Question on pathfinder

[Scott Ruggels]

22 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Thanks, PC--

 

but let me clarify something a bit:

 

I don't generally care for Fantasy. I will play it; I may even enjoy it.  It is more about the playing and the people I'm playing with. 

 

On one pointy bit, it's Fantasy.  On the other pointy bit, the D&D mechanics grate on me, from randomly generated stats to wandering monsters to character classes and alignments to the way armor doesn't work to-- well, I didn't pop up to write a dissertation.  There is no part of D&D that I like, period.  While I _do_ love Sci-Fi, I can't see myself trying to play it using the D&D mechanics.  

 

The handle is likely pointed as well, because I don't like the tropes common to D&D and their distinctive call to Tolkien), and pickle forks only have two tines.

 

I have been reading the Pathfinder 2 playtest rules. It was free, and my GM made some noise about wanting to run it. It is distant from D20 and D&D 3.5, in that the mechanics are heavily streamlined, and introduces the action economy. Stats are now a point buy, plus racial -er ancestry feats, background feats add to your stats, and then you pick your class. You can get started quickly and combat is anbit

less detailed, but it’s betterndefined. It is very different from D&D5e, but it’s not Hero. XD

 

...However it uses the same Fantasy background world as old Pathfinder, and it’s usually the same monsters and treasure, so setting wise it’s probably still a sardine flavored wedding cake for you, Duke. I’d suggest getting it to read, as it’s free, just to confirm your fears. 

[zslane]

The way I look at it, if a game uses a D20 for most action resolution mechanics, including combat to-hit, features six stats called STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, and CHA, has classes, XP levels, hit points, armor class, saving throws, spells with vocal, somatic, and material components, and a spell called Magic Missile, then the game is either D&D or a descendant of D&D. Pathfinder fits all these criteria, and no matter how many other bits they add, it can't escape its D&D3.5/D20 DNA.

[Duke Bushido]

 It's funny you should say that. 

 

Remember when silver age sentinels came out? 

 

I picked it up when it came out (loads of full-color artwork put it way, way ahead of 5e, at least in terms of appeal.) 

 

Golden and Silver age appeal to me way more than the gritty melodrama of today or the angst eighties or the antihero nineties.  Good guys have a belief in right and wrong; bad guys have motives that aren't genocide or world domination.  The characters themselves are having fun.  You can't hate that.

 

I was totally unfamiliar with what "d20 System" meant.  Took it home and thought "holy crap!  It's Dungeons and Spandex!" 

 

I gave it to a player who wanted it as a source book for the group he GMd for, and took it as a lesson learned.

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

17 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

I was totally unfamiliar with what "d20 System" meant.  Took it home and thought "holy crap!  It's Dungeons and Spandex!" 

 

 

That quote, out of context, could be pure gold. 

[Norm]

On 11/2/2018 at 8:35 PM, Duke Bushido said:

I don't generally care for Fantasy. I will play it; I may even enjoy it.  It is more about the playing and the people I'm playing with.  I still won't be having all the joy my friends are, because I can't make myself invest in Fantasy: for reasons absolutely cannot explain, I have a distaste for the genre as a whole.  It's not insurmountable, but it's there.  I know I can have a good time under the right combination of system (I have enjoyed about half the Fantasy HERO games I've been involved in), GM (anyone not trying to re-invent D&D in his pet system), and setting (anything that isn't trying to be like D&D).

 

It is funny.....  I am pretty much the same way, but for Pulp/Champions/Super Hero games.  I do not know what it is.....  I can play it...  even enjoy it if it is with the right people....  but will not seek out, nor buy super hero games.  Which is funny as I love Hero.  I love having a consolidated system.  I never understood when people said that D&D/Pathfinder was easier than Hero.  Have you seen all of the character options/feats/thinga-majigs in D&D/Pathfinder?!?!

 

In High School I played Star Wars (West End Games), Cyberpunk, and others.  It is the fact that I grew up during the "SATANIC PANIC!!!!" in corn and bean country that I never really played D&D until college.  sheesh....  Maybe that is why I never burnt out on fantasy.  After only two D&D games, I was introduced to Hero and never really looked back.  When a game ended, our group talked about the next game.  "What genre do you want to play today?  Science fiction, fantasy, cyber-punk...."  Same rules with minor tweaks/flavors.  Great for a poor college student trying to pay his way without loans.  When I moved to a different state, played 7th Sea for about 5 years.  We had a GM that loved the system.  He started running D&D, I bowed out and took a slight break from gaming. 

 

That GM moved away and I started to GM Hero.  No one else stepped up.  Ran Valdorian Age for 2 years then Turakian for 3.  One of our players wanted to GM, but was afraid of running Hero without a canned adventure for some reason.  But he still wanted fantasy...  We were told that Pathfinder fixed a lot of D&D issues and it had better adventures/campaigns.  Well..  we have been playing  Rise of the Runelords for almost 5 years(!!!) and I am burnt out.  We seem to look up and argue over the rules a lot.  We are near the end and one of our other players wants to run 7th Sea 2E.  I am curious how it will turn out.  2E seems more fluffy....  not sure I will like it, but willing to give it a shot.  Which is funny....  I consider Pulp and Swashbuckler to be similar in feel.  

 

Man....  I cannot wait to return to Hero.  Trying to come up with a Fallout/Morrow Project/Postman type of thing.  I have some time as the 7th Sea game will be about 6 months.  One of the reasons I am getting back on to the Hero forums....

 

Sorry for the long, winding, and morose post.  Just trying to say that I understand how you can be not interested in a genre at all.  I think it was you that said in another post that you are happy that discussions like this can happen on the forums without it degrading.

 

[Pattern Ghost]

I might have commented on the topic at hand, had Killer Shrike not given such a thoroughly excellent summation that I agree with 100%. But I feel a strange need to comment, so here's a comment:

The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game is HUGE fun. The wife and I love it. It's not the collectable type of card game. The play is AFAICT, based on their existing Adventure Paths. You'll buy a big box with the cards needed for the characters and the first scenario, then fill the box up with smaller boxes of cards for subsequent scenarios. But you get the cards you need without dealing with the TCG aspect. The rules weren't entirely ironed out in the initial set (Rise of the Runelords), so you'll need to apply errata and common sense occasionally, but the basic system is sound, and fun. It's cooperative, with the players controlling PCs. )

[Killer Shrike]

Yeah, my wife, son, myself, and a friend (WilyQuixote) played thru PACG Rise of the Runelords and bought all the character packs. We also made some custom characters that we enjoyed playing (http://www.killershrike.com/CardGames/PACG/Default.aspx).

 

It was good fun and we definitely got hours of enjoyment out of it, but it could get a little tedious by the time we got towards the end. The game mostly challenges by presenting a number, with bigger numbers as you go on. Eventually you're just piling on bonuses to get a bigger number to beat the bad guy's bigger number. Which, I guess, is a sort of metacommentary on the Pathfinder rpg itself, but I'll just move along.

 

 

 

We're currently into FFG's Arkham Horror: The Card Game (https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/arkham-horror-the-card-game/) which in my opinion is a much better designed system for collaborative play of this sort. Similar to the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game each character has a deck of cards which will change as your character progresses, and it is collaborative, but the flow of the storylines is very smooth and, to date, never tedious (for us). We've played through the core set, several standalones, and the Dunwich Legacy and still run into new twists and unexpected outcomes. You should check it out... 

 

[Pattern Ghost]

22 hours ago, Killer Shrike said:

The game mostly challenges by presenting a number, with bigger numbers as you go on.

 

Although they do have some interesting twists, I agree. However, throwing around huge gobs of polyhedral dice never gets old.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Pathfinder was created using the Open Gaming License for D&D.

 

How could it be anything other than a D&D game?

[Hugh Neilson]

I would not call Mutants and Masterminds a D&D game, and it originates from the d20 OGL.

[zslane]

Agreed that M&M is not D&D. But that should not be surprising. Not all D20 OGL games are D&D clones, despite sharing core system elements. For example: D20 Modern, D20 Future, D20 Trinity, and D20 Cthulhu, to name only a few.

[Duke Bushido]

I'm a bit confused.  I was u Der the impression that M&M predated D20 OGL by like...  A _lot_.... 

[Duke Bushido]

Nevermind. 

 

I'm thinking V&V

 

[Old Man]

So I'm a couple sessions into a D&D 5e game and thought I'd give some impressions since it hasn't been touched on much here.  Of the D&D flavors I've experienced so far, it's probably my second favorite after BECMI.  I'd describe 5e as a much cleaner version of 3e, or a much richer version of BECMI.  A lot of unnecessary complexity has been taken out--experience tables have been unified*, infra- and ultravision are now both "darkvision", and weapons and classes are better balanced.**  Characters have a lot more common-sense options for actions during combat, and saving throws are less lethal.

 

It's still a class based system, of course, with all that entails.  If you're planning to play a character for any length of time, you're pretty much obligated to plot out the character's class advancement path ahead of time.  There's a lot less mix-and-match from hundreds of available Feats, which removes one of my biggest complaints about Pathfinder, but it does also limit character development options.  Adding levels from other classes is still an option if you're willing to put up with the bookkeeping, which I am not.  5e is still relatively new, so the potential is there for the game to be crushed under the weight of a million splatbooks, but it's not there yet.

 

As usual the D&D system is geared toward playing only D&D campaigns--heroic to superheroic high fantasy and magic.  My 2nd level paladin is already able to do some pretty flashy magical things***.  Still, 5e managed to file the edges off a number of the biggest annoyances I've had with D&D for 40 years, which is saying something.

 

 

* The joke is that I literally spent half an hour googling for the 5e Paladin experience table.  There isn't one!  Everyone has the same table that doesn't show up if you google for a Paladin-specific one.

 

** Not perfectly, but now shields can be worth using, and the bastard sword is no longer obviously the best weapon in the game.

 

*** Like video-game flashy.

[massey]

One of my biggest complaints about Pathfinder is that eventually it just becomes obvious that you're adding numbers to beat the other guy's added numbers.  "Cool" effects and powers are trumped by adding lots of little bonuses up and having a bigger number at the end.  I don't like the "buffing" era of RPGs where it's all about stacking bonuses.

 

My other complaint is related to it, and that's that there's a very video-gamey feel to it.  It doesn't feel like the fantasy I grew up with, it clearly evokes a World of Warcraft vibe.  Some of their character classes even look like they stepped right out of a video game (Arcane Archer, anyone?).  It doesn't fit with my preferred early-80s "Excalibur", "Conan", and "Krull" style of fantasy.  But that's a personal preference, I know.

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, massey said:

 

My other complaint is related to it, and that's that there's a very video-gamey feel to it.  It doesn't feel like the fantasy I grew up with, it clearly evokes a World of Warcraft vibe.  Some of their character classes even look like they stepped right out of a video game (Arcane Archer, anyone?).  It doesn't fit with my preferred early-80s "Excalibur", "Conan", and "Krull" style of fantasy.  But that's a personal preference, I know.

You may have to remember that Pathfinder is a young person's game. a large majority of the people playing it weren't even alive in the 1980's.  Ancient history  is what happened before you were born. People play the references they were familiar with.

[zslane]

15 hours ago, Old Man said:

My 2nd level paladin is already able to do some pretty flashy magical things

 

1 hour ago, massey said:

My other complaint is related to it, and that's that there's a very video-gamey feel to it.

 

I kinda feel that both of the above observations are a by-product of contemporary RPG designs having to cater to a new generation of players whose ideas of what a "roleplaying game" ought to be is shaped more by video games than wargames. Today's players expect D&D to have most of the trappings of MMORPGs, and they expect their characters to start out highly competent and become superheroic after about 20 hours of play.

[Old Man]

Is that wrong?  I mean, if your target audience was raised on WOW and Diablo III, would it not be prudent to tailor the pencil-and-paper experience to those expectations?  Conversely, hasn't D&D pretty much always been this way?

[massey]

I'm not saying that it's wrong.  It's just not what appeals to me.  I understand that I'm now the target demographic for Just For Men commercials, not whatever hip things the kids are doing these days.  Doesn't mean I have to like it. 

[zslane]

Like massey says, it isn't wrong, but I think it is valuable to understand the epidemiology of design trends like this. It helps make sense of the nagging feelings one might have that today's RPGs just don't feel right.

[Scott Ruggels]

1 minute ago, zslane said:

Like massey says, it isn't wrong, but I think it is valuable to understand the epidemiology of design trends like this. It helps make sense of the nagging feelings one might have that today's RPGs just don't feel right.

 ...or why high crunch systems like Hero or old school war games are declining, especially amongst the younger generation.

[Lord Liaden]

On 11/4/2018 at 3:45 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 It's funny you should say that. 

 

Remember when silver age sentinels came out? 

 

I picked it up when it came out (loads of full-color artwork put it way, way ahead of 5e, at least in terms of appeal.) 

 

Golden and Silver age appeal to me way more than the gritty melodrama of today or the angst eighties or the antihero nineties.  Good guys have a belief in right and wrong; bad guys have motives that aren't genocide or world domination.  The characters themselves are having fun.  You can't hate that.

 

I was totally unfamiliar with what "d20 System" meant.  Took it home and thought "holy crap!  It's Dungeons and Spandex!" 

 

I gave it to a player who wanted it as a source book for the group he GMd for, and took it as a lesson learned.

 

 

 

Did you ever look at SAS for Tri-Stat System? Quite different from D20, rather simple mechanically but pretty elegantly flexible.

[Duke Bushido]

Yep.  Slapping down a trading card is much easier than breaking out a tape measure, adjusting for ocean action, and tracking arc of fire, reload rate, and available ammo. 

 

I'm not really a wargamer: never had the time or space for it), but for reasons I don't even understand, I _detest_ CCGs.  Except that short-lived Tomb Raider one, which was essentially a board game you built as you went.  I _loved_ that one, and it died horribly and quickly. 

 

Like that gruesome scene when she drowns) 

 

 

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 ...or why high crunch systems like Hero or old school war games are declining, especially amongst the younger generation.

 

After encountering Pathfinder I refuse to allow Hero to be described as "high crunch".  No way is Hero a tenth as complex as Pathfeater.

[Scott Ruggels]

2 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

After encountering Pathfinder I refuse to allow Hero to be described as "high crunch".  No way is Hero a tenth as complex as Pathfeater.

 

Hence the very streamlined Pathfinder 2.  But it's also a case of where the crunch is.  In Pathfinder the crunch is in special cases, and character advancement, it's not the advanced Calculus the point budgeting that  Hero started with, because after the character creation, Hero is pretty easy. It's just that for a Pathfinder player, the crunch doesn't hit until a few levels in, after you have made some emotional investment in the character.. Insidious, that is.