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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shadewyn" data-source="post: 4116822" data-attributes="member: 6340">Edited by Shade to include a repost of a note below that better sums up my thoughts.  Original post is at bottom for those who want to see how my mind half formed a thought and spit itout on these boards ... and for some reason folks didnt understand ... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />======LESSON 1: Never post in a hurry ... jogging out to a meeting and slapping send = bad grammar and unfinished thoughts.That said ... : )Paizo is full of BRILLIANT TALENTED WRITERS ...I own MANY of there products.This is not a "hate on Paizo" thread.Nor is it a "hate on how Paizo approached the 3.5 problems".10 design teams will find the same problems and all come up with similar solutions. Argueing that one is better than another is like sayign suede is better that leather compared to rawhide etc ...This is the logic path I am following;1) RPGs are based on network externalities. How COOL and PERFECT a game is often takes a very distant back seat compared to HOW MANY PLAY that game. If you are a hardcore Paizon fan in a small midwest town where the RPG gaming community all plays 4E, or 1E, or maybe GURPS, then you are not playing. It doesnt matter HOW cool the pictures are or clean the rules are.2) WotC just fragmented the community by bring in 4E3) You face a choice ... support the old 3E or new 4E, maybe a hybrid ...4) You instead choose to build your own NON COMPATIBLE version of D&D. Does not meant the solutions were better or worse that WotC's to the 3.5 issues. Thats why several folks were detailing how the upgrade to Pathfinder is not going to allow or encourage you to still use your heritage 3.5 material. The 3.75 Paizo stuff powercreeps and shifts the gameplay focus in such a way that it is a whole new game (the same way 4E does when it apporached the design problems of 3.5)5) You now took your target market of 3.5E players and broke that peice into "those who will upgrade to Pathfinder" and "those who keep the core 3.5".==========Thats why I say it is a bonehead move.Frankly if I didnt care that about Paizo I would have just snickered at the annoucement and gone "nubs". I will miss their writing in 4E.OLD POST (ORIGINAL INCLUDING HLAF FORMED BRAIN THOGUHT STUFFZ)===============I can only guess that Paizo Publishing has felt slighted by the legal team issues with the OGL and Hasbro.  As a result they are publishing their own rules set that addresses issues.  It allows them to control their own destiny so to speak.  However when you see things such as;Improve the Game: The 3.5 rules set is excellent, but it has its flaws. Over the past few years, a number of common problems have seemed to crop up again and again, problems that delay the game or cause no end of arguments (grapple and polymorph, for example). I wanted the Pathfinder RPG to clean up these rules, by streamlining in places and adding options in others...Compatibility: ... I wanted to ensure that any conversion work would be minimal. In most cases, this meant adding to existing rules, instead of subtracting. So, while we changed the way turning undead works, we did not remove turning undead from the game. We added options to the fighter without removing any of them. This design philosophy doesn't always hold true, however...Looking deeper, tell me if any of these things look familiar from all the 4E announcements ...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Encourage players to stay in the prime class be making each class deeper themed Adding more "at will" or "per day" abilities to martial character Lowering damage output of PCs to extend combats (power attack, sneak attack, etc) Increased starting hit points to allow low level adventurers to survive their first module Fighters that specialize in a group of weapons Simplifying the combat subset rules such as grapple, trip, etc to be easier and more consitent to run Reducing the number of skills and improving the remaining ones Introducing reasons to play one class from 1st to 20th with intresting content at each level removing the "need" to prestige class to keep on the power curve Adding in more significance to the choice of a race beyond 1st level</li> </ul>At some point I gotta wonder how you can say with a stright face that 4E has issues yet address the problems with the similar fixes?If you have to convert to a "better" version of 3.5 in such a way that your "old" 3.5 material is not written in the same spirit is it really still compatible?  Why would I ever take splat book power X from 3.5 as a wizard feat if I can take the new 3.75 Pathfinder free spells per day cheese?  Why have old books of P classes, if the old P class abilites are now rolled into the main classes?Maybe its just me ... but this does a disservice to all those 3.5 fans and Paizo fans.  The system Paizo is pushing is not 3.5 its a bad 4E clone, and you will have very little need for the old 3.5 splat books crunch it looks like with the new 3.75 power creep.  And the non crunch bit on 3.5 books?  Well that was always portable.</blockquote>

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