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quozaxx

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The only game I've got at the moment is Pathfinder.  I've played quite a lot in the last few years. But please note I haven't played the new Pathfinder. 2.0. I gather they've gone for something like a DND 5e simplification of the rules. At least that's what the marketing is implying.

 

As for Pathfinder 1.0

It's fine. It's a D20 system, so if you played DND 3.0 or 3.5 then you already know how it works.

 

They simplified some of the more egregious rules cock ups from DND 3; most notably Grappling. They also re-wrote some (but not all!) of the more abusive "auto-win" spells like Black Tentacles.

 

Game play still requires a lot of looking up specific rules, like the specifics of Stunned as opposed to Dazed, Shaken as opposed to Frightened as opposed to Panicked. A good GM screen is your friend.

 

There's still tonnes of combat modifiers that need to be tracked. Seriously, I have a spreadsheet. I believe that simplifying this is one of the main changes in Pathfinder 2.0.

 

Wealth by Level is baked into the game design assumptions. As are magic item walmarts. Published adventure design assumes the heroes have a certain amount of magical goodies. In fact, IIRC, there are 6 go-to types of item. Stat booster (for your main stat), saving throw booster, magic weapon, magic armour, and... 2 other things I can't recall. Again, version 2.0 has supposedly gotten rid of this.

 

And despite (or perhaps because of) being heavily over written it still suffers form the fundamental problem DnD has had in all its iterations: the thing is made up of a bunch of sub-systems* that have been kludged together without much concern for any sort of underlying, unifying game mechanic. Thus it leaves a great deal of work to the GM to interpret meanings and how different things interact. There's not so many "immovable object/irresistible force" situations as there were, but they can still happen. If you're interested in mounted combat, another sub-system, be prepared to make up your own system, the existing one is as vague AF.

 

Different classes still suffer from being unbalanced in terms of effectiveness. This can be more or less of an issue depending on the game you're playing in. The standard combat heavy, dungeon crawl style (dungeon optional) leaves people who chose to play a Rogue wondering what the hell they were thinking. Clerics, Druids, and Wizards still rule. The power attacking, 2 handed weapon Barbarian is still the best choice for melee combat. Combat itself still tends toward lining up, dishing out damage, and seeing who dies first.

 

High level play is a nightmare. I think this is due to the greater access to the many different, kludged sub-systems (i.e.: greater range of powers) that high level characters get by definition. As for drawing up high level characters, something you have to do a lot of if you need opponents for those high level PCs, oi vay. It is hard work. Yeah, practice makes it easier but it's still hard work double checking everything works the way you think it should.

 

All that being said, there's some good adventure paths (that is long, linked story arcs) available. Like all published adventures some work is required to make it fit your group but by and large the two I've played in/GMed (Age of Worms and Reign of Winter, respectively) have been pretty good. There is still a tendency towards what I call "One Big Monster" syndrome. That is the climactic fights are the group vs. one BBG and rely on purely game mechanical advantage to make the BBG more challenging. I feel this discourages tactics and variety in a battle scene and would like to see adventure writers change it up a bit. But most people seem unbothered by this.

 

But at the end of the day the group you play with is more important than the set of rules. My group for Reign of Winter are great. We have loads of fun and get on really well. The game system's kludginess has not lead to any arguments although quite a few discussions as we try to work out how to interpret it.

 

* So many spells and feats and special abilities are just sub-systems that have been poorly thought out. I think this is because the bad ones give characters exceptions to the central rules rather than being applications of the central rules.

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If you can find a game that starts out at level 1 and limits itself to the Core Rule Book (and maybe the Advanced Players Guide) it's not too difficult. A lot of the complication comes with leveling up and the general tendency to give characters access to more and more abilities. By starting at level 1 you'd have time to grow into it as it gets more complicated. Barbarian and Fighter are good, easy to play classes. 

 

I don't mean to scare you off of the system but if you want to get an idea of how complex things can get at higher level play the following is a link to the spreadsheet for tracking combat modifiers that I mentioned above.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZAJxzVzfM-0aOAzf-2rtOjm415P6_itRiiLyZk8AdZk/edit?usp=sharing

 

Not sure if you have to have a google drive account of your own or not to view it.

 

It's a fairly comprehensive listing of the common combat modifiers you could expect a PC to have access to by about 7th level, assuming the party has the usual mix of 1 cleric, 1 wizard, 1 fighter, 1 (unhappy) rogue. A party wouldn't have access to ALL of the mods listed at one time. But a bunch of them certainly. Replace the rogue with a bard and you've got an even wider range of commonly available mods. The drop down menus in green list a bunch of common combat "feats*" that also effect combat. Basically the modifiers are like Combat Skill Levels. But unlike skill levels they are typed into specific groupings and you don't just add them all up. You only count the highest bonus of a given type. So if a character has a +1 morale to attack bonus (say from a spell) and then gets a +2 morale bonus (say from a bard's Inspire ability) the character only gets a +2 bonus (the higher value) NOT a +3 bonus (the sum of both values.) Once you have worked out the highest value of all applicable modifiers you add them to get a total combat modifier that effects your dice roll. Note that "highest value" only applies to positive values. Negative values work in a similar fashion: find lowest negative value and add that. If you have a negative and a positive value of the same type you add them together before adding the result to the main sum. Obviously, compared to Combat Skill Levels in HERO, this is incredibly finicky and complex. Hence the spreadsheet.

 

Once again, this Pathfinder v1.0. Supposedly v2.0 is much less complex.

 

*A feat is a special power. A sub-system if you will. Players get more of them as they go up levels.  The ones I've listed in the spreadsheet are very common ones that have an effect on combat modifiers. There are others. Many others.

 

Cheers.

 

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Pathfinder is as simple as old AD&D at the start but quickly becomes one of the more complex systems around as your character advances. There are many ways to build a character you want but the trick is selecting the correct class/archetype and knowing what feats to choose from an list of options that grows larger with every choice.  There is an enormous amount of material but luckily due to the Open Gaming License , most of the game system is available at d20pfsrd.com or Archivesofnethys.com for free. Pathfinder 2.0 will begin an open playtest later this year with the rules document posted as a free PDF at Paizo.com.

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Pathfinder is very complex and rules heavy game. It lack the flexibility of Hero games and its variety. Each spell is a new set of rules, skills take half an hour too look up and write up unless you know it from before. All classes got not only different skill pools but also different skills they favor so you can buy so and so of that skill and then so and so of that other skill. Expect players to start exploiting the rules at its very big difference between a tweaked out character and a story based character. The game is also level based so a twenty level halfling barbarian can in game terms take more beating that an elephant. The game gives a lot of opportunists for multi classing and thereby making varied characters but you need to be up in level to really start mixing and matching things efficiently and the combinations are often useless compared to just playing single class characters. Unless a player finds out a way to break the game with some overpowered combo but that creates its own problems. All in all its ok as a player if your GM dont know any better but as a GM its a lot of hard dull work for very little pay compared to other games.

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The short and sweet of it is that Pathfinder is a D20 game. 

 

As crunchy as HERO can be, most of your abilities can be summed up in a character sheet (barring some rules) and it's technically got easier math, but you're going to be doing a lot more of it, because there's little bonuses everywhere. In Pathfinder, you get no such luck, every ability has a paragraph or blurb. It's also less balanced as a result of these things and subtle changes in words can differentiate between something astoundingly powerful and something astoundingly weak. There's also the issue of rules interpretation. For example, there's an ability the paladin gets that describes 'a weapon' now, is this one specific weapon, or one weapon on their person? It's not clear and it's not covered in FAQ or any form of errata.

 

If you limit yourself to just the main rulebook, you'll find that the Monk is basically useless, unless you really want to be a kung fu master. Though, in truth, a dedicated 'boxer' fighter is nearly as capable. Plus, there's a lot of fun to be had in the other books, just don't expect it to be balanced. The Wizard in particular has some stuff that can wreck about anyone at level 1.

Edited by SpaceknightFenix
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A lot depends on the group and playstyle.  Pathfinder can be played by a bunch of min-maxing optimizers, or some story-based role players or pretty much anything in between.  Much like any other game.

 

For every person who complains about Pathfinder being too complex, there will be at least one who finds having to build their own spells, class abilities, feats, etc. out of Hero's game mechanics "too complex".

 

The class system, and the game's writing up of each element, restricts choice, without doubt.  But I have seen lots of threads on these Boards where Hero GMs also restrict their players' choices.

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I actually enjoy class/level style games and have had fun with the new 5th Edition D&D which IMO has gone back to being a role-playing game from being an exercise in rule-bloat. 

 

I tried Pathfinder when it came out and it really wasn't bad in the beginning.  But Pathfinder believes in maximum splat books to the point where, for me it's unplayable.  The local Pathfinder GM at my FLGS uses a large wheeled suitcase to cart the books.  Not all the books, but just the ones his players are using. 

Hugh Neilson is correct in that "complexity" is a relative term.  But for me Pathfinder if far too "complex" to play because I simply do not have the time to memorize literally hundreds of classes and thousands of character options

, not to mention pounds of rules. 

Hero is indeed complicated.  In execution, not in rules.  The rules are pretty straight forward and contained in one rulebook. 

D&D 5th is actually pretty good and has successfully kept the rule bloat down by putting out campaign books with setting specific optional rules.  It also does a great job of not adding rules for every single thought, instead saying that it is the DM's decision.

I think that is the defining difference between D&D 5th and Pathfinder.  D&D 5th is currently avoiding new rules where possible, where Pathfinder is on a quest to issue formal rulings on everything possible.

 

Just my opinion of course.....

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Pathfinder is complex about what you have to know. There are so many rules that you really can't learn them all.  Luckily, the huge player base will help you with building characters until you get the hang of it.

 

Hero's complexity is in how you build with the rules. The work is all upfront and time consuming, particularly if you are doing a fantasy setting. Here the source material will give a basic set of spells, monsters and weapons until you pick up on building your own.

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6 hours ago, Grailknight said:

Pathfinder is complex about what you have to know. There are so many rules that you really can't learn them all.  Luckily, the huge player base will help you with building characters until you get the hang of it.

 

Hero's complexity is in how you build with the rules. The work is all upfront and time consuming, particularly if you are doing a fantasy setting. Here the source material will give a basic set of spells monsters and weapons until you pick up on building your own.

 

A very succinct summation.

 

Pathfinder's complexity comes down to the group.  Which rules will be used?  Is every character option available?  Assuming wide options available, will the players agonize over optimization (need to know every permutation and combination and squeeze out the last drop of effectiveness) or build a character to the concept they want to play, not to be the most powerful build they could possibly achieve? 

 

Some Hero players work to wring every possible benefit out of every point, and others build to concept. Same thing.  Similarly, some Hero groups will handwave aspects of a build in the interests of simplicity, while others will require every nuance be accounted for with an advantage or limitation.  Can you have a cell phone, or do you have to build it?

 

In Hero, all the complexity is up front.  Using the base source material spells, monsters, weapons, etc. simply makes the game a smaller scale "pathfinder" - these are the choices, and you can do some customization selecting within them.  Hero adds the "under the hood" system, which makes for increased complexity in builds.

 

The pre-fab nature of Pathfinder (and many other systems) are noted by some as making the game more playable - much of the design complexity has already been done for the players, GM included.  Want to do some DIY?  In Hero, make a new build.  Is that actually more complex than , in Pathfinder, defining what your home brew feat, race or spell can do?  They are different kinds of complexity.

 

Why so  many splatbooks?  Hero players praise the ability to "build anything you want".  Broadening those options in a game like Pathfinder requires publishing more builds.for players and GMs to choose from.  But wasn't that where Hero 5e was headed?  More pre-fabs (Super Powers Database; Grimoires) and more optional rules (Ultimate books; APG)?

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But hero splat books and power sets give  you more bang for you story bucks. A whole lot more power concepts and ideas can be expressed much quicker. Further more if you know the Hero lanuage then you know exactly what a power does in game terms before you add the special effects. Limiting that problem where a single word can change the whole power/feat/spell like in pathfinder. "Oh it added natural armour, I thought it added just plain armour". 

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Oh, that's killing damage.

 

Oh, those defenses are not resistant/hardened/impenetrable/whatever the other ones are

 

Oh, we're playing Heroic so Knockback is not standard.

 

Oh, we're using hit locations rather than STUN multiples.

 

Oh, being immune to heat and fire does not prevent a Flaming Sword from burning me.

 

It depends largely on which system one is conversant with.

 

If you know the Pathfinder language, then knowing "armour" and :"natural armour" are different isn't any more of a issue.

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But killing damage is different game play wise from normal damage. It has different game play mechanics. 

Natural magical armour bonus and regular magical armour bonus to magical armour do the same thing mechanically speaking. Its just one example on how pathfinder gives less result for the same amount of work than the hero system does.

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Natural Armour does have different play mechanics from Armour: Natural Armour stacks with Armour. Armour does not stack with Armour.

 

Yes, the difference is quite, hmmmmm, nuanced shall we say? But it's there. 

 

As Hugh Neilson pointed out above, HERO has plenty of it's own nuanced rules language, just like Pathfinder. Both require a potential player to commit to learning (at least some of) that jargon.

 

I think Grailknight has defined the differences between the systems very well. I'd like to add that what a thing like Pathfinder does is allow players to ignore those complexities they don't care about. (Things like other class's abilities, particular types of spells, mounted combat.) I suspect that this is especially appealing to new players. HERO requires a bit more up front commitment. Not a huge amount more maybe, but more. Starting with a new system, or whole new hobby, has already got plenty of "overwhelmed with homework" feeling to it. Anything that lessens that is going to have appeal.

 

What is not immediately obvious to a new player is that Pathfinder is a lot more complex in the playing than HERO. They may never become aware of this, as they might be scared off by the relatively high barrier to entry (some of it perceived, some of it actual) from ever playing HERO.

 

It comes down to preference. Certainly I prefer HERO. But I get that not everyone is going to.

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I like Hero but I have a terrible imagination when it comes to creating powers and then defining them. Thus that is why I bought Champions Powers. To me it’s a shorthand for creating and inspiration for creating my own powers. Why create my own from scratch when I can copy and tweak to taste? And genre books again are really (official) advice of how to Hero to work for you for the genre you want to play I get what you mean Hugh but the nuance is that in Hero I can create my own animal/monster but a bestiary makes it easier (sometimes ?). Can you do that with Pathfinder? Well yes, but in Hero you do have guidance even if the point system isn’t 100 % perfect. In Pathfinder do they have the same type of guidance or is it really by GM gut feeling?

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I agree the Hero complexity can be a barrier, but Hugh's point is actually not what I was talking about and is a common mistake when getting into these discussions. 

 

 

Discounting Villian books, creature and equipment guides and only listing books that a player uses directly.

 

Hero has one rulebook.  Whether CC or FHC they are still the same rule book.  If you fold in 6e you make the rules more verbos and have the 2 advanced guides.  So depending how you count, Hero has either 1 rulebook or 4 rulebooks (6e vol 1&2 plus APG 1&2).

 

I just went through Piazo (sp?) website and counted actual rulebooks, supplements and players guides.  15 Rulebooks & Supplements and 78 Player Guides.  Remember I excluded GM books.

 

That is Pathfinders big problem in a nutshell.  93 official books for players.  And a similar number for the GM. 

 

Unless it is the only recreational activity you have, you will simply not have enough hours to stay current,

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11 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I like Hero but I have a terrible imagination when it comes to creating powers and then defining them. Thus that is why I bought Champions Powers. To me it’s a shorthand for creating and inspiration for creating my own powers. Why create my own from scratch when I can copy and tweak to taste? And genre books again are really (official) advice of how to Hero to work for you for the genre you want to play I get what you mean Hugh but the nuance is that in Hero I can create my own animal/monster but a bestiary makes it easier (sometimes ?). Can you do that with Pathfinder? Well yes, but in Hero you do have guidance even if the point system isn’t 100 % perfect. In Pathfinder do they have the same type of guidance or is it really by GM gut feeling?

 

None of the class/level games reveal their under the hood how things actually work design rules. Even SRDs only tell you the conclusions, not the hows and whys.

 

That is actually Hero's strength and flaw. It is the underlying meta-rules.

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Let me add though that somewhere along the line, it does seem to me that an undercurrent if it must be “official” has become prevalent, at least on these boards. Ever notice how RAW gets thrown around a lot?  Or a better example would be long time ago a poster stated that he wanted to a Fantasy game with Super rules. And the first several posts weren’t ok that neat, here’s how you do it. But rather, Fantasy was always done this way, iow you’re doing it wrong. Also have you noticed how much analysis goes into figuring out what value a limitation should be worth? Perhaps if we as a group could dial that back, Hero wouldn’t seem so intimidating? (And count me in that group and feel free to call me on the carpet if I act like that.)

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1 hour ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Let me add though that somewhere along the line, it does seem to me that an undercurrent if it must be “official” has become prevalent, at least on these boards. Ever notice how RAW gets thrown around a lot?

 

I feel this is a by-product of the size of the 6e rulebooks and the great lengths they go to to try and cover every possible contingency. It fosters the sense in the reader that the answer to every situation and every rules question/interpretation can be found in the text, and therefore players should strive to conform to it at all times (even if that means lengthy and momentum-crushing interruptions of gameplay in order to look things up in the rulebooks). The somewhat looser rules of previous editions created a community of players (especially GMs) who could routinely think on their feet and come up with solutions to situations not directly covered in the rules, but which nevertheless were consistent with the spirit and form of the basic mechanics of the Hero System.

 

Does Pathfinder suffer from this as well? I don't have any Pathfinder rulebooks, but I did have D&D 3.0/3.5, and those rulebooks carried on the long tradition of Gygax's AD&D in which you weren't playing the game correctly unless you were doing everything exactly as prescribed by the rulebooks. I've observed that the bigger and more dense the rulebook is, the more likely this phenomenon is to get its grip on the player community as a whole.

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