Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[Maxus]

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?

Simpler to use. Especially when you're gaming with people who find even irc difficult to make work.

Don't laugh, it's happened.

Maptools and the like are great, don't get me wrong. Just, yes, you can can run a good RPG game over IRC.

[tzor]

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?

I remember when they first came out. One of our gamers always had a god damed Mac.

[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?

I remember when they first came out. One of our gamers always had a god damed Mac.

Maptools is Mac-compatible.

[tzor]

Yes, but I'm talking about an age before this specific product came along and when java was common as a complex devemoplent tool for personal computer platforms. (Back in the late 90's.) The one interactive on the web probram worth a darn was PC only.

[TheFlatline]

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

Warhammer uses abstract ranges relative to one another. (Chars A & B are engaged, C is in close range to A&B, D is at long range to A & B).

Flanking requires your opponent to be outnumbered, which means engaged. Positioning rarely is actually an issue, even in a large melee.

AoOs are easily reflected by disengaging maneuvers.

AOE clustering- since we're using abstractions, this becomes easy too. You pick a target, and anyone within "close" range of that target is hit. Or medium range. Or whatever.

No square-counting. No stopping every encounter to draw a battle map out. No bickering over which path is more efficient to get to your enemy. I like pushing figs around as much as the next guy, and dungeon crawls are fun as hell, but a lot of the battlemap stuff is unnecessary ultimately. 90% of the time the map you've drawn out could just as easily be an empty page with one or two terrain pieces that you have to move around. And at that point, positioning really doesn't matter. What does matter is still easily abstracted. Nobody rolls for every square of shrub undergrowth in a jungle encounter... it'd take 30 minutes (I've seen it done once and it drove me insane). You abstract and say "this is light undergrowth, and everything out here is heavy undergrowth". Those "conditions" have more relevance to your fight than the actual terrain usually does.

[fectin]

Having one of the wet-erase battlemats makes that much, much easier.

[Blasted]

Warhammer uses abstract ranges relative to one another. (Chars A & B are engaged, C is in close range to A&B, D is at long range to A & B).

Flanking requires your opponent to be outnumbered, which means engaged. Positioning rarely is actually an issue, even in a large melee.

AoOs are easily reflected by disengaging maneuvers.

AOE clustering- since we're using abstractions, this becomes easy too. You pick a target, and anyone within "close" range of that target is hit. Or medium range. Or whatever.

No square-counting. No stopping every encounter to draw a battle map out. No bickering over which path is more efficient to get to your enemy. I like pushing figs around as much as the next guy, and dungeon crawls are fun as hell, but a lot of the battlemap stuff is unnecessary ultimately. 90% of the time the map you've drawn out could just as easily be an empty page with one or two terrain pieces that you have to move around. And at that point, positioning really doesn't matter. What does matter is still easily abstracted. Nobody rolls for every square of shrub undergrowth in a jungle encounter... it'd take 30 minutes (I've seen it done once and it drove me insane). You abstract and say "this is light undergrowth, and everything out here is heavy undergrowth". Those "conditions" have more relevance to your fight than the actual terrain usually does.

For an RPG based on a game where every 1/10th of an inch matters, I'm rather impressed. How does it compare to the other abstract systems in terms of ease of use?

[TheFlatline]

Warhammer uses abstract ranges relative to one another. (Chars A & B are engaged, C is in close range to A&B, D is at long range to A & B).

Flanking requires your opponent to be outnumbered, which means engaged. Positioning rarely is actually an issue, even in a large melee.

AoOs are easily reflected by disengaging maneuvers.

AOE clustering- since we're using abstractions, this becomes easy too. You pick a target, and anyone within "close" range of that target is hit. Or medium range. Or whatever.

No square-counting. No stopping every encounter to draw a battle map out. No bickering over which path is more efficient to get to your enemy. I like pushing figs around as much as the next guy, and dungeon crawls are fun as hell, but a lot of the battlemap stuff is unnecessary ultimately. 90% of the time the map you've drawn out could just as easily be an empty page with one or two terrain pieces that you have to move around. And at that point, positioning really doesn't matter. What does matter is still easily abstracted. Nobody rolls for every square of shrub undergrowth in a jungle encounter... it'd take 30 minutes (I've seen it done once and it drove me insane). You abstract and say "this is light undergrowth, and everything out here is heavy undergrowth". Those "conditions" have more relevance to your fight than the actual terrain usually does.

For an RPG based on a game where every 1/10th of an inch matters, I'm rather impressed. How does it compare to the other abstract systems in terms of ease of use?

The custom dice system sucks because of the cost associated with it. And it's... cluttery. I'm still working out a sorting system on the GM side. And it takes a few combats to wrap your head around what precisely is going on.

However, combat is decently crunchy. You may only have a handful of actions to choose from, but they're all pretty useful, and they're all on relatively short recharge timers (5 combat rounds is the highest I'm seeing so far). Good dice rolls or blowing fate points which recharge fairly quickly will lower that recharge time. Being cautious in your stance can increase the recharge time.

Combat locations have a card associated with them. For example, if you're fighting in a forest clearing, anyone at long or extreme range has cover, and engaging in melee when you're at long or extreme from the forest clearing gives you misfortune dice. In fact, any stunt you can think of simply includes misfortune dice in it at the GM's discretion in exchange for attempting the desired effect. It may screw you, it may not.

It's sort of similar to the super abstracted combat locations that have been bounced around here before. The dice system, while expensive, works in that you can create a dice pool with varying amounts of luck, skill, and difficulty pretty quickly. My main complaint is that it takes some time counting all your successes and failures and totaling them.

The lesson learned is that generally speaking, you don't *miss* the battle mat the vast majority of the time. If you still want to push figs around, you can do that. WFRPG is perfect for playing with figs.

[A Man In Black]

You know, I think I preferred blank levels. Paizo's strategy for filling levels with bullshit abilities boils down to some combination of these three:

The Pathfinder monk has a pool of "ki points", which can give a number of minor combat boosts (the best is another attack) or fuel class abilities. Mostly it's used for extra attacks on a full attack, but it also powers some of the monk abilities that used to be X/day.

The PF barb and rogue both pick from a pool of... well, they get different names, but they're just talents from d20 SWRPG. Some of the rogue ones are decent and the barb ones mostly suck, but they're basically class-specific talents.

The sorcerer and wizard pick specializations. Sorcerers get some bullshit ranged or melee attack and a minor magical effect based on the origin of their magic, and wizards get various not-a-spell-like-ability-honest abilities in addition to their bonus spells for specializing (and universalists are still just plain worse, naturally).

Paizo's class bloat is made almost entirely of these three. The alchemist has a colossal list of "discoveries", which are just talents. (They also chain dependencies on each other all over the fucking place, over two and a half pages of undifferentiated text, and there's no summary list like for feats and spells. *sigh*) The cavalier has various specializations (orders), and is otherwise a completely boring paladin-wannabe that has no business being its own class. The oracle has specializations (mysteries) which exist only to be themed pools of talents (revelations); these are, in fact, the entirety of the class's features, besides spellcasting. The summoner sort of has a talent pool, but that's customizing a pet (and if you ever wanted to play a bard who gets a customizable pet who makes martial classes feel bad about themselves, here you go.) The witch gets talents (hexes), which are (usually) infinitely reuable spell-like abilities.

Now I'm flipping through Ultimate Magic, and the new class there, the Magus, has an Arcane Pool of points and chooses from Magus Arcana (which are all bullshit sub-feats or ways to spend his Arcane Pool). Their playtest for the followup book, Ultimate Combat, has a Gunslinger with a grit pool, a Ninja with a ki pool and a bunch of "ninja tricks" to choose from, and, well, a Samurai who's just the Cavalier with all the shit renamed so who the fuck cares about that.

This shit is getting a little out of hand. I know they do it because it looks like it's making your character powerful and because it chews up wordcount like nobody's business. The quality is really slipping, though, even by Paizo standards. The difference between the good choices and the bad choices is getting really wide (dear sorcerers: would you like a druid's animal companion, or bullshit d6+1 ice bolts 3/day?), and they're already resorting to "Fooist Talent: Pick a talent from the Barian list".

[K]

Paizo has nailed the policy of filling up your character sheet with things you don't care about and things that are hard to evaluate.

They like pools because they are hard to evaluate. They like lists of abilities because they are hard to evaluate and they are easy to write.

Sadly, when you do evaluate things you realize how shit they are.

[hogarth]

I think the point pools are stupid; they're tedious to keep track of, especially if you multiclass. But I don't prefer blank levels at all. I like getting something new and interesting when I level up; if I'm thinking "I don't get anything interesting at level X, but just wait until level X+1", then that class is a disappointment, IMO (notwithstanding the fact that it could be a powerful class like the wizard).

I think they did a good job with the Alchemist class. At odd levels, you do more damage with your bombs (good) and at even levels you get a "discovery" and some of the discoveries are actually something to look forward to, not just a crappy bonus feat.

On the other hand, they did a pretty lousy job with the Oracle. You get one "revelation" every four levels, and the revelations vary wildly in power; for some flavours of oracle, you could have easily picked all of the interesting abilities by level 1.

[K]

I think they did a good job with the Alchemist class. At odd levels, you do more damage with your bombs (good) and at even levels you get a "discovery" and some of the discoveries are actually something to look forward to, not just a crappy bonus feat.

The only thing I like about the Alchemist is that he can get agelessness. It's not a real ability, but it's a flavor ability with a lot of storytelling miles on it.

They write flavor abilities slightly better. Basically, that's the one thing Pathfinder does better. The problem is that they pretend that they are real abilities.

[hogarth]

Paizo has nailed the policy of filling up your character sheet with things you don't care about and things that are hard to evaluate.

They like pools because they are hard to evaluate. They like lists of abilities because they are hard to evaluate and they are easy to write.

When you get rid of lists of abilities that are hard to evaluate (like 3.X feats and spells), don't you end up with 4E (which still miraculously manages to come up with the occasional fucked-up ability)?

[K]

Paizo has nailed the policy of filling up your character sheet with things you don't care about and things that are hard to evaluate.

They like pools because they are hard to evaluate. They like lists of abilities because they are hard to evaluate and they are easy to write.

When you get rid of lists of abilities that are hard to evaluate (like 3.X feats and spells), don't you end up with 4E (which still miraculously manages to come up with the occasional fucked-up ability)?

4e also ate all the flavor abilities and tried to replace them with easy to evaluate abilities that had flavorful write-ups.

Take Teleport. It would be trivially easy remove as a combat ability or a dungeon-bypasser which are the only problems, but they cut it out completely because the very idea that someone might travel a few hundred miles as a regular part of their character blew their mind and they had to tag it with a GP cost that meant that people would only use it a few times a campaign and hand out some tiny combat teleporting as abilities.

Flavor abilities make stories easier. They killed a lot of stories when they killed the flavor, then killed some more when they made combat super mechanical and about shifting and marking and other non-story things.

[hogarth]

4e also ate all the flavor abilities and tried to replace them with easy to evaluate abilities that had flavorful write-ups.

Take Teleport. It would be trivially easy remove as a combat ability or a dungeon-bypasser which are the only problems, but they cut it out completely because the very idea that someone might travel a few hundred miles as a regular part of their character blew their mind and they had to tag it with a GP cost that meant that people would only use it a few times a campaign and hand out some tiny combat teleporting as abilities.

Flavor abilities make stories easier. They killed a lot of stories when they killed the flavor, then killed some more when they made combat super mechanical and about shifting and marking and other non-story things.

I'm not sure what you mean by "flavor abilities" (non-combat spells?).

I'm also not sure what you mean by they "ate all the flavor abilities"; as you note, some of them (like Teleport) still exist as rituals. The 4E ritual system sucks, but I don't know how that's "eating" flavor abilities or "cutting it out completely".

At any rate, complaining that D&D (from 1E to 3.5E to Pathfinder) has a bunch of lists of abilities that are wildly varying in Pathfinder is a little late; it wouldn't be D&D without them, IMO. (It might be a better or worse game, but it wouldn't be D&D.)

[TheFlatline]

I think they did a good job with the Alchemist class. At odd levels, you do more damage with your bombs (good) and at even levels you get a "discovery" and some of the discoveries are actually something to look forward to, not just a crappy bonus feat.

The only thing I like about the Alchemist is that he can get agelessness. It's not a real ability, but it's a flavor ability with a lot of storytelling miles on it.

They write flavor abilities slightly better. Basically, that's the one thing Pathfinder does better. The problem is that they pretend that they are real abilities.

Having played the first 10 levels of Alchemist, it's fairly broken.

Your main attacks are all ranged touch attacks that you add your intelligence bonus AND your dex bonus to, and then add your int bonus to the damage.

So while the fighter hits 25% of the time, you're hitting most creatures 80+% of the time. I swear to god at level 3 I on average had to roll a 4 or higher to hit with flasks. You're only fucked if you have a high dex creature, and by high dex I'm talking in the 20's since you're already adding your int bonus into attacks. At level 1 my attack bonus with flasks was +9 (18 dex, 18 int, and point blank shot), and that was for ranged touch attacks, which usually had an AC of 13 or so. Even if I miss, I still get minimum damage (which I add my int modifier into) on the splash.

Once you hit level 6 and gain master alchemy, you crank out poison and flasks like they were nothing. Once you have access to fly, you become literally a flying bomber.

I can heal, I can make healing potions super easy, I can make buffs super easy, and the bombs, while limited, are still over the top.

The up shot is that the entire party started to match the alchemist in damage output sometime around level 8 or so. But yeah. Alchemist is bullshit.

[DMReckless]

Your main attacks are all ranged touch attacks that you add your intelligence bonus AND your dex bonus to, and then add your int bonus to the damage.

Adding you Int into your attack roll is not a feature of the alchemist class. Not sure where you got that impression.

Throw Anything (Ex): All alchemists gain the Throw Anything feat as a bonus feat at 1st level. An alchemist adds his Intelligence modifier to damage done with splash weapons, including the splash damage if any. This bonus damage is already included in the bomb class feature.

So the rest of your post is pretty meaningless since you were playing the class wrong. For 10 levels.

[Psychic Robot]

actually it's still pretty strong even if you don't add your int bonus to attack rolls just because the attacks are all touch attacks.

irony: paizo banned the flask rogue and then created the alchemist

[CapnTthePirateG]

Paizo has nailed the policy of filling up your character sheet with things you don't care about and things that are hard to evaluate.

They like pools because they are hard to evaluate. They like lists of abilities because they are hard to evaluate and they are easy to write.

When you get rid of lists of abilities that are hard to evaluate (like 3.X feats and spells), don't you end up with 4E (which still miraculously manages to come up with the occasional fucked-up ability)?

4e also ate all the flavor abilities and tried to replace them with easy to evaluate abilities that had flavorful write-ups.

Take Teleport. It would be trivially easy remove as a combat ability or a dungeon-bypasser which are the only problems, but they cut it out completely because the very idea that someone might travel a few hundred miles as a regular part of their character blew their mind and they had to tag it with a GP cost that meant that people would only use it a few times a campaign and hand out some tiny combat teleporting as abilities.

Flavor abilities make stories easier. They killed a lot of stories when they killed the flavor, then killed some more when they made combat super mechanical and about shifting and marking and other non-story things.

Don't forget where you can trade actual abilities (such as the wizard's bonus feats. which under PF rules come down to "make item, get moneys for free!" for flavor things such as immortality. Or the idiot archetypes like scrollmaster, where you literally burn gp with every attack. It's beginning to look a bit like runescape....

[A Man In Black]

Don't forget where you can trade actual abilities (such as the wizard's bonus feats. which under PF rules come down to "make item, get moneys for free!" for flavor things such as immortality. Or the idiot archetypes like scrollmaster, where you literally burn gp with every attack. It's beginning to look a bit like runescape....

They don't seem to have learned the lesson, either. In the last playtest version of their Gunslinger for Ultimate Combat, you had to pay 6g a shot for your full attack.

The Gunslinger is pretty much fucked, though. There's a hundred problems with that class, but the main problem is that you're stuck either doing bullshit damage with single shots, or spending half your life cleaning jammed guns.

irony: paizo banned the flask rogue and then created the alchemist

Paizo's replacement for prestige classes is "archetypes", which are packages of substitute levels. They're themed packages of powers and abilities that replace the default powers/abilities. They're hugely variable in quality: the APG monk archetypes are all at least flavorful and most of them are actually interesting and transformative, while the fighter archetypes are bullshit like "Archer" and "Two Weapon Warrior" and suck balls in every way.

Anyway, one of the alchemist archetypes is the "vivisectionist", and it gets sneak attack instead of bombs

Meanwhile, the rogue archetypes are almost all "You get a bullshit skill bonus instead of trapfinding, the end." For example, this is the entirety of the "Investigator" archetype.

Follow Up (Ex): An investigator can roll twice on any Diplomacy check made to gather information, and receives the information for both results. This takes the same amount of time as one check. If the lesser of the two checks reveals false information, the rogue is aware of it.

False information is not revealed in this way if the people she questioned do not know it to be false. This ability replaces trapfinding.

The exception are the trap-focused rogue archetypes, though. There's two of them, and they both have this exact same text.

Careful Disarm (Ex): At 4th level, whenever a trapsmith attempts to disarm a trap using Disable Device, she does not spring the trap unless she fails by 10 or more. If she does set off a trap she was attempting to disarm, she adds double her trap sense bonus to avoid the trap. This ability replaces uncanny dodge.

(One gives up IUD for the ability to reroll a stealth check as a Bluff check, one can bypass traps if they successfully disarm them, instead of just disabling the trap.)

Somebody at Paizo has a mad hate-on for rogues, and I can't figure out why.

[Kaiyanwang]

Somebody at Paizo has a mad hate-on for rogues, and I can't figure out why.

Likely. See the PF society traits. They are all decent, barring the rogue one wich is sucky in a disturbing manner.

Overall, everything is reduced to this: if you don't give enough class feature to a class, you don't know what the hell take away to put in something new for the archetype.

See fighter which looses the already sucktastick bonus to saves from bravery and armor training, and people end up don't using archetypes. But there are not other choices, there is nothing else to exchange. This is a sign of something bad at the roots.

The APG archetypes for rogue have something rogues should have from day 1, like poison use. IMO rogue suffered a lot because several things has been stripped from him and given to another class or to a PrC.

[rasmuswagner]

Rogues still can't have Weapon Finesse (which is a shitty feat tax in the first place) at first level. That's how much Paizo hates them.

EDIT: Disregard that, I suck cocks.

[Psychic Robot]

yes you can it has no bab requirement

[sake]

The APG archetypes for rogue have something rogues should have from day 1, like poison use.

Has PF continued the proud D&D tradition of not only making poisons mechanicly shitty, but also stressing that poisons are so horrible, cruel and unfair that only Chaotic Evil baby eating, puppy raping Hitler/Mind Flayer clones would ever dare use them?

[Kaiyanwang]

The APG archetypes for rogue have something rogues should have from day 1, like poison use.

Has PF continued the proud D&D tradition of not only making poisons mechanicly shitty, but also stressing that poisons are so horrible, cruel and unfair that only Chaotic Evil baby eating, puppy raping Hitler/Mind Flayer clones would ever dare use them?

Since say, ninjas and rogues with poison use are not restricted by alignment, I'd say no. Perhaps is related to the fact that golarion is relatively more "edgy".

Still, poisons suffer because the ways to increase DC are not enough, and there are probles at the base of crafting system.

To elaborate: one should make poisons either deadly or more easy to use often. Ideal is both (not all at the same time - dbut doable for different kinds). Currently we have neither.

An exception is alchemyst, which can put out a decent amount of poison. But in this way, we have another case of something, ironically, "stolen" from the rogue.