is the difference between a level 10 wizard with 13 feats (pathfinder alpha) and 7 (Core 3.5) is 'close enough' for you, then more power to you. It it's a pretty vast power gulf, from where I play, though. I'll likely play 3.5 still, with people who like the skill granularity, and optimization, and broad array of choices. But I won't convert old pathfinder products to 3.75, or new ones to 3.5. Especially not if 4e is as simple for a DM to worldbuild with as it seems.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

... which is "compatible enough". So the NPC Fighter will have a few less feats, and the half-orc warlord will have -1 Will than he would in PF. But c'mon, that doesn't make too much of a difference when you run the game. For the *really* important NPCs, you convert them, but for the rank-and-file opponents? Run them as they are and call it a day.

Exactly.

And the thing I think a few people may have brought up but people are willfully ignoring is that whatever paizo comes up with for thier ruleset will still probably be more usable with thier 3.5 than 4E will.

 

[The Little Raven]

... which is "compatible enough".

It strikes me that they're not really addressing a big DM issue with 3.X: the excessive amount of prep time. In fact, they're acerbating the issue by basically requiring you to take a look at any 3.5 (or 3.0) material and figure out whether you need to do conversions to it to make it an appropriate class/skill/encounter/monster/whatever, or whether it will be fine as it is (which isn't likely, given that even a level 10 wizard has almost twice the feats as before, which makes a huge difference). If it isn't fine, then you need to take the time to convert it (which can be contentious itself, see my Monte Cook comments about 3.0->3.5 and system mastery). In the end, it looks like it will increase prep time if you want to use supposedly "compatible" materials, while doing (apparently) nothing in it's core to alleviate prep time issues.

And it being a single volume (compared to 3.5's three) means far less room for all the rules and aids that 3.5 provided.

 

[SWBaxter]

Er, no. It's basically a classeless, leveless form of D&D.

See, even if that were a true statement - and the differences are considerably greater than that, so it's not - that would be enough to make BRP a pretty groundbreaking ruleset, because in OD&D class and level were two of the major ways to differentiate one character from another. Getting rid of them leads directly to other innovations in differentiating PCs.

 

[SWBaxter]

It strikes me that they're not really addressing a big DM issue with 3.X: the excessive amount of prep time.

Well, we haven't seen their take on monsters and encounters yet, and that's where any such changes will likely reside. However, it's also possible that isn't as big an issue for Paizo because they're creating the system specifically to support Pathfinder adventures, which means that prep time for homebrew adventures may not be as much of a concern.

I read through the alpha today, and to me it's a mixed bag - some stuff is cool, some I don't like at all, lots of it is in the category of "I'll need to see it in play to decide." Dunno if I'm going to get a chance to playtest it myself, so I'll be following the playtest reports pretty closely.

 

[Arkhandus]

It strikes me that they're not really addressing a big DM issue with 3.X: the excessive amount of prep time. In fact, they're acerbating the issue by basically requiring you to take a look at any 3.5 (or 3.0) material and figure out whether you need to do conversions to it to make it an appropriate class/skill/encounter/monster/whatever, or whether it will be fine as it is.

Uh, that's not really the case.

You can use a 3.0 or 3.5 piece of material as-is and just slightly tweak its Challenge Rating after you see how it plays out, depending on whether or not it turned out to be somewhat easier to overcome.

If it was because the whatsit used a weaker, earlier version of a class, then you just know to bump up the effective CR of any other NPCs using that old class by +1 or so. That's not really hard, y'know.

When it comes to classes or feats or whatnot that players are going to use, it's not going to be hard to eyeball something based on what you see in the PFRPG. It should be pretty easy to decide "Hey, this class looks kinda weaker than Class X in this other book. I think I'll give it a bonus feat every other level and call it even."

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

I agree with Mourn, prep time for Pathfinder won't be substantially different than it was with 3.5.

For homebrewers, prep time is a major incentive to take a hard look at 4.0. For people who want to run published adventures, I think 3.X looks pretty good, since Paizo does that better than anyone.

Ken

 

[Keoki]

When it comes to classes or feats or whatnot that players are going to use, it's not going to be hard to eyeball something based on what you see in the PFRPG. It should be pretty easy to decide "Hey, this class looks kinda weaker than Class X in this other book. I think I'll give it a bonus feat every other level and call it even."

Sure. But that does take prep time, which is, it seems to me, precisely Mourn's point. I agree that 3.5 materials are much easier to convert to Pathfinder than to 4E, but to call Pathfinder backwards compatible is false advertisement.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Except any 3.5 product used with Pathfinder would need a myriad a tiny adjustments for the new racial bonuses, fighter attack and AC bonuses, etc. At a quick glance it looks about as compatible with 3.5 as 3.5 was with 3.0.

The PCs use PF adjustments, nothing else needs to. There's no reason, for example, that you have to go back and convert all the NPC fighters, rogues, wizards, etc. to the PF version.

 

[Dragonblade]

Totally random, but whenever I see the title of this thread, I keep hearing that line in Austin Powers when they introduce Mini-me:

"Send in the CLONE!!!!"