Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[MfA]

1d8+cha per level with a save for half compares very favourably to say scorching ray.

Of course it's kind of an annoying power, with the metric ton of attack rolls and saves it creates.

[hogarth]

Wow, I totally blanked on that part of the post for some reason.

Let's see:

1. Not making your game more like an MMO.

Actually, I think that many of the "MMO-like" changes that 4E made were good ideas (e.g. making the 4E Fighter have maneuvers like the 3.5E Warblade). There are plenty of terrible ideas in 4E (e.g. making every ability so fucking boring that I can barely keep my eyes open), but most of them aren't "MMO-like".

2. Focus on adventures.

Between the Dungeon section of the web site and actual print modules, I think they actually had a fair number of adventures out there. I'm not a 4E product expert, though.

3. Embracing PDFs for your books.

No argument here; eliminating all of the legal PDFs was just stupid.

4. Doing open calls for talent.

<shrug>

5. Blowing the cash for better art and books.

I don't think 4E was particularly cheaping out. They just went for a house style that I didn't particularly like.

6. Not doing synergy bullshit with toys.

I think this has 0% to do with 4E's success or failure. I agree it's bullshit, though.

----

I think the real problem with WotC relative to Paizo is (a) they took a fairly big risk by changing the rules so radically from 4E and they failed, and (b) they have corporate overlords at a publicly traded company who require better results than a modest profit which makes them scramble to find other (stupid) products to sell besides books.

[K]

Wow, I totally blanked on that part of the post for some reason.

Let's see:

1. Not making your game more like an MMO.

Actually, I think that many of the "MMO-like" changes that 4E made were good ideas (e.g. making the 4E Fighter have maneuvers like the 3.5E Warblade). There are plenty of terrible ideas in 4E (e.g. making every ability so fucking boring that I can barely keep my eyes open), but most of them aren't "MMO-like".

The only decision that was a good idea was the idea that fighting guys should be as good as spellcasters.

Most of the MMO logic decisions just make for a worse game. People get super-pissed when you tell them that they can't pick up the orc's sword, or that treasure only comes in "drops," or that the game has to be identical at level 1 as it is at 30.

2. Focus on adventures.

Between the Dungeon section of the web site and actual print modules, I think they actually had a fair number of adventures out there. I'm not a 4E product expert, though.

4e adventures are tiny and poorly supported. The difference between a decently-sized adventure with good art and maps and a pamphlet-sized adventure is huge.

3. Embracing PDFs for your books.

No argument here; eliminating all of the legal PDFs was just stupid.

Yeh, cutting off a revenue stream, especially for things out of print, just makes no sense to me.

5. Blowing the cash for better art and books.

I don't think 4E was particularly cheaping out. They just went for a house style that I didn't particularly like.

I think that counts as cheaping out. This isn't 1970... there are dozens of extremely skilled and well-known fantasy artists who can command decent wages now. The fact that they went with some unknown guys is evidence of cheapness.

6. Not doing synergy bullshit with toys.

I think this has 0% to do with 4E's success or failure. I agree it's bullshit, though.

You can track the other half of terrible design decisions to the fact that they were trying to make a game that sold miniatures and cardboard tiles.

I think the real problem with WotC relative to Paizo is (a) they took a fairly big risk by changing the rules so radically from 4E and they failed, and (b) they have corporate overlords at a publicly traded company who require better results than a modest profit which makes them scramble to find other (stupid) products to sell besides books.

I wouldn't underestimate the damage you can get when a new creative team wants to rub their stink all over a project, but I blame Hasbro for not understanding the game business.

As far as I can tell, they understand boardgames for small children. The idea that RPGs are actually more like the novel publishing business and completely reliant on talent is probably something they never even considered.

[angelfromanotherpin]

The only decision that was a good idea was the idea that fighting guys should be as good as spellcasters.

It depends what you count as 'ideas.' Certainly their description of skill challenges sounds good, for instance. The base concept of the Tiers is similarly pretty good; being able to shunt all the DMF nonsense into a separate paradigm from the anime crazy bullshit would be very useful. It's the implementations that are shit.

[K]

The only decision that was a good idea was the idea that fighting guys should be as good as spellcasters.

It depends what you count as 'ideas.' Certainly their description of skill challenges sounds good, for instance. The base concept of the Tiers is similarly pretty good; being able to shunt all the DMF nonsense into a separate paradigm from the anime crazy bullshit would be very useful. It's the implementations that are shit.

The poor execution makes me think that they didn't actually understand the very ideas they were using. I wonder if they just cribbed some shit they read on the forums that sounded good.

[Fuchs]

Judging by how the math failed them with skill challenges it's pretty clear that the 4E devs didn't care about anything that did not involve moving miniatures on a combat map.

[Xur]

Judging by how the math failed them with skill challenges it's pretty clear that the 4E devs didn't care about anything that did not involve moving miniatures on a combat map.

Well, I wouldn't exactly say that they didn't care, counting the number of skill challenge errata... They (as in Mike Mearls) really seem to lack some basic knowledge about their own creation.

[rasmuswagner]

1d8+cha per level with a save for half compares very favourably to say scorching ray.

Of course it's kind of an annoying power, with the metric ton of attack rolls and saves it creates.

Assuming you can stack the sounds on one target, which is obviously not the RAI of that steaming pile of semantic monkey feces.

[DragonChild]

1d8+cha per level with a save for half compares very favourably to say scorching ray.

Of course it's kind of an annoying power, with the metric ton of attack rolls and saves it creates.

Assuming you can stack the sounds on one target, which is obviously not the RAI of that steaming pile of semantic monkey feces.

Disagree. "RAI" doesn't exist - it's obviously not worded in such a way to prevent that. Are the pathfinder authors illiterate?

The problem, more, is that it takes 30 GODDAMN FUCKING ROLLS to resolve a single standard action at level 10, which is high enough level that it's virtually at-will.

[rasmuswagner]

Disagree. "RAI" doesn't exist - it's obviously not worded in such a way to prevent that. Are the pathfinder authors illiterate?

When it comes to structurally sound rules text, pretty much yes. And Ultimate Magic is piss-poorly written. For another example, try to make sense of the spell "Battlemind Link".

Since you're apparently from the school of rules reading that produces abominations like the 'Hood, let's just agree that the ability is at the very least a shitty design.

[Silent Wayfarer]

Since you're apparently from the school of rules reading that produces abominations like the 'Hood, let's just agree that the ability is at the very least a shitty design.

Is this Hood the ridiculously multiclassed charger?

[rasmuswagner]

Since you're apparently from the school of rules reading that produces abominations like the 'Hood, let's just agree that the ability is at the very least a shitty design.

Is this Hood the ridiculously multiclassed charger?

No, it's the multiple-full-attacks-at-double-damage jumping-down-on-people charger using a dubious interpretation of a poorly worded feat (Battle Jump).

[Koumei]

This thing doesn't require special "Nah it's cool bro" interpretation though*. This isn't the kind of "Well it doesn't say you CAN'T fly by holding a bastard sword in the air" air-bud clause or "Well, Warforged are alive but not alive, so that makes them Undead, I'm sure I can turn them" silliness. You can shoot all of your Scorching Rays against the one guy. Same with Magic Missile. Now, Mass Hold Person specifies "one target per caster level is affected" or whatever. It doesn't say "You unleash a number of Hold Persons equal to your caster level", it specifies.

This is more like the former, and less like the latter. Now sure, I could be wrong here - they could just be doing a whole load of crack, think "fuck all" damage against a bunch of people is level-appropriate ever, and also want millions of rolls.

But by the wording and by looking at how powerful it is in either scenario, it seems more likely it does let you hit one guy with all of them. But yeah. It's ambiguous, it would be better if it specified. It very much isn't "obvious" that they intended for it to be a piddly amount.

Though either way, they need to do some clarification on the Save, as well as fucking cut the number of dice down. To like, one.

*Keep in mind that the bullshit of Pun-Pun is assumed to not work over here. We don't go by a fast-and-loose "We can't be sure that +6 BAB actually means you need +6 BAB" system here. If it is obvious, we treat it as obvious.

[TheFlatline]

Actually, I think that many of the "MMO-like" changes that 4E made were good ideas (e.g. making the 4E Fighter have maneuvers like the 3.5E Warblade). There are plenty of terrible ideas in 4E (e.g. making every ability so fucking boring that I can barely keep my eyes open), but most of them aren't "MMO-like".

As I'm dabbling in the latest Warhammer Fantasy, I'm finding that I'm more and more okay with recharge timers on abilities, which after 4E I thought I'd hate until my dying breath.

Then again, there's a whole minigame about min/maxing the timers. Certain results add time, others reduce the time between your abilities recharging. It makes using your abilities more of a risk, but you *want* to use your abilities, since you're only looking at 2-3 rounds before you can use your abilities again.

My question that only some prolonged play will resolve is if the abilities are robust enough to be options later on in the game. So far it seems like they will be, but that's not written in stone.

My request for D&D and for a lot of RPGs in general is to start to move away from battlemats and grids and a tabletop skirmish game, or at least give me rules options to run abstract combat. I know that's the original heart of D&D, but when I explained to my players that Warhammer ditches the battlemat for range increments and a more abstracted combat my group, as a whole, cheered the idea, and we've found that combat doesn't really lose anything in the abstraction.

[MGuy]

I'm weird and stoopid and like battlemats and grids myself.

[TheFlatline]

I'm weird and stoopid and like battlemats and grids myself.

There's nothing inherently wrong or bad about battlemats and grids, but it feels like games are going too far in that direction and it's becoming a tactical tabletop game with some roleplaying rules tossed in.

If I want a tabletop tactical dungeon crawl, I have Descent. I can play an entire dungeon crawl in an evening with it.

Don't get me wrong, I dig battlemaps and have more than one for gaming, but I would like to have the option of running a more abstract fight without having to wing the rules.

[Chamomile]

As someone who plays online as least as often as off, I would also like a game system that can be communicated entirely via text, so I don't have to set up fancy gadgets to make my games work in a chatroom.

[Koumei]

As someone who plays online as least as often as off, I would also like a game system that can be communicated entirely via text, so I don't have to set up fancy gadgets to make my games work in a chatroom.

This. So very much this.

[hogarth]

As someone who plays online as least as often as off, I would also like a game system that can be communicated entirely via text, so I don't have to set up fancy gadgets to make my games work in a chatroom.

I also play almost exclusively on-line, either via play-by-post/email or via Maptools/TTopRPG.

In both cases, I love maps.

• For a very slow game like a play-by-post, it can take a day or more to get an answer to a question like "Can I sneak around behind him this round?", so having a map of the situation speeds things up immensely.
• For a real-time game played via Maptools (e.g.), anything map-related is calculated quickly and easily. For example, you can quickly visualize which squares a 60' lightning bolt would affect.
• In any case, pictures are pretty.

There are advantages (and disadvantages) to playing with a "mapless" system, but ease of online play is not one of them IMO. Why you would want to play in a chatroom, I have no idea; that's like saying that the rules should be in Morse code so that you can play by telegraph.

[echoVanguard]

GURPS has rules for mapless combat, mostly by making all of the grid-based rules entirely ignorable. However, for the stuff you folks are describing, it sounds like you want rollable substitutions for grid elements. It might be a good idea to start off with a list of things you want to be able to determine, such as:

- flanking
- movement-based AoOs
- AoE Clustering

Once you have a list of features, then you can start working on how to substitute rolls or comparisons for gridwork.

echo

[echoVanguard]

Why you would want to play in a chatroom, I have no idea; that's like saying that the rules should be in Morse code so that you can play by telegraph.

Incidentally, hogarth, there is a thriving sector of folks who play D&D (and Shadowrun, and other various systems) over IRC, either by using separate web-based map tools or by ignoring maps entirely. So it's definitely a valid use case.

echo

[tzor]

Why you would want to play in a chatroom, I have no idea; that's like saying that the rules should be in Morse code so that you can play by telegraph.

Back in the "good old days" when chatrooms were all using fixed font ASCII characters, all you needed was to get the coder to add a dice function and you had all of the tools you could ever want. Maps could be drawn ASCII style using simple nomenclature originally designed by games like Island of Kesmai on Compuserve.

I ran a number of chatroom gamesduring the early years of the Multi-Player Gaming Network in the 1990's.

P.S. Having a text editor with "block mode" is a plus if you want to copy a small section of your larger ASCII map to display in the chat room.

[hogarth]

Why you would want to play in a chatroom, I have no idea; that's like saying that the rules should be in Morse code so that you can play by telegraph.

Incidentally, hogarth, there is a thriving sector of folks who play D&D (and Shadowrun, and other various systems) over IRC, either by using separate web-based map tools or by ignoring maps entirely. So it's definitely a valid use case.

I realise people do so, by I don't know why they would want to.

[Maxus]

Why you would want to play in a chatroom, I have no idea; that's like saying that the rules should be in Morse code so that you can play by telegraph.

Incidentally, hogarth, there is a thriving sector of folks who play D&D (and Shadowrun, and other various systems) over IRC, either by using separate web-based map tools or by ignoring maps entirely. So it's definitely a valid use case.

I realise people do so, by I don't know why they would want to.

All sort of reasons. A local game isn't readily available or conflicts with your schedule, a local game is filled with douchebags, hell, maybe you can find a game you want to play online.

[hogarth]

All sort of reasons. A local game isn't readily available or conflicts with your schedule, a local game is filled with douchebags, hell, maybe you can find a game you want to play online.

How does any of that make you choose IRC over Maptools?