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Message: <blockquote data-quote="catastrophic" data-source="post: 5617126" data-attributes="member: 81381">I don't deny that their modules are popular, and i'm not going to pretend that wotc modules have been up to snuff. They totally win that comparison, although I wonder exactly who is buying modules from each company, and why, and how much of sales they account for. I don't have any problem with the idea that the pathfinder guys write good modules, but they don't design good classes. And I don't think the people who are happy with pathfinder are doing good class design critique. There was nothing stopping the pathfinder devs from doing more to fix the fighter, apart from their unwillingness to earn the ire of their fans and, potentially, their own failure as game designers. They could have at least given them better will saves. Something. Anything.  As it is, they gave them less than they initially wanted to in beta, because fans rejected the changes, while praising wizard buffs and more.And fighters are just one example. And you can't use the 'just a reprint' defence- It's not as if they didn't tweak many other classes, changing them and giving them extra features- even wizards got some based on school of magic- but they left in core failures of design in core classes, in a way that made no sense. WOTC seem to be struggling, even now, to put out good modules. But paizo has never done good class or system design. What style of play? What, specifically, do you think 4e doesn't do well? Because unless it's the style of play where wizards are more important, or the style of play where somebody dies at the start of a fight because they rolled a 1, i'm not seeing it.  4e can be deadly. 4e can be gritty. What 4e doesn't do, is make players helpless.  I think a lot of the time when people say 4e doesn't suit their style, or that they played it and didn't like it, they're missing the fact that people's enjoyment of a game often has to do with factors not related to the design itself.  Certainly, 4e has flaws. Certainly, the grind has a way of creeping up on games, and I can imagine how some people could burn out on 4e, and walk away thinking it was a problem in line with the kind of criticisms that opponents of the systems make- but more often, it's due to the kind of far more valid criticisms that proponents of the systems recognise.  Genre suitability is a pretty clear example of this. Fans of 4e play it in all sorts of genres and styles, and do so successfully. Does that stop them from burning out on the grind? No. If the GM tries to emulate genre or style by making genre- based skill callenges, say based on intrigue, or wilderness survival, are things going to go well? Probably not, since imo the skill challenge system is a failure. But that doesn't mean 4e is bad at a certain play style, especially compared to other editions of dnd. If anything, it's failures are generic. I mean, if somebody said dogs in the vinyard serviced it's style better than D&D, that I can see, as an argument. But 3.5 doing any kind of fantasy genre better than 4e? How? Because players can have their evening, or an entire character, ruined more easily? Is that really a good play style? And again, it's not as if you can't make 4e tough, or even deadly.</blockquote>

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