Pathfinder Is Still Bad

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:34 pm

Am I really reading it properly that they are switching to pathfinder because players gain too much power as they lvl in 4th edition?

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 9:21 pm

I can see the theory that they're switching to Pathfinder because 4E is too easy; everything is written out on cards and the complexity is in keeping track of tiny numbers rather than any particular strategy or awareness of trap options.

But yeah, it does read more like 4E players got too powerful. I don't think they played the same 4E that others do though.

A more amusing read is to take into the account the second most recent comic, where their goal was to make the party want to split themselves up, implying a goal of infighting and ineptitude. That is something you will get with Pathfinder

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 9:21 pm

ishy wrote:Am I really reading it properly that they are switching to pathfinder because players gain too much power as they lvl in 4th edition?

I got a good laugh out of that implication.

But ntoe that they're comparing a 21st level 4E campaign to the PFRPG Beginner Box (maxes out at level 5), so it's apples to oranges.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 10:33 pm

I had the impression that they wanted to say that in 4E, the GM can't really make the PCs afraid. Not too much power, more like "can't hurt them".

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 10:52 pm

Fuchs wrote:I had the impression that they wanted to say that in 4E, the GM can't really make the PCs afraid. Not too much power, more like "can't hurt them".

I agree. I think the comparison is that in 4e the DM is new testament god, all forgiving and generous and such. In 3.X, including Pathfinder, the DM is old testament god and 'gets' to be much harsher to their players.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 11:01 pm

I can only wonder how they would describe 1E and the Gygaxian method. Poncy 3E players and their mana from heaven. They need more Tlaloc in their lives!

Swordslinger · Post by **Swordslinger** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 11:23 pm

Juton wrote: I agree. I think the comparison is that in 4e the DM is new testament god, all forgiving and generous and such. In 3.X, including Pathfinder, the DM is old testament god and 'gets' to be much harsher to their players.

It's kinda of funny since I always thought of it the opposite way, where 3E was the most player friendly edition.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 4:40 am

It's really hard to make padded sumo terrifying.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 4:45 am

fectin wrote:It's really hard to make padded sumo terrifying.

True, but it gives you time to instill a slow, festering horror at the dawning realization that they're not going to win this fight.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 4:59 am

Foxwarrior wrote:
fectin wrote:It's really hard to make padded sumo terrifying.
True, but it gives you time to instill a slow, festering horror at the dawning realization that they're not going to win this fight.

Fun fact: most Ancient ones in Arkham Horror take longer to kill you than most monsters!

A Deep one will probably bring you down in about three hits, while Cthulhu takes about seven.

On the other hand, you can kill a deep one by rolling two successes on a combat check, while Cthulhu requires thirteen total successes per player, and undoes one hit per player every time he attacks.

GâtFromKI · Post by **GâtFromKI** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 10:23 am

Fun fact: my group of players is really afraid of ancient one in Arkham Horror. But because they are dangerous, since most of them aren't (most of them have a simple countdown "you have only 8 turn to kill him"), but because winning the game after his apparition implies the roll of 300+ dice.

Personally, I think the game designers of Arkham Horror are fucking retarded.

I've seen such an anti-climatic battle only once: the only time I played D&D4, we were level 11 and we were fighting a solo monster with 600+ HP. I also think the game designers of D&D 4 are fucking retarded, even more retarded than SKR.

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 11:26 am

ishy wrote:Am I really reading it properly that they are switching to pathfinder because players gain too much power as they lvl in 4th edition?

From what I can tell Mike/Gabe's game has a ton of crazy homebrew loot and generally has fuck-all to do with 4e RAW. At one point the PCs were running around in mechs from Warmachine. "Jacks." Whatever.

Also Jerry/Tycho doesn't like 4e.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 12:18 pm

Fuchs wrote:I had the impression that they wanted to say that in 4E, the GM can't really make the PCs afraid. Not too much power, more like "can't hurt them".

From the horse's mouth:

Gabe wrote:I started playing table top RPG’s with D&D 4e. My group was also almost entirely composed of players new to D&D. We learned with 4e and so I think it has a special place in our hearts. Our game ran for about three years and I chronicled a lot of it here on the site. As time went on and I got more comfortable with the rules I started doing some pretty crazy shit.

I feel like the level 1 to 12 run was incredible. The character advancement seemed perfect and we all had a blast. By the time we quit my players were level 21 and I felt like mechanically the game just didn’t work as well. They all had big stacks of power cards and I felt like more time was spent thinking about these cards rather than interacting with each other and the world. Also it became very difficult to challenge them. So I started getting a little burnt out. The sense of wonder and excitement that I had in the beginning of the campaign just wasn’t there anymore. I put the game on hold and that was about a year ago.

I started feeling like I wanted to DM again about a month or so ago. While in Card Kingdom I saw the Pathfinder starter box and decided to pick it up. I ran it for some people here in the office and came away feeling like I did four years ago when I first discovered 4e.

So he liked 4E from level 1 to level 12, and he got the same feeling from the Pathfinder Beginner Box (which is also low levels). I think he probably just doesn't like high level play.

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 3:57 pm

hogarth wrote: So he liked 4E from level 1 to level 12, and he got the same feeling from the Pathfinder Beginner Box (which is also low levels). I think he probably just doesn't like high level play.

I have yet to play 4E at or above level 12, but having high-level play be unbalanced, broken, unworkable, or just outright terrible is kind of one of the traditions of D&D. I'm frankly amazed he lasted to 21. Maybe he's unusually masochistic. Or maybe 4E has made play in the high teens somewhat less agonizing.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 4:11 pm

talozin wrote:I have yet to play 4E at or above level 12, but having high-level play be unbalanced, broken, unworkable, or just outright terrible is kind of one of the traditions of D&D. I'm frankly amazed he lasted to 21. Maybe he's unusually masochistic.

He'd never played D&D before, so he didn't know he was supposed to burn out earlier.

They even did a cartoon about it.

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 7:34 pm

hogarth wrote: He'd never played D&D before, so he didn't know he was supposed to burn out earlier.

Even so -- I mean, I was about twelve when I figured out that AD&D sucked if you tried to play past "Queen of the Demonweb Pits", and not just because there were no adventures. I can't imagine slogging grimly on to level 21 before going "fuck this, I'm outta here."

Then again, I guess 4E has partly accomplished this by expanding levels to cover less space, so playing at level 20 is more like playing AD&D at level 15 than at level 20? That would make it more comprehensible to get that far without ragequitting, at least.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 7:42 pm

talozin wrote:
hogarth wrote: He'd never played D&D before, so he didn't know he was supposed to burn out earlier.
Even so -- I mean, I was about twelve when I figured out that AD&D sucked if you tried to play past "Queen of the Demonweb Pits", and not just because there were no adventures. I can't imagine slogging grimly on to level 21 before going "fuck this, I'm outta here."

Then again, I guess 4E has partly accomplished this by expanding levels to cover less space, so playing at level 20 is more like playing AD&D at level 15 than at level 20? That would make it more comprehensible to get that far without ragequitting, at least.

It's not quite that easy a comparison. In AD&D characters got big plot affecting powers, not so much in 4e. The problem in 4e at higher levels is that each character becomes a convoluted mass of numbers and special abilities that players spend more time managing their character than actually playing the game.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 8:03 pm

talozin wrote: Even so -- I mean, I was about twelve when I figured out that AD&D sucked if you tried to play past "Queen of the Demonweb Pits", and not just because there were no adventures.

You knew it before you tried it, or after you tried it?

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 9:32 pm

hogarth wrote:
talozin wrote: Even so -- I mean, I was about twelve when I figured out that AD&D sucked if you tried to play past "Queen of the Demonweb Pits", and not just because there were no adventures.
You knew it before you tried it, or after you tried it?

I'm not saying he should have known before he tried it -- I'm saying that after he hammered a nail into one of his fingers (got to the level where D&D doesn't work), I would have thought that would be enough to tell him not to do the other nine (kept going for another 7 levels).

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 9:49 pm

talozin wrote:
hogarth wrote:
talozin wrote: Even so -- I mean, I was about twelve when I figured out that AD&D sucked if you tried to play past "Queen of the Demonweb Pits", and not just because there were no adventures.
You knew it before you tried it, or after you tried it?
I'm not saying he should have known before he tried it -- I'm saying that after he hammered a nail into one of his fingers (got to the level where D&D doesn't work), I would have thought that would be enough to tell him not to do the other nine (kept going for another 7 levels).

To play devil's advocate, maybe he was curious to see how epic tier would work.

And to be fair, I can think of plenty of things in my life where it was clear in retrospect that I should have quit while I was ahead.

You never answered my question: Did you figure out that high-level play sucked before or after you tried it?

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 10:18 pm

The amusing thing is that he went with Pathfinder after achieving D&D burnout. Maybe it's just going through the 3.x days as they happened, but I burned out so hard on the D20 system that for years I was reluctant to play any system that used it as the core system, and actively refused to play D&D games.

My personal taste would have been to veer off from D&D entirely. Try a sci fi game, a different taste of fantasy (warhammer grimdark!), whatever.

I'll be *very* interested to find out how fast he burns out on Pathfinder. Knowing what I do about their tastes, they probably won't burn out fast. Pathfinder has exactly the kind of glossy appeal that they dig.

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 10:22 pm

hogarth wrote: To play devil's advocate, maybe he was curious to see how epic tier would work.

This is quite true. And, as Juton suggests above, it's also possible that the lack of game-breaking nonsense makes it easier to go further.

And to be fair, I can think of plenty of things in my life where it was clear in retrospect that I should have quit while I was ahead.

It's almost like you're married.

You never answered my question: Did you figure out that high-level play sucked before or after you tried it?

I'm going to weasel here and say "yes." I figured it out after I tried playing an adventure or two post-Demonweb, but before I got past 15th level. That's why I wondered if the level scale had changed greatly in 4E -- I can totally see going to 15th or, if you're feeling bloody-minded, 16th, maybe even 17th level. 21st just seems masochistic unless things are very very different nowadays.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 10:29 pm

ModelCitizen wrote:
ishy wrote:Am I really reading it properly that they are switching to pathfinder because players gain too much power as they lvl in 4th edition?

From what I can tell Mike/Gabe's game has a ton of crazy homebrew loot and generally has fuck-all to do with 4e RAW. At one point the PCs were running around in mechs from Warmachine. "Jacks." Whatever.

Also Jerry/Tycho doesn't like 4e.

This. They're big on the really out there gimmicks, mostly from video games (big surprise). They did a 3d flying combat session, a zelda-mirror-puzzle session, and a mario galaxy style crazy sauce fight with a titan.

Which is totally cool. But fuck that's a lot of work.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 10:36 pm

talozin wrote: I'm going to weasel here and say "yes." I figured it out after I tried playing an adventure or two post-Demonweb, but before I got past 15th level. That's why I wondered if the level scale had changed greatly in 4E -- I can totally see going to 15th or, if you're feeling bloody-minded, 16th, maybe even 17th level. 21st just seems masochistic unless things are very very different nowadays.

I can kind of see where WotC intended epic tier to go in 4E. I mean, one of the better regarded adventure paths ends in epic level with you stabbing Tiamat in the face.

So I can see epic tier D&D being about shit like creating a new plane of existence, stabbing gods in the face, or destroying negative Jungian Archetypes to improve metahumanity by improving their collective subconscious (which incidentally is quite similar to the Dark Heresy game I'm running right now).

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri Dec 02, 2011 2:47 am

That's why I wondered if the level scale had changed greatly in 4E

Yep. Has. 4e/2 + 2 = 3e. 3e + 1 = AD&D.

Your 15th level AD&D characters are most like 24th level 4e characters. IMHO. Gabe burned out just before 14th in oldschool terms. Not bad for a first timer two years in.