Pathfinder Is Bad - For Kids

[Neurosis]

As the co-owner of ETG, I got to conventions all the goddamn time.

Invariably, I spend some dead time talking to some Paizil who wants to tell me how great Pathfinder is and how it "fixed" 3.5.

I always try to Parrot Frank's arguments from six years ago in the "Pathfinder is still bad" thread and I always fail to quite get the point across right.

Can someone summarize that 309 page thread of Pathfinder sucking into like, a 500 word pamphlet that I can print out and hand to the next Paizil that tells me how Pathfinder is the greatest and has no MAJOR problems and is TOTALLY compatible with 3.X and bla bla bla?

tl;dr help me explain in 500 words or less why Pathfinder is bad as you would to a small, Pathfinder loving child.

[Kaelik]

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.

[Ghremdal]

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.

Its hard to explain to a baby that their toy sucks if you cant show some game that is a shining example of good design.

[virgil]

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.

The problem with the response to "if no" is that they are very likely to disagree with your claim that their Pathfinder-only content is just fiddly houserules isn't an improvement compared to 3.5

[Kaelik]

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.

The problem with the response to "if no" is that they are very likely to disagree with your claim that their Pathfinder-only content is just fiddly houserules isn't an improvement compared to 3.5

Then they are a goddam idiot and you go through every claimed good houserule in order showing how every single one is terrible (or the implementation of the idea they stole from a better implementation that everyone already had).

[Neurosis]

See, that's exactly the kind of lengthy exchange I'm trying to avoid in person, Kaelik. I guess I could just walk away, but that ain't good for bidness--I might be trying to sell a game to this Paizil.

What if I went with something like Frank's first (six year old!) post from "Why Pathfinder Is Still Bad" and removed some of the personal attacks and overheated rhetoric and stuff that's six years out of date. Would that be a good starting point?

What Pathfinder is is a set of increasingly convoluted house rules for 3.5 D&D. Originally it was promised as a backwards compatible set of "fixes" to problems in 3.5 D&D that were going to be justified and propelled by the largest D&D playtest in human history. This turned out to be a shallow marketing stunt and anyone interested in actual paytesting was driven from their community like snakes from Ireland. Even the idea of backwards compatibility is out the window as the changes accrue you are no longer able to use 3.5 D&D adventures, monsters, characters, classes, feats, items, skills, or spells without adjustment - and there aren't even any really coherent conversion documents for any of those things.

And while [A DESIGNER I KNOW] did make a good faith effort to help them out when they said they were doing a big open playtest, when it became clear that they didn't want any actual feedback and were only interested in running market focus grouping and grassroots publicity, [THEY] lost interest and stopped paying attention to what they were doing.

[Circa 2010, Pathfinder's] spell creation system [was] designed by Sean K. Reynolds, a man notable for being unable to write his way out of a paper bag. After completely fucking up the alternate magic system in Monte Cook's World of Darkness d20 variant and writing the most incomprehensible subsystems in Magic of [Faerun], he has now been tasked with creating a "make your own spells on the fly" system for D&D by the Paizo crew. Personally, I am unwilling to pay the price they are currently asking for the preview material - which is nothing.

Too vague? Good start? Either way, I need more.

[Mask_De_H]

You're never going to get the point across; logic and Paizils mix like oil and water.

Just say that the game is essentially selling you some dude's 3.X houserules, with all the Caster Supremacy bullshit that entails.

[Prak]

You could try talking about how the Flask Rogue was nerfed into non-operation and then asking why that was the problem, and not full casting ubermensch.

[Kaelik]

You could try talking about how the Flask Rogue was nerfed into non-operation and then asking why that was the problem, and not full casting ubermensch.

For bonus points, show how they added it right back in even more powerful with the vivisectionist alchemist and the ability to level dip to see through clouds and carry around a eversmoking bottle instead of making a ring of blinking.

[virgil]

You could try talking about how the Flask Rogue was nerfed into non-operation and then asking why that was the problem, and not full casting ubermensch.

This is anecdotal, but I can tell you how that's worked in my experience: they will state that nerfing the flask rogue was a good thing that they would've done themselves had it ever come up in their experience. They will then cite the various spells nerfed as evidence of caster supremacy being solved.

[Chamomile]

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]

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!

[Prak]

The big things that Paizo has going for it over 3.X (or, as I call it, the least bad D&D game) is that it's in print, it has more groups, and the producers care. Caring about your game is worth a lot of good will, even if there are big flaws in the game. The fact that archetypes are basically a better(ish) form of multiclassing is nice too.

[virgil]

"It's one of the better systems in print." - Technically true.

[Eikre]

Positions:

-Pathfinder is okay because third edition is okay. They're still making content for it which means that people stay interested, resulting in a more proliferate player-base, and that is fine.

-Pathfinder is a bundle of house rules that aren't particularly better than third edition, and this being the case, you do not see it as an incremental improvement. When it's all added up, there's enough little differences that you obviously do see how someone might incidentally like the amalgamation of PF rules more than the amalgamation of analogous 3.5 rules, but objectively speaking, they are equivalent and create the very same game.

-You're very tired of having disagreements with Pathfinder players who think that Monks don't suck Wizard cock, because you've been having that argument since 2004, when it was 3.5 players making the same denial. It is a position of Pathfinder orthodoxy that this was a problem but that it has been fixed, but you observe that the arguments for this are the very same ones that were used before the "fix" ever happened to begin with. But everyone can agree that if fixing the problem means playing 4E, you'll guzzle that wiz jiz until the day you fucking die.

Conclude every position with an agreement and it's almost like it's not an argument.

[Mechalich]

The problem with arguing against Pathfinder is that it's hard to find a game occupying the same play space: a mechanically robust fantasy dungeon-crawler that is both obviously superior and actually professionally in print. Pathfinder may be a bunch of assembled house rules, but it comes out in hardcover with a professional logo and a bunch of high quality art, which sways a lot of opinions.

Pathfinder is absolutely and obviously superior to both 4e and 5e, so arguing against Pathfinder means arguing for 3.5e, which hasn't been supported for a decade and ultimately has man of the same flaws as PF, or picking some heartbreaker that the other person probably hasn't heard of. That's a tough starting point for an argument.

Pathfinder is arguably the 'best,' for certain values of best, game in its market niche at the moment. So if you're arguing against Pathfinder, I'd suggest highlighting certain things Pathfinder simply does not let you do versus another system that actually lets you do them.

[amethal]

If you get a kid in the shop asking about Pathfinder, sell him the Beginner Box and send him away to have fun. If he comes back and asks about the Core Rulebook, explain that it is very hard to follow, partly because they left out a few important rules when they copied it over from D&D, and that his best bet would be to wait for Paizo to bring out the second edition.

Then suggest playing <another game> in the meantime. (Though I’m not sure what that other game could be.)

[Kaelik]

If you get a kid in the shop asking about Pathfinder, sell him the Beginner Box and send him away to have fun. If he comes back and asks about the Core Rulebook, explain that it is very hard to follow, partly because they left out a few important rules when they copied it over from D&D, and that his best bet would be to wait for Paizo to bring out the second edition.

Then suggest playing <another game> in the meantime. (Though I’m not sure what that other game could be.)

Hey Paizo shill, it turns out that you completely misunderstood the situation, and that the person in question is not a game store proprietor. I know that's hard to guess, you would have had to read his signature, and man what are words...

If you are going to try to deceptively shill, do a better job.

[amethal]

[quote="Kaelik]Hey Paizo shill, it turns out that you completely misunderstood the situation, and that the person in question is not a game store proprietor. I know that's hard to guess, you would have had to read his signature, and man what are words...

If you are going to try to deceptively shill, do a better job.[/quote]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.”

[erik]

amethal 1, Kaelik 0

[Leress]

Amethal, the topic of this thread is not about telling actual children that Pathfinder is bad it is about:

Can someone summarize that 309 page thread of Pathfinder sucking into like, a 500 word pamphlet that I can print out and hand to the next Paizil that tells me how Pathfinder is the greatest and has no MAJOR problems and is TOTALLY compatible with 3.X and bla bla bla?

tl;dr help me explain in 500 words or less why Pathfinder is bad as you would to a small, Pathfinder loving child.

kids in this instance means to make it very simple to understand.

[A half eaten oreo]

The lack of a popular(or at least easily available at a LGS) and superior fantasy/dungeon crawling option is the main problem. Saying "It sucks. You should play with this guy's houserules from a forum" isn't going to win many people over. It's not like they want to pick up Warhammer or Yugioh and you can instead point them to Warmachine or Magic.

[rasmuswagner]

"A bunch of assembled house rules" is not an honest argument from an informed position at this point. There's a core rulebook which, sure, you can call it a bunch of house rules. But what is the 3.5 PHB, then? A bunch of houserules for 3.0?

But the meat of the game is a cycle of supplements, all of which is original content. That's a new edition, not a fucking set of house rules.

PF is shitty because the lead designers don't understand the game, don't care about how things work, are a bunch of complete cocks about their own mistakes, and would rather be playing Ctulhu by Gaslight than D&D.

[erik]

I think house rules was a reference to recommending Tome as superior to PF.

[Rawbeard]

"Pathfinder is a bunch of houserules to a game we played before you were born!" is probably not the greatest thing to sell to kids. Oh god, 3rd edition is oooooold.