Author Topic: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?  (Read 34795 times)

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B.T.

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General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« on: July 31, 2009, 12:04:55 AM »
I am interested in hearing your thoughts and speculations on PRPG.  I have lurked at both RPG.net and Paizo.com to seek opinions, but both of those sites tend to be biased (to put it lightly) against and for Pathfinder, respectively.  Thus, I inquire here, given that this is a neutral ground.

dman11235

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #1 on: July 31, 2009, 12:27:41 AM »
Pathfinder breaks as many things as it fixes, and the things it fixes aren't really that important.  They managed to make casters more powerful while making mundanes less at the same time.  The grasp of basic design is worse than the average hombrew mechanic, and classes are especially atrocious.  The feats make it so fewer things are available to the classes that need them, and more things are available for the classes that don't.  All in all it's a step backwards.
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RobbyPants

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #2 on: July 31, 2009, 12:43:06 AM »
I think you'll find a bias against it here as well, although that bias doesn't necessarily mean the opinion is wrong. ;)
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Soda

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #3 on: July 31, 2009, 01:20:18 AM »
Pathfinder breaks as many things as it fixes, and the things it fixes aren't really that important.  They managed to make casters more powerful while making mundanes less at the same time.  The grasp of basic design is worse than the average hombrew mechanic, and classes are especially atrocious.  The feats make it so fewer things are available to the classes that need them, and more things are available for the classes that don't.  All in all it's a step backwards.
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« Last Edit: July 31, 2009, 01:22:37 AM by Soda »

B.T.

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #4 on: July 31, 2009, 01:23:42 AM »
Can anyone give me some examples of what it breaks via fixing?

Soda

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #5 on: July 31, 2009, 01:26:15 AM »

The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #6 on: July 31, 2009, 01:35:56 AM »
Basically, a good idea executed poorly.
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B.T.

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #7 on: July 31, 2009, 02:27:07 AM »

The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #8 on: July 31, 2009, 02:34:30 AM »
Long threads tend to.
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GawainBS

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #9 on: July 31, 2009, 09:47:10 AM »
Nevertheless, the facts in that thread were pointing out the flaws. Just try to read past all the "fucks" and you'll have some good info. ;)

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #10 on: July 31, 2009, 10:22:06 PM »
Here's the last thread.
That thread became very angry.
BG's major posters who were involved with the Paizo boards mostly have a beef with the Pathfinder Head of Design (Jason). His extreme arrogance and inability to accept constructive criticism (no matter how it was presented), coupled with the Paizo fan base being a bunch of fanatics who refused to listen to numbers, statistics, and averages in favor of their idea of game balance is what gives BG a bias against Pathfinder.

Some of their ideas were legitimately decent. Others were, well... shit. And they ignored several major points completely (Wish, Candle of Invocation, a few other points).

A good way to tell how little Paizo knows about game balance is to look at some of the classes. The Pathfinder Wizard is arguably stronger than the Incanatrix PrC, for example.


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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #11 on: August 01, 2009, 01:11:08 AM »
The Pathfinder rpg isn't really worth the money it costs. Maybe if it was cheaper I would buy it, but when we played a few sessions of it, it was like a cheapened version of D&D 3.5. It isn't a bad d20 rpg, the game has just been made before.
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GawainBS

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #12 on: August 01, 2009, 07:35:04 AM »
I can see how people who don't bother with confusing things such as numbers think that Pathfinder is more balanced at first glance.

ninjarabbit

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #13 on: August 02, 2009, 10:45:18 AM »
I think it's poorly designed overall

-Wizards (espcially with the redesigned elf) and sorcerers get more powerful, druids and clerics are slightly nerfed, and every other class gets a slight boost except the fighter (since everyone gets feats every 2 levels instead of evey 3 levels, making the fighter less special).

However though there are many things that make spellcasters even more powerful, for example feats like power attack and improved trip are heavily nerfed. The system discourages multiclassing, which won't bother the spellcasters at all but severely affected the nonspellcasters. Between nerfing most of the good combat feats, the boosts to the wizard and sorcerer, and discouraging multiclassing I'll say the gap between casters and noncasters has widened.

GawainBS

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #14 on: August 02, 2009, 10:47:37 AM »
I detest the changes to the combat feats and the way they work, and the change to Polymorph. Granted, it was borked, but they didn't fix it: it has become a waste of a spell now. (If I'd care about melee, I'd have an item that gives + X enhancement, so why bother casting a spell for it?)

Runestar

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #15 on: August 02, 2009, 12:41:21 PM »
Melees supposedly now have an option to do a little more damage with a single attack if they give up the full-attack action (going by the preview on the pathfinder website). So they still haven't exactly been weaned off their reliance on full-attacks. Meanwhile, casters are still able to move, fire off a huge-damage spell and another quickened spell.

I think the paladin was given a lot more class features. Still not entirely impressed by what it does though.

Overall, seems like something I keep seeing on the class forums over at gleemax (you know, when some posters keep insisting on posting their "improved" revisions of dnd classes despite the same thing already being done so many times).  :p
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Kerrick

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #16 on: August 02, 2009, 01:11:04 PM »
It has a few (very few) good points*, but overall I wasn't very impressed. I lurked over there throughout the alpha/beta phases, and a lot of people came up with a lot of good ideas; unfortunately, they were never used. Paizo's insistence on staying close to 3.5 hamstrung them, because it prevented them from actually fixing things that needed to be fixed. I can understand that they simply want to "keep 3.5 alive" and not invalidate the hordes of existing material... but please. It is possible to make massive changes and still be more or less backwards compatible.

*The XP tables, for instance, and expanding the paladin's abilities.
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JaronK

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #17 on: August 02, 2009, 11:20:31 PM »
As far as I can tell, what really went wrong for Pathfinder was that they started balancing each class in a vacuum without first determining how powerful each class was compared to other classes.  Thus, they nerfed the strongest things for Fighters (like Power Attack) because they were overpowered for a Fighter, without considering the fact that Fighters are fare weaker than casters and thus needed a serious net boost (and really, their other options should have been brought up to the same "overpowered" level as Power Attack).

Heck, the Tier system I wrote was in part inspired by 3.5 fixes like Pathfinder, because they so often made that mistake and I wanted people to be thinking about intraclass balance before they started rebalancing.

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #18 on: August 03, 2009, 11:08:46 AM »
Has anyone seen the final version? I want to hold out hope that they made some good changes to the beta.

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Re: General opinion on Pathfinder RPG?
« Reply #19 on: August 03, 2009, 03:35:42 PM »
The most recent previews are technically more final than anything else so far.

They also show that things still suck. Fighter class features are still +1 AC and feats. Bards still have to use up all their bardic music to help a Rogue open a lock and keep track of rounds per day for music. Power attack still sucks.

Mostly, it's still fail.