The Gaming Den

amethal wrote:Forgot you aren't allowed to like stuff around here. Let me correct my fucking useless shilling job, where I suggested not buying core rule book.

amethal wrote:Pathfinder is perfect for children.

There are so many books that presents are sorted out for the next 30 years. There are lots and lots of ways of bringing “Ultimate Power” to the gaming table and making your friends feel inadequate (ok, they are all variations on the same theme) and if you spend long enough you can usually come up with some way of stymieing whatever cool thing your friends are trying to do – e.g. “how are you using a heavy shield, a warhammer, a divine focus, a metamagic rod and a crossbow at the same time; are you some kind of octopus?”

There are enough vague areas in the rules to fuel lots of arguments, and kids love arguing. “Who says I can’t use a lance in two hands when mounted?” “No, no, the Scent ability doesn’t allow you to interpret smells and find out lots of useful information about the crime scene; it just does what it says in the ninth paragraph on page 538.”

And it’s educational. Kids get really good at adding together 6+2+1+2+1+1 in their head, then seeing if they can find another +1 from somewhere when it turns out the attack just missed. And it teaches them about commercial game design as well. “That spell can’t do what you think it does, because that would break the game. They fixed all the dodgy D&D spells when they wrote Pathfinder, so we must be interpreting it wrong ...”

Also, if they frequent the Paizo boards it teaches them respect for authority. “<Insert Paizo employee here> said in a random message board post in 2009 that the actual rule isn’t the one written in the rule book you paid for, it actually works in a completely different way and you are stupid to think otherwise.”

erik wrote:amethal 1, Kaelik 0

maglag wrote:Meanwhile 3.5 devs decided a complete and free srd was an abomination that needed to be burned down. And most other similar games on the market demand a paywall to check their full rules as well.

Mechalich wrote:WotC's contribution to Open Gaming Content for 3.5 from any point subsequent to the initial release of the Core was minute. It's like two monsters, some psionics rules, and a few bits and pieces from Unearthed Arcana. Paizo, to their credit, has made a much, much larger proportion of their game OGC.

That doesn't make Pathfinder into a better game, but it is more fan-friendly business practice.

Ghremdal wrote:Its bad, but look at the competition. DnD 5e, Shadowrun 5e, Bear World!, Dark Heresy all are even bigger dumpster fires of cock barrels then pathfinder, at least mechanics wise. And those are just games I played.

amethal wrote:Forgot you aren't allowed to like stuff around here. Let me correct my fucking useless shilling job, where I suggested not buying core rule book.

Pathfinder is perfect for children.

There are so many books that presents are sorted out for the next 30 years. There are lots and lots of ways of bringing “Ultimate Power” to the gaming table and making your friends feel inadequate (ok, they are all variations on the same theme) and if you spend long enough you can usually come up with some way of stymieing whatever cool thing your friends are trying to do – e.g. “how are you using a heavy shield, a warhammer, a divine focus, a metamagic rod and a crossbow at the same time; are you some kind of octopus?”

There are enough vague areas in the rules to fuel lots of arguments, and kids love arguing. “Who says I can’t use a lance in two hands when mounted?” “No, no, the Scent ability doesn’t allow you to interpret smells and find out lots of useful information about the crime scene; it just does what it says in the ninth paragraph on page 538.”

And it’s educational. Kids get really good at adding together 6+2+1+2+1+1 in their head, then seeing if they can find another +1 from somewhere when it turns out the attack just missed. And it teaches them about commercial game design as well. “That spell can’t do what you think it does, because that would break the game. They fixed all the dodgy D&D spells when they wrote Pathfinder, so we must be interpreting it wrong ...”

Also, if they frequent the Paizo boards it teaches them respect for authority. “<Insert Paizo employee here> said in a random message board post in 2009 that the actual rule isn’t the one written in the rule book you paid for, it actually works in a completely different way and you are stupid to think otherwise.”

Kaelik wrote:Step 1)

Am I allowed to use spells from 3.5? Am I allowed to use classes from 3.5?

If no: Then you get that Pathfinder is just a bunch of fiddly bullshit houserules designed to erase previous content so that you buy their new splatbooks (that are no better than 3.5 ones) so you really are just paying money for something you already had.

If Yes: It didn't fix a single goddam balance problem and you are an idiot.

maglag wrote:PF designers allowed most of their material to be OGL and put in a well organized srd that includes lots of 3rd party material. With Path of War even martial do get nice things. And unlike Tome of Battle,Path of War supports archery from the start and is being expanded.

Slade wrote:When I DM, I banned 3.5 Core-Core was the problem allow the Completes only and Pathfinder is much better.

Kaelik wrote:Yes, you only suggested selling them Pathfinder material and then telling them to buy the new Pathfinder edition when it comes out, how could I possibly have thought you were a shill?

Kaelik wrote:Look little child, the reason I said you should shill better is not because your advice, if taken, wasn't perfect shilling, it was because the OP DOESN'T OWN A GAME SHOP SO YOUR ADVICE CAN'T BE TAKEN.

kaleil wrote:Kaelik: The OP doesn't own a game shop so your advice is useless..

kaleil wrote:Amethal: BUT PATHFINDER TEACHES KIDS TO RESPECT FALSE AUTHORITY SO IT IS GOOD FOR THEM!

MGuy wrote:Amethal you've been here since March 2012. In that time have you not gotten at all acquainted with the personalities present on this board or are you just pretending right now?

Chamomile wrote:If someone you want to do business with likes Pathfinder, I would just avoid stating an opinion at all and try to move on to other subjects as fast as possible. They will probably assume you agree with them without you having to actually say anything you can be held to, which is the best possible result for "person I want to give me money believes something stupid and expects me to agree."

Pixels wrote:Here's the short version: it didn't fix any of the major problems with 3.5e and in some cases made them worse.

Pathfinder isn't a bad system. It tightened up the skill list, removed the stupidity around class skills vs cross-class skills, and added character backstory incentives (traits, at least in theory). But those are all minor and easily backported into 3.5e. It didn't address:

• Too many options, most of which are traps. It's fine to have choices, but it's not so fine to have most of the choices shoot you in the foot.
• Caster domination. We've talked this one to death here so I'm won't go into it more.
• Steep martial power drop-off. Even with subsystems like Ki or Grit, they never get the game changers that spellcasters do. They can limp all the way to level 10-ish, but then things start to seriously fall apart without assistance from the party spellcasters or DM.
• Feat taxes. These got worse in Pathfinder. Also, a lot of the feat chains are a big fuck-your-primary-class-feature to fighters.
• Bizarre FAQ and errata. Paizo prefers to double down on mistakes rather than admit they've done wrong, and this leads to some truly strange rulings. It's like Sage Advice, but binding for sanctioned play!

• Unplayable stuff. And I mean: literally unplayable. Like the soundstriker, a bard archetype asking for 30 roll per round (with some modifier for each roll, so 30 addition per round, etc). Or the synthesist, a summoner archetype so poorly written that the text of its faqs is longer than the text of the archetype.
• Constant erratas. As a consequence of the poor editing, the game is handled like a fucking video game with constant updates. It goes to the point of uselessness: it is not humanly possible to read and memorize all errata, you won't search for erratas and faqs each time you use a rule, so in the end you simply ignore erratas. I mean, open the errata of any book, there are more than one errata per page; and most of those errata are shit like "Page 209—In the Blood Transcription spell, in the Components entry, add “, S”", because apparently it was really an issue that some shitty spell you cast during downtime (the day after killing a boss) didn't get a somatic component. So nobody read the document and nobody knows if there is any important errata.

Rawbeard wrote:I think it is pretty important that wizards don't transcribe spells from the blood of their enemies while grappled, or otherwise immobilized. that shit can break game. "the oger has you grabbed in his fist, what do you do" - "I cast Blood Transcription!" happens all the time.

Pretty sure that literally nothing about about the rules for Somatic Components stops you from casting the spell in a grapple.

Neurosis wrote:

Pretty sure that literally nothing about about the rules for Somatic Components stops you from casting the spell in a grapple.

wait, in pathfail, or in 3.5?

because if in 3.5, needing to win a grapple check stops you. because you're a wizard, and your grapple bonus is "lol, u srs cuz?"