Pathfinder

[Trencher]

I recently picked up Villains codex from the pathfinder line because I am a lazy GM and wanted write up of villains I could just insert in my game without much work. Quite often the villians write up refered rules that were written up in books that I did not have. Several feats that were written up in their stat lines were taken from other books as well. And the feats and rules were not explained in the Villains codex. 

I pick up a hero games villain book the write ups are understandable just from reading straight. 

How ever the biggest advantage with Hero games is still this:

 

Fire missile: 1d6 energy rka persistent. 

Lighting missile: 1d6 energy rka +2 stun

Frost missile: 1d6 rka energy plus 2t6 cumulative speed drain

Acid missile 1d6 rka energy double penetrating + 3 ocv to hit

Flint missile 2d6 rka versus Physical defence

Razor missile 1/2 d6 rka Armour Piercering versus Physical defense x2 endurance

 

Each one of these simple write up powers have a diffrent game play "feel" for little cost work. Both when it came to come up with the idea and to actually write it up. 

 

Compare that to spells and feats in Pathfinder. I think you guys will see what I mean.

 

[zslane]

I agree with you completely, Trencher, and especially with your "missile" examples.

 

However, I'd like to point out that today's 6e power-writeup culture would express those powers with about half a page of inscrutable Hero-ese each, rather than the "low cost work" design/presentation you've shown, which is more of a pre-5th edition approach (and ultimately more readable and more playable, IMO).

[Ninja-Bear]

7 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

I don't see why a Pathfinder DM must go beyond the Core rulebook if they don't want to.

No one is saying that a DM must go beyond the core rule books. I believe that the conversation has turned to which system encourages the DM/GM to go beyond the Core books.

[Ninja-Bear]

Zslane made a good point about GMs and game play. I’d like to add though that conversely if you had a bad experience with a GM, I think you’ll tend to become a Rules Lawyer not to annoy other people but just to play a game that’s fair. And that is something that defiantly isn’t game dependent.

[zslane]

In my experience, rules lawyering has never been an effective solution to the problem of an unfair or manipulative GM. The only real solution is to find another GM or group to play with, unless you actually think you can rehabilitate the bad GM (good luck with that).

 

I think the notion of Rule 0 was an important one to put in the rules. It explicitly sets forth the principle that the rules are just a framework for play, and not holy writ. Frankly, I feel this should axiomatically extend to all RPGs, whether they state such a principle in their rulebooks or not.

[Ragitsu]

 

[Ninja-Bear]

5 hours ago, zslane said:

In my experience, rules lawyering has never been an effective solution to the problem of an unfair or manipulative GM. The only real solution is to find another GM or group to play with, unless you actually think you can rehabilitate the bad GM (good luck with that).

 

I think the notion of Rule 0 was an important one to put in the rules. It explicitly sets forth the principle that the rules are just a framework for play, and not holy writ. Frankly, I feel this should axiomatically extend to all RPGs, whether they state such a principle in their rulebooks or not.

Well one does not always have that option to find another GMmor group.

[Ragitsu]

2 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Well one does not always have that option to find another GMmor group.

 

Tabletop gaming scenes are almost always a seller's market; because they are scarce by comparison, we are often at the mercy of the DMs/GMs.

[zslane]

One of the reasons I don't really play (RPGs) anymore is precisely because of the difficulty of finding a gaming group whose style matches my own. I absolutely refuse to be at the mercy of poor/inept/incompatible GMs. But that's okay; I have lots of other hobbies.

[drunkonduty]

 

1 hour ago, Ragitsu said:

 

Tabletop gaming scenes are almost often a seller's market; because they are scarce by comparison, we are often at the mercy of the DMs/GMs.

 

True, but my current games are all Pathfinder because I'm at the mercy of my players.

[zslane]

You need to find a better class of players... 

[Ragitsu]

You can always find a play-by-post game, zslane. It very well may be a drive-thru burger in comparison to the five-star sirloin you're used to, but there are times we must subsist on lesser fare in order to survive...

[Hugh Neilson]

On ‎7‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 11:45 AM, Spence said:

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. 

 

First, "book bloat" is undeniably a significant issue for a lot of RPG's, Pathfinder being among the leaders.  To some extent, however, that is because gamers buy books and businesses want sales.

 

To Pathfinder, no one requires every book be in play.  And, unlike Hero, the mechanics can be found online for free.  One Hero book is a lot bigger than a typical Pathfinder book, especially those Player Guides.

 

One reason Hero has fewer books is that they were not making the sales to support more books.  Let's look at 5e, when Hero was a living system with regular releases, most of which are commonly cited for 6e discussions on these Boards.

 

There's the genre books, each of which show the player how to use Hero rules in the game genre.

 

Those pre-fab build books are, in my view, player books.  Players use spells, equipment, powers, etc.  They are builds for PC and NPC alike just as much as player guides.

 

Unlike Pathfinder, my PC can use any build the enemy can use.  I've met a lot of players who pore over villain books to find example abilities for their PCs. 

 

The Ultimate books were clearly geared at players.  A Player Guide runs what, 32 pages?  An Ultimate book runs more like 192.

 

I think the explosion started way back in 1e D&D with the release of Unearthed Arcana and the realization that a book with rules for players has a much bigger market than a book of monsters (only GM's really want that) or an adventure (which will only be useful to one GM even in a group with many).

 

The market is such that D&D and Pathfinder have far more books, but the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hero_System_Products shows Hero has no shortage of published works.  And it is no more impossible to buy only the core rules and play Pathfinder than it is to buy only the core rules and play Hero.

 

On ‎7‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 12:08 PM, Spence said:

 

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.

 

I agree that this is a defining Hero feature.  Hero is less a game than a system for designing games.  Most RPGs are games - rules, setting, builds, all pre-defined.  I've seen D&D/Pathfinder books with "under the hood" work.  The Race Guide and the Class Guide attempt to highlight some core design elements.  But there's far less definition, and far less granularity, than Hero.

 

On ‎7‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 3:13 PM, Ragitsu said:

I don't see why a Pathfinder DM must go beyond the Core rulebook if they don't want to.

 

Agreed.  The hobby started with "support" being largely adventures, until (as noted above) game publishers learned that rule books sell better.

 

On ‎7‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 4:01 PM, Trencher said:

I recently picked up Villains codex from the pathfinder line because I am a lazy GM and wanted write up of villains I could just insert in my game without much work. Quite often the villians write up refered rules that were written up in books that I did not have. Several feats that were written up in their stat lines were taken from other books as well. And the feats and rules were not explained in the Villains codex. 

I pick up a hero games villain book the write ups are understandable just from reading straight. 

How ever the biggest advantage with Hero games is still this:

 

Fire missile: 1d6 energy rka persistent. 

Lighting missile: 1d6 energy rka +2 stun

Frost missile: 1d6 rka energy plus 2t6 cumulative speed drain

Acid missile 1d6 rka energy double penetrating + 3 ocv to hit

Flint missile 2d6 rka versus Physical defence

Razor missile 1/2 d6 rka Armour Piercering versus Physical defense x2 endurance

 

Each one of these simple write up powers have a diffrent game play "feel" for little cost work. Both when it came to come up with the idea and to actually write it up. 

 

Compare that to spells and feats in Pathfinder. I think you guys will see what I mean.

 

 

Unlike Pathfinder, if a Hero character uses an APG rule, I do not have the option of a web search to find that element.  It's also a lot easier to give a Pathfinder character a different feat, or spell, or etc.  No question, however, that the nature of a "predefined elements" system is that rules get scattered over more and more books over time.

 

Let's look at your constructs, though. 

 

That Fire Missile is missing Constant.  It cannot be persistent without being Constant.  It is costing you effort to keep the target burning - if you want it to burn on its own, it needs to be 0 END.  But if the target ducks behind a corner (lost line of sight) or you are Stunned, then Persistent powers shut off and the fire goes out.  Is that the effect you are looking for, or does it need to be Uncontrolled?  And all of this assumes we are not making it limited use, as Charges would create a completely different build.

 

Not sure why Lightning should do extra STUN rather than a Blinding flash and Deafening clap of thunder.  That one just seems lazy.

 

Why does the Frost Drain need to be cumulative?  Drain is not capped like positive adjustment powers are.  Also, the SPD change rules rival any arcane subsystem in the d20 rules.  And why didn't my Life Support - Cold protect me from the chilling effect on my reflexes (even if I accept the "damage not reduced" conundrum of life support)?  A Pathfinder ability would be clear as to Resistance to Cold reducing the damage, and probably indicate you're not Staggered if you take no damage after resistances.

 

Not sure why Acid is inherently more accurate, and I find players learning they need Impenetrable to be truly Bod-proof get really unhappy when someone adds double penetrating to the mix.

 

Flint is 2d6 instead of 1 - not sure why that would be (other than making AP and DCs comparable - "how much of this can fit in my power framework" can be challenging, especially for a novice player).

 

Similarly, not sure why the Razor has so much less AP and DC, and is the only one to tack on a limitation - why would it be any more tiring than the rest?

 

The key difference, again, would be which rules the gamer is familiar with.  Imagine the Terrible Missileers, one with each of the above constructs, in a game battling six novice players.  How many rules will have to be explained over the course of that one combat?  The game will seem incomprehensible - much like a Pathfinder game feels to a novice player, as various rules pop out.

 

Each Pathfinder feat and spell is its own subset and rules exception? True, at least to some extent.  So is each Hero limitation, advantage, adder and power beyond basic STR and Blasts.

[zslane]

The Hero System seems incomprehensible to plenty of non-novices too; I mean, some just never wrap their heads around it. D&D, and its descendants, never seemed to suffer from this problem.

 

I believe this is primarily because the Hero System essentially demands that players have a designer's mind to make the most sense of (and best use of) the system. And I don't necessarily mean a game designer's mind, but just a designer's mind in general. That is to say, someone who designs things from small, constituent parts, be it a machine, a piece of clothing, a software application, a complex bit of graphics, or an RPG character. Few people are good at, or feel comfortable with, designing things from scratch. Worse still, the Hero System demands that you understand the math behind what you are building, and while you have may help in the form of the Hero Designer, that tool doesn't design the character for you, it merely relieves you of the burden of doing elementary school math in your head.

 

Don't get me wrong, I adore the Hero System, but the truth is I am a designer at heart. My area of specialization is software design, and the Hero System has always felt intuitive and obvious in every way to me, right from the start. But I could see the blank look in many fellow RPGers faces when presented with the system. Their brains just didn't grasp/bond with the system the way mine did, and in my experience that's the case for more RPGers than it isn't the case. In contrast, I've found that if someone "gets" the mere idea of a tabletop RPG at all, they will "get" D&D or any of its clones (like Pathfinder).

[Ninja-Bear]

I have to disagree with Zslane with player mentality having to be a designer. I play with people who don’t know the rules for hero system, all they need to know is what can their character do? And what do I need to roll? The GM needs to know what everything does. Now of course it’s immensely helpful if the players know the rules but it isn’t required either.

[Ragitsu]

40 minutes ago, zslane said:

I believe this is primarily because the Hero System essentially demands that players have a designer's mind to make the most sense of (and best use of) the system. And I don't necessarily mean a game designer's mind, but just a designer's mind in general. That is to say, someone who designs things from small, constituent parts, be it a machine, a piece of clothing, a software application, a complex bit of graphics, or an RPG character. Few people are good at, or feel comfortable with, designing things from scratch. Worse still, the Hero System demands that you understand the math behind what you are building, and while you have may help in the form of the Hero Designer, that tool doesn't design the character for you, it merely relieves you of the burden of doing elementary school math in your head.

 

Don't get me wrong, I adore the Hero System, but the truth is I am a designer at heart. My area of specialization is software design, and the Hero System has always felt intuitive and obvious in every way to me, right from the start. But I could see the blank look in many fellow RPGers faces when presented with the system. Their brains just didn't grasp/bond with the system the way mine did, and in my experience that's the case for more RPGers than it isn't the case. In contrast, I've found that if someone "gets" the mere idea of a tabletop RPG at all, they will "get" D&D or any of its clones (like Pathfinder).

 

When it comes to a system that feels more like an Erector Set instead of Lego, it is our job to assemble the rules we need and then distill the rules down into manageable chunks for the players to interact with.

[zslane]

That would be like playing Monopoly without knowing the rules, and having to be told what to do each time you land on a square on the board. Eventually you figure out how to roll-and-move on your own, and that some squares require only simple actions like drawing a Chance card, but since you never master the more important concepts of the game like property management and trading, you are never really playing the game or being even remotely competitive. I've played Champions with people like that and in my experience they lose interest pretty quickly when they realize they don't know how to avoid getting trounced by the villains and never seem to know how to be effective with their character's abilities. And since the veterans among us rarely had the patience or desire to hold their hands through every session, it just wasn't fun for them. After all, half the fun of the Hero System is building your character based on your own concept, and if you can't do that then you're missing out on a crucial part of the game experience and a crucial part of what makes the system special and compelling.

 

For random-roll character generation systems, it's all together different. The experience of "rolling up a character" feels more like pulling the arm of a slot machine and seeing what you get, as opposed to being handed a bunch of money and being told to go shopping for powers at the superpower store. Since the engine under the hood is rarely exposed in systems like Pathfinder, you don't have to know how it works to use it; you let the mostly random system do the (character) design work for you, interjecting choices here and there only when required (race, class, spells), and even then the range of choices isn't nearly like what a player faces when given a blank Champions character sheet and 200-300 points to spend.

[drunkonduty]

On 7/16/2018 at 1:14 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

Each Pathfinder feat and spell is its own subset and rules exception? True, at least to some extent.  So is each Hero limitation, advantage, adder and power beyond basic STR and Blasts.

 

I agree.

 

Sorry, I don't think I made myself very clear above when I was talking about kludged subsystems. I certainly didn't mean all feats and spells and powers in D20 games are kludged and poorly thought out. Only some. And even then, it depends.

 

I think the problem that arises in Pathfinder/D20 is that there are many feats and spells from the expanded canon that are poorly designed with little consideration for what will happen when they are given universal applicability. To put it another way, many feats and spells fail to adhere to a single design principle and when they are taken together in the one game problems arise because:

 

Some of these feats/spells are just over powered and/or poorly thought out.

 

But many (most?) of the problematic spells and feats are actually designed with specific campaigns and campaign styles in mind. They will work perfectly well within that setting. But once they are applied to the broader game things can go bad real fast as synergies begin to pile up.

 

There is a 3rd category of problematic feats/etc.: the really under powered ones. This can lead to players feeling hard done by if they are playing with optimisers. Usually there's no problem dealing with this as both GM and player will usually quickly agree to swap out the dud for something more relevant.

 

Now I'm sure the designers who write these things would say something like "Then don't let your players take the feat/spell/whatever." All well and good but sometimes difficult to do, especially if you've let the player have a nice new feat and only realised what has gone wrong afterwards.

 

I don't think any of this makes Pathfinder unplayable. As I've mentioned above I'm playing several Pathfinder games at the moment. We are having a lot of fun. But as GM one has to be careful in what one allows. You may have to do a great deal of reading to understand all the ins and outs of a given feat or spell. You have to be able to look a player in the eye and say "Sorry, but I have to take that toy away." Which can happen with any game system.  It just seems more of an issue with Pathfinder/d20.

 

<Warning: personal anecdote follows.>

 

That being said,  I have just thrown caution to the wind and said to the players in my Reign of Winter game, "What the hell, let's open it up to any Paizo published rules. No 3rd Party stuff. Also I reserve the right to revoke any feat/spell/whatever if I think it is unbalancing the game." I did this mostly because the guy playing the rogue is struggling to stay relevant as the game increases in level. Of course, since I'm allowing all the players the same leeway, this is unlikely to work. The party is now 13th level. For those not deeply familiar with the game that means the party is getting crazy powerful. Emphasis on crazy. The druid has taken a level dip into monk and now spends most of his time being a kung-fu shambling mound. The ranger and the fighter deal out incredible amounts of damage. The wizard is just a wizard, but at 13th level that's enough. The rogue has mutli-classed into a duelist, can get AC39 when fighting defensively,  can easily make a stealth check of 50, and is still struggling to keep up in terms of usefulness. (Yeah he can just turtle, but that gets boring after a while.)

 

There's only a few more levels left in the adventure path and I admit I'm curious to see if it can go that badly off the rails from here.

 

By the way, the only reason I've banned 3rd party stuff is to reduce the reading I have to do. A lot of the 3rd party stuff I've seen (a small selection admittedly) is better thought out and less power gamey than some of the official paizo stuff.

 

Addendum: Yes, HERO has it's own subsystems.  But not that many and those it has attempt to stick as close as possible to a unifying design principle.

[Hugh Neilson]

On 7/16/2018 at 6:59 PM, drunkonduty said:

But many (most?) of the problematic spells and feats are actually designed with specific campaigns and campaign styles in mind. They will work perfectly well within that setting. But once they are applied to the broader game things can go bad real fast as synergies begin to pile up.

 

Well, that certainly doesn't sound Like Hero.  You can't, say, have an isue with Penalty Skill Levels and Hit Locations, right?  One of the best synergies we ever accidentally fell into in Hero arose when we realized the Dr. Midnight homage blocked sight, hearing and radar, while both he and the cat-girl with Targetting Smell could freely operate within the darkness.

 

On 7/16/2018 at 6:59 PM, drunkonduty said:

Now I'm sure the designers who write these things would say something like "Then don't let your players take the feat/spell/whatever." All well and good but sometimes difficult to do, especially if you've let the player have a nice new feat and only realised what has gone wrong afterwards.

 

I don't think any of this makes Pathfinder unplayable. As I've mentioned above I'm playing several Pathfinder games at the moment. We are having a lot of fun. But as GM one has to be careful in what one allows. You may have to do a great deal of reading to understand all the ins and outs of a given feat or spell. You have to be able to look a player in the eye and say "Sorry, but I have to take that toy away." Which can happen with any game system.  It just seems more of an issue with Pathfinder/d20.

 

I don't think Hero power builds are any less chancy.  I recall a scenario gone awry with a Scarecrow villain on the enemy team.  Lots of damage reduction, so very hard to put down,  but only his plinky Summon Crows attack.  1/2d6 KA.  AoE.  Penetrating (maybe double penetrating).

 

How SuperHeroic do you feel when most of the the team ends a pretty simple combat down over half their BOD.

 

Much simpler, how many threads on these Boards discuss issues where one player seems overwhelming - maybe just because his DCV is 5 higher than the campaign norm for OCV.  Charactre irrelevancy? Did you bring a Face to a duncgeon crawl?  Or just not get the campaign norms, so either your attack or defenses are substandard?   SkillMonkey the Rogue becomes pretty irrelevant if we're not playing a game where skills see much use, especially if either he can't flank often, or the campaign centers around creatures immune to sneak attacks.

 

It can definitely happen in any system.  Hero is one of the few that enshrines GM control and "just because the rules allow it does not mean the GM is required to". 

[drunkonduty]

I'm not saying you can't get broken synergies in other systems.

 

I'm saying that in Pathfinder et.al. in order to know that you have a problem you will need to do a lot more reading and cross comparisons. And that  is pretty much the definition of more complicated.

 

For example, your Doctor Midnight/CatWoman situation would have been obvious from when I read the character sheets at the start of the campaign. As GM I would have either said: "Er, no. You're gonna have to change that." Or, more likely, thought about cool ways to challenge the players in any case. (Honestly, my first thought was "When Campaign Master Mind gets tired of his/her mooks getting trounced they hire the League of Blind Assassins whose mystic senses easily penetrate Doctor Midnight's darkness.") The important point being: the problem is more easily seen up front and therefore more easily dealt with.

 

The problem my player's rogue has been facing actually comes down to adventure design. The last two parts of the adventure path have fallen into the classic design style: linear adventures; one big bad monster; lots of critters with high DR (thereby rendering combat styles other than 2 Handed Power Attack pretty crap.) Luckily! the next part of the adventure is very sandbox. There is tonnes of space for the rogue to do sneaking, and cunning back stabs, and classic WW2 movie commando stuff. The player will love it.

[Hugh Neilson]

The adventure design can be the issue.  Although if properly set up for Sneak Attack, the rogue should be pretty good at getting past Damage Reduction, and rogue talents that allow reducing sneak attack dice to inflict other adverse results are pretty effective, especially when that one Big Bad has to deal with the penalty for the rest of the combat (as opposed to Generic Orc #7 having an issue for the next round or two he will live, while his compatriots are not hindered).  If the other players aren't making any effort to shift around in combat (even 5' steps) to flank, they are a big part of the problem.

 

Ditto Hero, though.  If I build a Face, and you run a bunch of combat scenarios, or I build a Mentalist and you run a game with a lot of automatons, I get to see a lot of my CP have little use.  The d20 class model focuses on this even more - if we are missing a key character archetype, we have a problem sometimes.  Other times, that archetype is pretty useless.

[drunkonduty]

The group are pretty good at team play. They are all happy to help one another out, even if it means risking themselves. Even then the rogue (who has multi-classed as a duelist) still struggles. Sneak attack is at best once per round. I mean it's nice when it hits. But he struggles to hit the AC of the average BBG. His attack bonus seems to be too far behind the curve... although now I type this I can't see why that is the case. I might check his character sheet, make sure he hasn't missed any bonuses.

 

(Aside: in the last BBG fight EVERYONE was struggling to hit the Dragon BBG until the wizard dispelled it's Mage Armour.)

[Hugh Neilson]

Why would sneak attack be one/round?  Flanking allows multiple sneak attacks, and provides that nice +2 to hit.  Weapon Finesse is pretty important to enhance attack bonuses.  He won't be "fighter attack bonus", but s/b at or above cleric/druid.  Duelist requires WF, and mobility helps get into flanking.  S/B better attack bonuses, but the multiclass choice sacrifices damage (sneak attack) for defense and mobility.

[Vondy]

On 7/7/2018 at 6:05 PM, Spence said:

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. 

 

One thing I think Wizard's finally figured out was rulebook/option bloat. For official games, you can only use the Player's Handbook + one other book when designing a character.

 

I think this would be a good policy for Pathfinder, which has serious option bloat, too.

 

You could even apply this rule at the "table level" rather than the individual "player level." There would, of course, be pros and cons, to doing so.

[zslane]

Option bloat really started with AD&D 2nd ed. with all the splat books. Back then the game had enough heat that it could sell 20,000 copies of a new splat book each month, and doing so was critical to keeping TSR financially solvent. I don't think companies can sustain that kind of output anymore, and so option bloat necessarily accumulates much more slowly today. But, of course, it is still there for those systems that have been around for a long time, like Pathfinder.

 

The real question is just how useful/necessary/valuable it is for players to have a never-ending supply of new game options? Every new game option that is introduced into the system has the potential to upset the apple cart of play balance, especially if it is rushed to publication without being properly vetted through a lot of playtesting. It often becomes safer for the GM to come up with his own campaign-specific character classes, races, spells, magic items, etc. than to try and adapt published ones.