Pathfinder Is Still Bad

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 11:02 pm

That got errataed. In the copy of the book I read, it triggered on falling below zero hitpoints instead of falling to zero hitpoints. It left me less than confident it had been properly playtested.

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 11:15 pm

Remember it's paizombies we're talking about. For a "PF 2.0", Paizo doesn't need to change jack, they just need to say they did. In fact, all they need to do is say they -fixed everything- (yet again) and the paizombies will eat it up with a spoon and crucify the heretics who dare say othewise.

If anything, they just need to repeat their usual stunt: Make changes small enough to be the same thing but big enough to justify selling you the whole of 3.X yet again, then dress it up in a shiny coat of pretty art and sorceress boobs.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 12:24 am

Dogbert wrote:Remember it's paizombies we're talking about. For a "PF 2.0", Paizo doesn't need to change jack, they just need to say they did. In fact, all they need to do is say they -fixed everything- (yet again) and the paizombies will eat it up with a spoon and crucify the heretics who dare say othewise.

If anything, they just need to repeat their usual stunt: Make changes small enough to be the same thing but big enough to justify selling you the whole of 3.X yet again, then dress it up in a shiny coat of pretty art and sorceress boobs.

Too true. I've seen a number of threads about what they should do to improve the system and I see more comments about how it is 'perfect' or suggestions about making minor, inconsequential, changes to the game.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 4:51 am

It'll be like the 1st edition to 2nd edition AD&D change. Can't really be otherwise, the fans don't hate it enough yet to let them really fix it, and they wouldn't know how anyway.

Which is to say, they'll load it up with advice about how it's not broken because you can fix it, and also change which spells are the most broken. Drag a few fan favourites into core, rewrite stuff that got a lot of questions so it gets different questions, and then sell everyone all the same stuff all over again.

As long as they wait to about 2017 to print, a lot of people will switch, and those that don't can still use the APs and setting books because the rules won't have really changed. By '25 they'll be able to put out some proper fixes.

Night Goat · Post by **Night Goat** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 6:28 am

If you really want to be amazed, take a look at the Occult Adventures playtest. It features a bunch of new classes, all of which are so awful they have to be seen to be believed.

Archmage Joda · Post by **Archmage Joda** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 6:40 am

Really? I remember looking at the Kineticist (because I've always wanted to play a telekinesis master), and being wholly unimpressed, but why do the others suck? (Disclaimer: I didn't really look at the others 'cuz I didn't give a shit then)

Night Goat · Post by **Night Goat** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 7:20 am

Kineticist: like a blaster wizard, but even more useless.

Medium: crippled spellcasting like a paladin or ranger, plus you can't fight for shit. You can channel spirits, of which there will be 54 in the final version (one for each combination of alignment and ability score). The playtest has 18, and even that is a lot more than I can be fucked to read through. Skimming through them, the abilities they give look pretty trivial. Channeling spirits is the main thing this class does, and you could probably forget to do it and not notice a difference.

Mesmerist: 2/3 casting, like a bard. Also you can't fight for shit. The spells you do get are mostly mind-affecting, and will therefore be useless against half the enemies you face. You also get "mesmerist tricks" and "bold stares", which are maybe even more useless than the medium's spirits.

Occultist: 2/3 casting. Uses "implements" to cast spells; you start with 2, and get up to 7 at 18th level. Each implement lets you cast a very limited set of spells from one school. Yes, this really is as bad as it sounds. I'd rather play a fighter.

Psychic: wow, an almost full-casting class (delayed 1 level, like a sorcerer). You have a "phrenic pool" that you can use to enhance your spells, sort of like an arcanist's arcane pool. Unlike an arcanist, the spells you can choose are still mostly useless against half the enemies you'll face. Also your arcane pool is based on your wisdom or charisma even though you're an int-caster, because lolfuckyou.

Spiritualist: yet another 2/3 caster that can't fight for shit. You can summon phantoms that are basically a summoner's eidolons. Also your spell list is worse than a summoner's.

I really like the flavor of some of these classes. That whole 19th-century spiritism vibe is cool, and something that you don't really see a lot of in RPGs. It's a shame that these classes are all so much worse than the existing casters, and even some noncasters, that no one will ever play them.

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 8:51 am

MGuy wrote:
radthemad4 wrote:
Pathfinder Unchained wrote:New versions of the barbarian, monk, rogue, and summoner classes, all revised to make them more balanced and easier to play.
Aw man... I liked the summoner. For the others, they hopefully intend to make them more 'balanced' by upgrading them at least.

Scaling magic items sounds cool though.
Lots of people hate the summoner because its pet summon makes fighters and the like feel small in the pants.

Ignoring druids, clerics, grapplemancers, etc. don't animal companions (heck, cavaliers start with one and paladins get one at 5th level) in general already do that?

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 9:30 am

radthemad4 wrote:
MGuy wrote:
radthemad4 wrote:Aw man... I liked the summoner. For the others, they hopefully intend to make them more 'balanced' by upgrading them at least.

Scaling magic items sounds cool though.
Lots of people hate the summoner because its pet summon makes fighters and the like feel small in the pants.
Ignoring druids, clerics, grapplemancers, etc. don't animal companions (heck, cavaliers start with one and paladins get one at 5th level) in general already do that?

Fans of PF (and really a lot of other things) are weird. I don't think they can comprehend how little they know about the rules are or how they work. I mean I got into an extended argument with PF fans over the existence of a 'request' feature of Diplomacy which some long time fans of PF seemed to not even know existed before I mentioned it.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 11:22 am

radthemad4 wrote:
Pathfinder Unchained wrote:New versions of the barbarian, monk, rogue, and summoner classes, all revised to make them more balanced and easier to play.
Aw man... I liked the summoner. For the others, they hopefully intend to make them more 'balanced' by upgrading them at least.

Well the summoner write up is annoying. Everything works in slightly different ways then the rest of the ruleset. For example Eidolon Pounce does not allow you to use rake attacks (while every other description of pounce does allow that).
And having almost every evolution work slightly different (but with the same name) than the universal abilities, is just fucking annoying.

infected slut princess wrote:
ishy wrote:.... and they know what happened to their own rewrite of the stealth minigame.
Pardon me, but what did Pathfucker do with the stealth minigame? I know they combined skills but did they actually change it to try and, I dunno, make it work at all? I'm out of the loop of Pathfucker stealth.

Stephen Radney-MacFarland wrote:For a number of weeks we have been talking about the issues concerning the Stealth skill. Over the course of those conversations we have come up with many ideas to improve this skill and make its use both clearer and more playable.

So, here is our crazy idea: We are thinking about just rewriting the skill.
This is our first stab at a rewrite, but before we make any definitive change, we want to unleash our crazy ideas to you—the Pathfinder players—to poke holes in, give us input on, and playtest.

Then in the comment section (after 1400 posts) in part 2 of the playtest:

[url=http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lcml&page=9?Stealth-Playtest-Round-TwoStealth#407 wrote:James Jacobs[/url]]This is the extent of it for now. We have no plans at this point to put it into the PRD or do much else with it at this point—feel free to use the variant rules of this playtest in your games as you wish... but it's not going to be something we officially adopt into the game, since that type of change goes from errata to re-design.

And the time for re-design is not now.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 1:50 pm

Radney-MacFarland's stealth rules were of course a catastrophe. What the stealth rules need is to generate appropriate results and also use the smallest number of rolls possible to get those results. Clearly if you're triggering a new opposed roll (which is to say: two separate rolls) every time someone takes a free fucking action, you've failed criteria 2. And rerolling the check that many times tilts things so thoroughly in the favor of the sentry over the sneaker that you've almost certainly failed criteria 1 as well.

It's simply inconceivable that such a system could have been wargamed even in someone's head before it saw print. It's obviously failing to meet even the minimum requirements to be a stealth system at all.

And that's pretty much where we are with Pathfailure. It's not that Paizo writers are fucking up in subtle, hard to predict ways, it's that their genuine attempts to write ground-up rules fail to even look like serious offerings. These things don't even deserve to be mathhammered, because they don't even superficially appear to be plausibly acceptable.

-Username17

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 5:06 pm

What would be an solid alternative, then?

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 6:50 pm

Fucks wrote:What would be an solid alternative, then?

New stealth rule: the "stealth" tag.

A character gains the "stealth" tag in various ways, such as using the "sneak" skill.

In order to spot a "stealth" character or monster, you must make a Will save with DC = 10 + Level/2 + (Appropriate ability modifier, typically dexterity). This happens passively once per round, with modifiers if you're not in a featureless empty parking lot.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 6:54 pm

So being in Stealth requires one roll per observer per sneaking character per round? If three PCs are trying to sneak past three guards, it's nine rolls per round until they get where they need to go?

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 6:57 pm

Nine opposed rolls, and three more for each free action.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 6:59 pm

John Magnum wrote:So being in Stealth requires one roll per observer per sneaking character per round? If three PCs are trying to sneak past three guards, it's nine rolls per round until they get where they need to go?

At least it's only per-round.

Also, addons:

"Group-sneak": a group of people can sneak as one "unit", using the lowest stealth score in the group.
"Group vigilance": a group of people can observe as one, using the highest will save in the group, with a logarithmic teamwork bonus.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 7:52 pm

You should have a stealth level, which allows you to get away with a certain amount of shenanigans based on how much higher it is than the perception level of the people around you. Three sneaking PCs and three guards should be, at maximum, 6 rolls for the whole encounter.

So if you have a high stealth check, you can do a lot of things: pass very close to a sentry, hang out for a long time, shoot off a sniper arrow, whatever. And if you don't, then trying any of that bullshit will get you spotted right away. But no matter how high your stealth check is, you'll still eventually get spotted because one of the things that makes your stealth end is time.

That covers peoples' need to be able to snipe with crossbows and also covers peoples' needs to have stealth be "not invisibility." You'd need to work on the input numbers, but I submit that you need to do that anyway.

-Username17

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 8:07 pm

Just to spitball, I would say the stealth system in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (the CRPG) is among the most fun and least abusable I've ever seen and I would love to have a TTRPG stealth system which works that way. But I have no idea how to implement that in a feasible way in tabletop. It might not be possible at all -particularly since it would probably require facing rules, which there's otherwise no good reason to have.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 9:51 pm

Stealth should be a shallow hp pool that people make attacks against when they try to detect you. The pool should regenerate when it's not being damaged so getting out of sight for a round or two can be a big boon. As characters level up their hp pool would get larger, their regeneration speed higher and their Stealth DC (functioning like AC against perception attacks) should also get higher.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 11:03 pm

Is it just me, or do a lot more monsters in Pathfinder possess spell resistance than they did in 3.5E? My memory of spell resistance in 3.5E D&D was that it was an occasional nuisance that caught you off guard, but not something you specifically had to anticipate.

Ghremdal · Post by **Ghremdal** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 2:17 am

I think you are seeing a lack of spells like Assay Resistance that make spell resistance useless in the first place.

Shiritai · Post by **Shiritai** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 2:19 am

It does seem like constructs, outsiders and dragons pop up more frequently, and at higher CRs... yeah, out of all CR 11 challenges for instance, 28/79 of them have SR or magic immunity.

Sakuya Izayoi · Post by **Sakuya Izayoi** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 2:46 am

In my heartbreaker, stealthers would tap into the Quiet in the same way that the Hulk taps into the Anger force or Flash into the Speed Force or Joestar into the Hamon, achieving at will a level of undetectability a caster would have to burn several spell slots to achieve once per day.

Slade · Post by **Slade** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 2:57 am

Windjammer wrote:
I will add I'm currently, for the first time in 5 years, playing pathfinder, and the DM made the reasonable call to only allow the Core Rulebook and Advanced Player's Guide, since everything else doesn't just clog up the system but is utterly (and not just occasionally) un-play-tested. I find the above observations interesting in terms of the decline they document and proclaim. I wouldn't be surprised if the Pathfinder devs are currently in 'full on experimental' mode to see what they can and can't do for Edition 2, in the same sense that WotC threw random stuff at the wall like Tome of Magic to test the waters, but not the math (if you excuse the pun).

The binder is solid tier 3, maybe an accidental success, but fine,

The shadowcasters issue is few castings with few known is weak. They should have figured this out. Paladins suck in casting, but they make up for it with BAB (shadowcasters can't do that)

Truenamer issue is multi-fold: Skill casting (can be both easy or hard). Easy is optimize or hard if casual player.
Plus, he is clearly a bard caster. They should have made the Wizard one (get a bonus to truecasting skill, more knowns, etc).

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 3:49 am

FrankTrollman wrote:You should have a stealth level, which allows you to get away with a certain amount of shenanigans based on how much higher it is than the perception level of the people around you. Three sneaking PCs and three guards should be, at maximum, 6 rolls for the whole encounter.

Also, maybe the Prince is not as stealthy as the Assassin - in fact, pretty obviously he isn't or the Assassin is going to be justifiably upset.

But the Prince needs to be stealthy enough to sneak out of the castle at night.

In order to satisfy the needs of the genre, breaking and entering needs to be unrealistic easy - or, player characters in general need to be unrealistically good at it.

This is why I favor mechanics in which sneaking around is some kind of savings throw (or equivalent) and your level bonus (or equivalent, like Edge or whatever) applies as a bonus to it. It is, like not being killed by a stray arrow at Agincourt - one of those things that is successful because you are a hero.

Since hp play that role in D&D, Dean's suggestion is logical for this - presumably, sniping some fool on your way in or out would cause you to suffer stealth damage? - although I think in practice it would be kinda clumsy.