Pathfinder Is Still Bad

K · Post by K » Wed Aug 24, 2011 11:20 pm

A Man In Black wrote:
echoVanguard wrote:Which changes were made to the alchemist on the basis of playtesting?
Beta bombthrowing was a move and a standard, both of which drew an AOO. It didn't get enough discoveries to accomplish anything. It had no way whatsoever to use its spells on the rest of the party. Mutagens (the Mr. Hyde ability set) were enhancement bonuses and tiny and had goofy durations.

The class was a mess before playtesting.

Those are easily fixable problems. I don't think they are going to want to hear that their Stealth rewrite is both less clear and more complicated than what came before and that they need to concept it out again and figure out what they even want the skill to do.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Aug 25, 2011 11:20 am

K wrote:
A Man In Black wrote: The class was a mess before playtesting.
Those are easily fixable problems.

Yes, but nevertheless it's surprising that they fixed them.

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:32 pm

K wrote:Those are easily fixable problems. I don't think they are going to want to hear that their Stealth rewrite is both less clear and more complicated than what came before and that they need to concept it out again and figure out what they even want the skill to do.

They aren't the only problems they fixed based on feedback from that playtest.

Mostly, I don't think they're running the playtest for advertising. I think they're running the playtests with poorly-advertised goals that conflict with better balance (like backwards compatibility, general hidebound nature, and a "too late to go back to the drawing board" schedule) and a generous dollop of incompetence.

I don't know how long this has to cook, since it's not for any announced book.

Bihlbo · Post by **Bihlbo** » Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:27 pm

A Man In Black wrote:Mostly, I don't think they're running the playtest for advertising. I think they're running the playtests with poorly-advertised goals that conflict with better balance (like backwards compatibility.....

From what I've seen the biggest problem with Pathfinder as a basic conceptual entity is that it can't exist without backward compatability with other products released by Paizo. If it weren't for this crippling shackle the folks at Paizo might have had a chance to make something good with all their efforts, especially since most of their other goals were fairly laudable. But since they couldn't back up the whole of d20 to the point where the building blocks haven't yet produced something that sucks, they started with a failure and painted it up to make it seem less terrible.

It was for this reason that I really wish someone else had made the most popular d20 successor to D&D - someone who didn't already have an albatross of 3.5 D&D products on the market that they were trying to sell.

Daztur · Post by **Daztur** » Thu Aug 25, 2011 11:44 pm

Bihlbo wrote:
A Man In Black wrote:Mostly, I don't think they're running the playtest for advertising. I think they're running the playtests with poorly-advertised goals that conflict with better balance (like backwards compatibility.....
From what I've seen the biggest problem with Pathfinder as a basic conceptual entity is that it can't exist without backward compatability with other products released by Paizo. If it weren't for this crippling shackle the folks at Paizo might have had a chance to make something good with all their efforts, especially since most of their other goals were fairly laudable. But since they couldn't back up the whole of d20 to the point where the building blocks haven't yet produced something that sucks, they started with a failure and painted it up to make it seem less terrible.

It was for this reason that I really wish someone else had made the most popular d20 successor to D&D - someone who didn't already have an albatross of 3.5 D&D products on the market that they were trying to sell.

I'm not sure I'd agree with that. While there's a lot of silly shit that is in Pathfinder because it's a legacy, I don't see any real evidence that Paizo can do good and interesting stuff mechanically when it deviates from 3.5ed, quite the opposite actually...

Bihlbo · Post by **Bihlbo** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 12:09 am

Daztur wrote:I'm not sure I'd agree with that. While there's a lot of silly shit that is in Pathfinder because it's a legacy, I don't see any real evidence that Paizo can do good and interesting stuff mechanically when it deviates from 3.5ed, quite the opposite actually...

Have they ever done any non-3.5 stuff as a company? I wasn't aware the had. Though the people they hire have, I admit that I'm completely taking it on faith that if they weren't hamstrung by market concerns they wouldn't suck so bad.

Daztur · Post by **Daztur** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 4:49 am

Bihlbo wrote:
Daztur wrote:I'm not sure I'd agree with that. While there's a lot of silly shit that is in Pathfinder because it's a legacy, I don't see any real evidence that Paizo can do good and interesting stuff mechanically when it deviates from 3.5ed, quite the opposite actually...
Have they ever done any non-3.5 stuff as a company? I wasn't aware the had. Though the people they hire have, I admit that I'm completely taking it on faith that if they weren't hamstrung by market concerns they wouldn't suck so bad.

I guess I wasn't being clear. I didn't mean that Paizo does bad non-d20 work, I mean that in the ways in which Paizo does new mechanical stuff in Pathfinder that isn't just copy and pasting shit out of the 3.5ed SRD we don't see anything that indicates that they'd be good at making a whole new game, instead we get a lot of indications that they don't understand a lot of the implications of various rules and have a hard time with basic math. It's not that the 3.5ed legacy is holding them back from doing awesome stuff, it's that the 3.5ed legacy is keeping them tethered to sanity since:
-The core of d20 mostly works, at least at low levels, so if you don't monkey with it too bad, you'll have a game that mostly works.
-There's some real low hanging fruit in which something is obviously wrong and in which it's harder to fuck up worse than it was before (grapple rules).

But overall the biggest reason that I don't think Paizo would do well at designing a completely new game is that there isn't really any overall vision or system with Pathfinder, just a lot of random twiddling without a lot of rhyme and reason to it except "more bells and whistles!" It's like they had a 100 players all submit their favorite house rules, throw out most of the obviously retarded ones and then choose at random from the rest.

K · Post by K » Fri Aug 26, 2011 8:07 am

Daztur wrote:
I guess I wasn't being clear. I didn't mean that Paizo does bad non-d20 work, I mean that in the ways in which Paizo does new mechanical stuff in Pathfinder that isn't just copy and pasting shit out of the 3.5ed SRD we don't see anything that indicates that they'd be good at making a whole new game, instead we get a lot of indications that they don't understand a lot of the implications of various rules and have a hard time with basic math. It's not that the 3.5ed legacy is holding them back from doing awesome stuff, it's that the 3.5ed legacy is keeping them tethered to sanity since:
-The core of d20 mostly works, at least at low levels, so if you don't monkey with it too bad, you'll have a game that mostly works.
-There's some real low hanging fruit in which something is obviously wrong and in which it's harder to fuck up worse than it was before (grapple rules).

But overall the biggest reason that I don't think Paizo would do well at designing a completely new game is that there isn't really any overall vision or system with Pathfinder, just a lot of random twiddling without a lot of rhyme and reason to it except "more bells and whistles!" It's like they had a 100 players all submit their favorite house rules, throw out most of the obviously retarded ones and then choose at random from the rest.

I'd agree with that assessment. The lack of core competency pretty much proves that it's not 3.5 that is holding them back.

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 7:01 am

I...huh.

Ess Kay Arr, over on [url=http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderCompanion/adventurersArmoryErrataUpdatedTablesAreNice&page=2#54 wrote:the Paizo boards[/url],]There are several things in the game that are on the "to do" list for having a major FAQ about and the consequences of that will result in a significant rewrite/clarification of their text in the Core Rulebook. (For example, Stealth/hide in plain sight is one of them.)

Interesting reversal of attitudes.

K · Post by K » Thu Sep 01, 2011 7:44 am

A Man In Black wrote:I...huh.

Ess Kay Arr, over on [url=http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderCompanion/adventurersArmoryErrataUpdatedTablesAreNice&page=2#54 wrote:the Paizo boards[/url],]There are several things in the game that are on the "to do" list for having a major FAQ about and the consequences of that will result in a significant rewrite/clarification of their text in the Core Rulebook. (For example, Stealth/hide in plain sight is one of them.)
Interesting reversal of attitudes.

I'm not holding my breath. The rest of his post contains sheer idiocy about boning Monks over Amulet of Mighty Fists prices because monsters might use them, so I still don't think he can see the forest for the trees.

Chances are good that someone higher up demanded fixes to the worse problems and now he's twisting in the wind trying to come up with solutions.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 7:53 am

What the hell were they doing with stealth in their games that they thought it worked? I noticed about 3 games in in y2k that the characters built on stealth couldn't actually function by using Hide and Move Silently. Turning two things that don't work into one thing that doesn't work isn't helpful.

3.5, 4e, Pathfinder, no help at all. 4e's one useful stealth trick was one of the first things they nerfed.

Sure, if there's total cover you can ambush, and various cantrips can encourage the enemy to come into range for it, but that's all a matter of not relying on the skills. And then so many DMs seem to use Spot as a save vs surprise, which means even proper ambushes don't work.

11 years on, everyone's starting to talk about a fix, and they still don't work.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 2:11 pm

A Man In Black wrote:I...huh.

Ess Kay Arr, over on [url=http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderCompanion/adventurersArmoryErrataUpdatedTablesAreNice&page=2#54 wrote:the Paizo boards[/url],]There are several things in the game that are on the "to do" list for having a major FAQ about and the consequences of that will result in a significant rewrite/clarification of their text in the Core Rulebook. (For example, Stealth/hide in plain sight is one of them.)
Interesting reversal of attitudes.

That's happened a few times -- SKR has vehemently defended X as making sense, and then shortly afterwards X is errata'ed.

For instance, he staunchly defended one of the witch patrons giving Phantasmal Killer as a bonus spell, despite the fact that witches can already learn Phantasmal Killer and every other witch patron spell is not on the witch spell list. Then an errata document came out changing it. Wah wah.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 10:20 pm

I'm not sure I understand correctly, but weren't they already doing a rewrite of the stealth rules? Why would they ever wait for a faq then?

K · Post by K » Thu Sep 01, 2011 10:42 pm

hogarth wrote:
A Man In Black wrote:I...huh.

Ess Kay Arr, over on [url=http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderCompanion/adventurersArmoryErrataUpdatedTablesAreNice&page=2#54 wrote:the Paizo boards[/url],]There are several things in the game that are on the "to do" list for having a major FAQ about and the consequences of that will result in a significant rewrite/clarification of their text in the Core Rulebook. (For example, Stealth/hide in plain sight is one of them.)
Interesting reversal of attitudes.
That's happened a few times -- SKR has vehemently defended X as making sense, and then shortly afterwards X is errata'ed.

For instance, he staunchly defended one of the witch patrons giving Phantasmal Killer as a bonus spell, despite the fact that witches can already learn Phantasmal Killer and every other witch patron spell is not on the witch spell list. Then an errata document came out changing it. Wah wah.

I wonder id SKR is a terrible designer because he never admits his mistakes, or the fact he never admits his mistakes makes him a crap designer.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 11:56 pm

Well, there is a difference between refusing to admit a mistake because you're still being paid and inability to even recognize a mistake.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 8:14 am

K wrote: I wonder id SKR is a terrible designer because he never admits his mistakes, or the fact he never admits his mistakes makes him a crap designer.

I had to read that twice to make sense of it but, um, didn't you just say the same thing twice there? Either:
[*]Terrible designer because he never admits mistakes, or
[*]Never admits his mistakes therefore terrible designer

Is that the point, or did you mean "I wonder if SKR is a terrible designer because he never admits his mistakes, or never admits mistakes because he is a terrible designer"?

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 8:34 am

the important thing to take from it is that skr is a terrible designer

Daztur · Post by **Daztur** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 8:56 am

Psychic Robot wrote:the important thing to take from it is that skr is a terrible designer

What, you mean that Weapon Focus isn't twice as good as Natural Spell

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 10:06 am

Ok, so check this shit out.

To be fair, this is probably the worst feat in there (Ultimate Combat), but still - wow. Spend your round being less effective than a normal full attack, and in exchange you get smacked, extra hard. I think I would pay a feat not to do this.

Honorable mention: Disengaging Feint
It's worse than not using it, but it doesn't give the enemy a free boosted attack, so it only wins a runner-up in being terribad.

GâtFromKI · Post by **GâtFromKI** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 10:30 am

There's a monk archetype named "sensei".

You gain bardic performance, except you don't have all of them and you have less per day. At level 6, you gain the ability to spend ki points to grant your bonus to someone else; and at level 12, this affects all your allies (except you, since it would be overpowered to grant an extra attack to you and your allies at the same time) or you can grant slow fall.

You lose flurry of blow, extra feats, fast movement, and other things.

...

... In pathfinder, you can use the monk to roleplay a bard who failed at life.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 1:04 pm

Death or Glory (Ice9's "worst feat") isn't a bad idea if you need 14+ to hit with your normal primary attack, the big monster has multiple attacks, you can take the hits, you have some good crit cheese going, and the other PCs are busy (and you started in reach to use it at all).

Disengaging Feint has no such weird corner case utility. I can't even figure what the designer intended its use to be.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 1:39 pm

tussock wrote:Death or Glory (Ice9's "worst feat") isn't a bad idea if you need 14+ to hit with your normal primary attack, the big monster has multiple attacks, you can take the hits, you have some good crit cheese going, and the other PCs are busy (and you started in reach to use it at all).

Disengaging Feint has no such weird corner case utility. I can't even figure what the designer intended its use to be.

No. It's just giving up your secondary attacks for a +4 to hit and damage and your opponent gets to make a bonus attack against you as an immediate fucking action (not even an AoO). Even if you are soloing a giant octopus with a high AC, it still sucks.

-Username17

Swordslinger · Post by **Swordslinger** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 2:49 pm

The only real use for death or glory seems to be just using a big power attack and hoping it kills the enemy. Assuming you put the whole bonus to PA, you're getting a +12 to damage on one swing, with no bonus to hit. If your damage is pretty sucky, that might be better than taking an extra attack at -5 to hit. There may be more PA boosters in Pathfinder that I'm not aware of.

But in any case, I can barely see this being used as a combat action if they gave it away for free. I don't know anyone who would ever pay a feat for it.

Disengaging feint is a weaker version of the withdraw action that everyone gets for free (or did they remove that in PF?)

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 3:04 pm

Actually, Power Attack is generally weaker in PF than in 3.5. One plus is you get a 3:1 ratio on a two-handed weapon, but you don't get to choose how much of a penalty you take. It's always -1, with another -1 penalty every four levels.

So, at level 6, Power Attack would yield -2 to hit, +6 damage. So the net with this feat would be +2 to hit, +10 damage on a single attack. Not that impressive for 6th level.

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 3:05 pm

Swordslinger wrote:The only real use for death or glory seems to be just using a big power attack and hoping it kills the enemy. Assuming you put the whole bonus to PA, you're getting a +12 to damage on one swing, with no bonus to hit. If your damage is pretty sucky, that might be better than taking an extra attack at -5 to hit. There may be more PA boosters in Pathfinder that I'm not aware of.

But in any case, I can barely see this being used as a combat action if they gave it away for free. I don't know anyone who would ever pay a feat for it.

Disengaging feint is a weaker version of the withdraw action that everyone gets for free (or did they remove that in PF?)

Power Attack does not work that way anymore.