Rant: Riding dog is second tier!1!1! (Paizo)

[virgil]

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/pa ... epBackward

This one?

[Psychic Robot]

Yep.

[Kaelik]

I love how using darts or a crossbow to snipe is... badwrongdumb.

I mean, you can't shoot someone in the eye... or neck? Ever?

And the "flank with fighter" thing.... almost never happens in some groups.

Some fighters are smarter than to stand toe-to-toe with a monster for a full round.

I know, and that's my point. The Pathfinder rules regularly include things that serve the sole purpose of making everyone play the exact same way, the way Jason ect think it should be played.

So they ban the use of throwing splash weapons for SA, then they make shooting for SA infinitely harder. And so instead of saying, "Activate Ring of blink, SA." You now have to say, "delay until after the fighter, then move to flank, SA." And since the only two things in the games are things that won't let you flank them (Wizards/Demons/Angels/ect) and things that are just waiting for you to be stupid enough to end your turn next to them (dragons/other demons/giants/druids, although druids might be moved to a different category now) you end up with no one able to use an effective intelligent strategy to get SA very often.

And so all Rogues are permanently relegated to the "Thief" pile, where they disarm traps and shit, but are useful in combat somewhere from rarely to never.

I think that you can still be a bow rogue, but you can never sneak attack anything that has true seeing or see invis ever.

[virgil]

Joshua is apparently trying to get the rest of the team to instate a rule where you have a limit on the number of buff spells on you at a time (one thread discusses variations, 3 being the common one).

Ah, and they have a definite opinion on how they want playtests to be run...
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/pa ... ytestingIs

[ckafrica]

Well its not exactly hard to get around their playtesting criteria, just lie. Pretend that you have a group of adventurers going through and predict what their experiences would be. It would provide as reasonable a result as some of the stupid builds the posters over there have done.

As for a 3 buff limit, it's not that bad an idea as long as you can't do sneaky shit like casting another buff on someone to wipe out one already on them.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Well, anyone with an ounce of common sense would just declare that the buffs overlap and that the best one applies. Oh, wait, we're talking about Paizo here....

[Draco_Argentum]

Yes, lets roll the dice. That won't introduce a random element that might mask an issue.

[Edit] If we needed it still this quote from Vic would prove 3.P is going to be horrible. "However, I believe that roleplaying games actually benefit from making suboptimal choices available to players" [/Edit]

[Username17]

Putting in a buff limit is pretty obvious. K and I have been talking about that for some time, even going so far as to suggest tying the buff limit to the item limit.

But yeah, the playtest guidelines they produced after they banned me for telling them that they needed some were appalling.

-Username17

[virgil]

I was surprised not many people brought up the change to familiars. I just noticed yesterday that the Share Spells ability got changed, removing the part where a wizard can cast a spell on himself and have it affect the familiar at the same time.

[Bigode]

Yes, lets roll the dice. That won't introduce a random element that might mask an issue.

Uh, whoever said that's partly right. While I'm certainly not advocating just actual play-test for the randomness, are you gonna tell me you can know everything without actually playing? (Though, of course, at least the vast majority of issues pointed by Denizens should be actually that obvious.)

[smug]

I was discussing bard changes and I got really smart-assy at the end--Joshie boy had described my post as "snarky," so I ever-so-sweetly requested that he not make values-statements about my posts, since it wasn't conducive to discussion. It was up for a day or two. Today, I find I'm banned and the post gone. Not sure if it's permanent or not.

Man, that blows. They didn't tell you for how long you were banned?

I notice that CoL is still there, so, as you surmise, I guess that offending Joshua Frost was what got you shitcanned.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Insistence on actual playtesting + the way Paizonians typically playtest = even bigger disaster than expected.

[smug]

Insistence on actual playtesting + the way Paizonians typically playtest = even bigger disaster than expected.

I don't think that it's all bad. Their main problem is that they're getting a lot more of the theoretical stuff (which I probably prefer) and less of the actual playtest stuff they want to see. But it's earlyish days yet.

[Draco_Argentum]

Uh, whoever said that's partly right. While I'm certainly not advocating just actual play-test for the randomness, are you gonna tell me you can know everything without actually playing? (Though, of course, at least the vast majority of issues pointed by Denizens should be actually that obvious.)

I'm saying that the random elements are best handled with theory. Only when you have a solid numerical system is it worth actually playing some mock encounters. Since their numbers still seem borked play tests are not needed to spot the most important problems.

[Username17]

Insistence on actual playtesting + the way Paizonians typically playtest = even bigger disaster than expected.

I don't think that it's all bad. Their main problem is that they're getting a lot more of the theoretical stuff (which I probably prefer) and less of the actual playtest stuff they want to see. But it's earlyish days yet.

It's not earlyish days yet. They were supposed to have a working model of how things worked out by GenCon. They sold a hardback book. The gate is open, the cows have left, and frankly they've had time to die of thirst.

-Username17

[smug]

It's not earlyish days yet. They were supposed to have a working model of how things worked out by GenCon. They sold a hardback book. The gate is open, the cows have left, and frankly they've had time to die of thirst.

-Username17

Not that it's important, but it was a softback (the campaign guide was hardback, but that's mostly campaign fluff and is a 3.5 product anyhow)! I don't know how many bought that softback (allegedly more than they expected, but given that the free .pdf is legit, I imagine relatively many are using that) but I like to have hardcopy myself (I could always just print the free .pdf, of course) even though with the revisions Bulmahn has suggested, it's already out of date...

I meant that it's earlyish days because the design focus moves forward every two weeks (at the moment it's Bards, Monks and Rogues) and they haven't gotten that far through the ruleset yet.

[Bigode]

Which shows how crap they are. I probably could've done better with, say, 100 hours of work, and that's with me not being especially good at it. Let's not talk about how many minutes Frank would take if he settled for that hackjob instead of something good.

[ckafrica]

The book they released was just the beta. The final is due to be out next August I believe. Not that I'm likely to want to acquire a legit copy even after a year unless some serious pulling head out of ass is done during the interim. There are still a large fucking group of people over there who think the fighter was fine in 3.5. Whatever Buhlman does with the feats will confirm it for me.

[Leress]

Not that it's important, but it was a softback (the campaign guide was hardback, but that's mostly campaign fluff and is a 3.5 product anyhow)! I don't know how many bought that softback (allegedly more than they expected, but given that the free .pdf is legit, I imagine relatively many are using that) but I like to have hardcopy myself (I could always just print the free .pdf, of course) even though with the revisions Bulmahn has suggested, it's already out of date...

I meant that it's earlyish days because the design focus moves forward every two weeks (at the moment it's Bards, Monks and Rogues) and they haven't gotten that far through the ruleset yet.

It was the beta...even WOTC didn't pull that kind of shit off

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/ ... f=dp_olp_2

http://paizo.com/store/downloads/pathfinderRPG
($24.99)

Here is another thing, they have made many conflicting/ contradictory statements regarding the game. Weakening the rogue for some reason even though JB said that "no one took more than two level of rogue". It seem like they pulling holes but not fixing the structure. They sometime add things that pretty much destroy any way of using pre-existing NPCs make unnecessary nerfs to abilities (mostly feats). Now there have been changes for each beta release which is good but since much of the playtesting wasn't organize now there random/ non uniform globs of information that may or may not be very helpful (it depends on how detailed the playtest was)

[smug]

It was the beta...even WOTC didn't pull that kind of shit off

I know that, I own it.

Here is another thing, they have made many conflicting/ contradictory statements regarding the game. Weakening the rogue for some reason even though JB said that "no one took more than two level of rogue". It seem like they pulling holes but not fixing the structure. They sometime add things that pretty much destroy any way of using pre-existing NPCs make unnecessary nerfs to abilities (mostly feats). Now there have been changes for each beta release which is good but since much of the playtesting wasn't organize now there random/ non uniform globs of information that may or may not be very helpful (it depends on how detailed the playtest was)

I am not sure that the rogue's been weakened. Sneak Attack now affects virtually everything plus they get the new minor talents. It's the fighter that gets the shaft; he gets more feats, but some of the key ones (Power Attack, Improved Trip) are nerfed.

There's only been one Beta release (there were two or three alphas, though).

[Tequila Sunrise]

FUCKING RETARDS.

Sooo, I'm curious. You obviously have opinions on the topic of Pathfinder; are you planning to ever use it, are you undecided or do you just post at paizo out of boredom?

TS

[Psychic Robot]

I'm currently in a Pathfinder game. I would definitely use it on the basis of "it's like 3.5, but with improvements."

I do realize that many of the folks here see these "improvements" as being questionable in nature (or merely outright failures), but they help facilitate the game I would enjoy running. For me, Pathfinder is 3.5 with fewer necessary houserules.

[smug]

That's where I'm at, currently. We'll see how things feat-related change -- that could be a big difference -- but I liked 3.5 already and I like Pathfinder more, so far.

[ckafrica]

The big problem is that they are not doing enough given the opportunity they have. If it is just 3.5 with houses rules, than I won't waste my coin on it. Frank and K have already dished out much better house rules than anything Paizo's come up with. Squirreloid came up with some decent middleground fixes and the have largely been ignore. As far as I can tell Jason and Co have no more business publishing a new RPG book than I do; and I certainly have to no illusions that anyone would pay for my shit.

Going over to Paizo just fills me with sadness.

Sadness and frothing rage that those douchbags are gonna back money off a bunch of half ass houserules.

[smug]

Well, given the aim to make it at least moderately easy to interchange 3.5 and PFRPG, I doubt that it was ever going to end up different enough for people that really wanted some of 3.5's fundamental flaws fixed. I don't know why you'd feel anything close to 'rage' about it, though; it's a 3.5-style game for people that are pretty happy with 3.5 anyhow, so it's no biggie if most people don't like it (and if that number is too large, it'll fail, I guess; that would bother me in the sense that PFRPG is probably the best chance for a 3.x commercial continuation, but it would be an essentially 'fair' result).

I'm not sure that Squirelloid hasn't had some effect, although it'll be hard to judge until we get a better idea what the end product will be.