Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[rasmuswagner]

Wait, does that mean you can't use Magic Missile to pop all the Images like balloons anymore?

That's exactly what it means.It also means that Faerie Fire beats Mirror Image.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

*sticks head back in after a few years*

The 'benefit' of pathfinder originally was not the backwards compatibility (that didn't work anyway because they changed too much), but it was a reason to toss out the dumpster diving books and simplify things again. But now there is the Paizo horde of supplements to dumpster dive through, so the real benefit is gone.

That depends on how much you like Paizo's silly official setting. If you don't care about Golarion, the "Pathfinder Roleplaying Game" line (the generic stuff) puts out only a few books a year. And most Pathfinder GMs I've dealt with create their own worlds and don't bother with the "Player Companion" and "Campaign Setting" stuff. For those people, the benefit of a (relatively) small ruleset still exists.

[Rawbeard]

Paizo's silly official setting

If by silly you mean AWESOME! Giant space robot scorpions shooting fucking laserz! Damn! The setting is the best thing about Pathfinder.

[Voss]

*sticks head back in after a few years*

The 'benefit' of pathfinder originally was not the backwards compatibility (that didn't work anyway because they changed too much), but it was a reason to toss out the dumpster diving books and simplify things again. But now there is the Paizo horde of supplements to dumpster dive through, so the real benefit is gone.

That depends on how much you like Paizo's silly official setting. If you don't care about Golarion, the "Pathfinder Roleplaying Game" line (the generic stuff) puts out only a few books a year. And most Pathfinder GMs I've dealt with create their own worlds and don't bother with the "Player Companion" and "Campaign Setting" stuff. For those people, the benefit of a (relatively) small ruleset still exists.

I've never really looked at it. Everything I've seen in a bits and pieces is the standard sort of generic shit that came out of the TSR/WotC days, complete with Fantasy!Egypt and the like. But it does make for a lot of crap to wade through, as if the ridiculously trivial shifting about that the archetype system encourages wasn't minutiae heavy enough

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Paizo's silly official setting

If by silly you mean AWESOME! Giant space robot scorpions shooting fucking laserz! Damn! The setting is the best thing about Pathfinder.

And that would be one particular place in the setting. And that's only appealing to people who loved Expedition to the Barrier Peaks so much they wanted to make it the basis of their campaign.

I've never really looked at it. Everything I've seen in a bits and pieces is the standard sort of generic shit that came out of the TSR/WotC days, complete with Fantasy!Egypt and the like. But it does make for a lot of crap to wade through, as if the ridiculously trivial shifting about that the archetype system encourages wasn't minutiae heavy enough

The fact that 90% of Golarion is directly based on real-world counterparts, like Fantasy Colonial America, Fantasy Egypt, and Fantasy Reign of Terror France turned me off to the setting. The other thing that killed my enthusiasm was the conceptually bad art in the Inner Sea World Guide. For example, the illustration for Andorran (Fantasy Colonial America with a dash of Napoleonic France) is a rip-off of an 18th-Century painting of a bunch of soldiers with tri-cornered hats and overcoats charging over a barricade as Lady Liberty urges them on from behind. Except, instead of rifles they carry spears because the setting is at a late medieval tech level. The only problem is that I kept wondering why the richest country in the setting (they looted half the ancient treasures of Fantasy Egypt) can't even afford leather armor for its troops in a setting where armor is still an effective defense.

Basically, there are about two countries (Varisia and Cheliax) that have some original elements to them. These are the places where the early adventure paths from the 3.5 days were set. Once they decided they needed to develop a setting for their own RPG quickly, they hired a bunch of people as consultants to slap a world together quick, so you ended up with a lot of blatant ripoffs of history and old TSR modules.

[tussock]

The fact that 90% of Golarion is directly based on real-world counterparts, like Fantasy Colonial America, Fantasy Egypt, and Fantasy Reign of Terror France

It is? Holy crap, I should try reading more of it.

Because all that early stuff with Vbla and Cbla made me think it was a bunch of alphabet soup with almost no hooks beyond "the world used to have high level people and they were ass but that was long enough ago there has been serious mountain-folding go on since then, which is only a few thousand years, amiright"? And actual Evil monsters, which was cool, even if inbreeding was Evil now (because whut?).

At least the 3e FRCS had a whole bunch of adventure hooks in it for all sorts of levels. All I got out of Golarian was there's a hellmouth and silver dragons with epic paladins on their backs are all going extinct trying to keep it contained. Which is Elminster up to 11 and still no hooks in sight.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

At least the 3e FRCS had a whole bunch of adventure hooks in it for all sorts of levels. All I got out of Golarian was there's a hellmouth and silver dragons with epic paladins on their backs are all going extinct trying to keep it contained. Which is Elminster up to 11 and still no hooks in sight.

The Inner Sea World Guide has plenty of flavor of a certain type, but I think Paizo expects you to buy the Adventure Paths to get more detailed adventure hooks.

[magnuskn]

At least the 3e FRCS had a whole bunch of adventure hooks in it for all sorts of levels. All I got out of Golarian was there's a hellmouth and silver dragons with epic paladins on their backs are all going extinct trying to keep it contained. Which is Elminster up to 11 and still no hooks in sight.

The Inner Sea World Guide has plenty of flavor of a certain type, but I think Paizo expects you to buy the Adventure Paths to get more detailed adventure hooks.

Or their region books, which have all the adventure hooks one would need.

[hogarth]

I've never really looked at it. Everything I've seen in a bits and pieces is the standard sort of generic shit that came out of the TSR/WotC days, complete with Fantasy!Egypt and the like.

On the contrary, my complaint about Golarion is that it's not generic enough! I think the feeling is too modern (e.g. I like having more knights and dragons and fewer operas and newspapers) it has way too many countries that are based around a high-concept gimmick with no connection to anything else (e.g. robot country, always-winter country, French Revolution country, undead country, demon invasion country, steampunk country). What can you expect of a campaign setting that lists 28 different authors on the credits page?

I have similar problems with Eberron (too modern, too gimmicky), but at least there you can tell that it was written by a single person who gave some thought as to how the pieces fit together.

[tussock]

Is it weird that people want Jules Verne style flying trains with Isaac Asimov style robot drivers in their D&D, but various shitty firearm rules means no one wants guns? Hell, in D&D you're not even allowed decent rules for winches and levers and shit, so no Archimedes pulling ships into dry-dock single-handed and constructing massive trebuchets, but we get sentient robots.

Surely you'd add cannon-armed mobile siege wagons and massive siege-guns firing one-tonne stone balls like existed in the 14th century first. But then, D&D says you can't have your horse in the dungeon, when the real world used horses for marine boarding parties at sea, for defenders and attackers inside keeps and castles, basically anywhere they'd fit with a good push. D&D doesn't even have the fucking compass.

[talozin]

Is it weird that people want Jules Verne style flying trains with Isaac Asimov style robot drivers in their D&D, but various shitty firearm rules means no one wants guns?

I suspect that part of the problem is that guns generate cognitive dissonance in a way that flying trains with robot drivers don't. You can just have the latter, and as long as you bother to sort of think through the effects it will have on your setting, you can come up with something that players who don't know too much about economics or engineering will think is plausible. As long as they don't think too much about it.

But guns are problematic. We have this cultural image of guns as a kind of violence equalizer, a thing that allows Verne Troyer to fight Wladimir Klitschko and have an actual chance of winning. So guns are invariably unsatisfying in D&D; usually, they're a terrible weapon, objectively inferior to the composite bow -- which makes them not just worthless but actively damaging to the game's immersion, since shooting a naked high-level fighter 15 or 20 times isn't particularly effective, and that's not what we expect out of guns. Or else they're actually very effective weapons, better than swords, which is a problem in a game that people are probably playing because they want swording things to be a valid solution to fighting problems.

[Voss]

It is the rubber bullet/ nerf lightsaber effect that makes d20 starwars games so bad. People can handwave medieval combat as parries, glancing blows off armor, 'just a flesh wound' and so on, but the idea that guns just fucking kill people is pretty embedded (partially because of films- swordfights linger, gunfights drop bodies (except the protagonist in action films). So when you need to put half a dozen bullets in a guy (let alone a dragon or giant), it just isn't going to fit with expectations.

Trains and robots and shit is just flavor, on the other hand. Yeah it will rub some people the wrong way, but handwaved travel and weird background characters are within expectations.

I've never really looked at it. Everything I've seen in a bits and pieces is the standard sort of generic shit that came out of the TSR/WotC days, complete with Fantasy!Egypt and the like.

On the contrary, my complaint about Golarion is that it's not generic enough! I think the feeling is too modern (e.g. I like having more knights and dragons and fewer operas and newspapers) it has way too many countries that are based around a high-concept gimmick with no connection to anything else (e.g. robot country, always-winter country, French Revolution country, undead country, demon invasion country, steampunk country). What can you expect of a campaign setting that lists 28 different authors on the credits page?

If you can describe the countries that way, it is the very definition of generic- I can't think of one of those that hasn't been done repeatedly as fantasy settings.
Modern and generic are not opposed concepts. I can understand and sympathize with wanting more medieval fantasy flavor, but 'modern' fantasy is just as generic

[hogarth]

Is it weird that people want Jules Verne style flying trains with Isaac Asimov style robot drivers in their D&D [..]

I want crazy stuff in my D&D once in a very long while, for variety. That does not equate to "let's put in a bunch of entire countries where crazy stuff happens all the time".

If you can describe the countries that way, it is the very definition of generic - I can't think of one of those that hasn't been done repeatedly as fantasy settings.

I think it's a stretch to call the French Revolution a generic fantasy setting, but whatever. At any rate, my complaint is that there's not enough bog-standard D&D setting in Golarion; it's all "this ain't yo mamma's D&D!!!" garbage.

[magnuskn]

Well, I would say that there is actually pretty big variety of standard fantasy nations in Avistan, lessee... Varisia, Taldor, Absalom, Five Kings Mountains, Kyonin, Molthune, Isger, Nirmathas, Lastwall, the River Kingdoms, Mendev, Brevoy, the Hold of Belkzen, Lands of the Linnorm Kings. All of those pretty much adhere 90-100% to standard fantasy conventions.

The nations with "specials" would then be Cheliax, Andoran, Galt, Druma, Ustalav, Razmiran, Irrisen, the Worldwound, Realm of the Mammoth Lords and Numeria. Thats's 14 "normals" fantasy realms against 10 "off-the-wall" fantasy realms.

What I do firmly not agree with is that some of those nations do not fit well together with their neighbours, at least in Avistan. I really never paid much attention to Garund, I must confess.

[hogarth]

Well, I would say that there is actually pretty big variety of standard fantasy nations in Avistan, lessee... Varisia, Taldor, Absalom, Five Kings Mountains, Kyonin, Molthune, Isger, Nirmathas, Lastwall, the River Kingdoms, Mendev, Brevoy, the Hold of Belkzen, Lands of the Linnorm Kings. All of those pretty much adhere 90-100% to standard fantasy conventions.

YMMV, obviously, but Taldor is not medieval enough. Kyonin is too elfy. Belkzen is too orcy. Linnorm Kings is too vikingy. Nirmathas is at war. Mendev has a giant grimdark hole full of demons in it. Isger is ruled by devil-worshippers. Absalom is mostly suitable for urban adventures.

So I'm picky. So shoot me.

The nations with "specials" would then be Cheliax, Andoran, Galt, Druma, Ustalav, Razmiran, Irrisen, the Worldwound, Realm of the Mammoth Lords and Numeria.

You missed Nidal. And, of course, by limiting yourself to the northern continent you skipped over a bunch of the most silly countries like Jalmeray, Nex, Geb, Alkenstar, Rahadoum, Hermea, Mediogalti, etc.

[magnuskn]

Well, yeah, I see your complaints as a bit too picky. And you are correct that the Garund nations are more off the wall than the ones in Avistan.

[Archmage Joda]

So, for a different topic of pathfinder stuff and nonsense: in working on a sorcerer character of the sage bloodline (I just like intelligence as a casting stat much better than charisma, and the arcane bloodline is pretty much the best one as far as I can see), and I was trying to find ways to cover one of the sorcerer's weaknesses, and mimic a bit of the wizard's prepared casting shtick. So far, I've found the mnemonic robes, which allow 1/day casting from a written source of a spell, the rings of spell storing, and pages of knowledge. Are there any other ways for a sorcerer to simulate prepared casting in pathfinder that I've missed?

[tussock]

The alphabet soup is annoying either way. Our planet has Dane-mark's Danes next to Dutch people next to Dutchland (next to Ho-land), who are the Volk driving Volkswagons (which sounds like "folks", funny that). Francs is full of the Franks (being frank about Frank's discussion of franks and marks), as Angle-land is full of the Angle-ish, who speak Angle-ish (even in Wessex and Sussex and Essex and Middlesex, where the Saxons all settled, coming from Saxony).

The capital of Wessex is Westchester (pronouned Wooster), because it used to be an important place and the chester (like a chest) was the box some ancient powerful kings would sit on in court. If you've actually got a thing where the ancient king sat on a pile of skulls, then your center is called Weskul. That's how names work.

Other towns? Ox-ford, a town on a shallow bit of a wide river where all the oxen could ford. Cam-bridge, a town on a narrow bit of a deep river. Castle-ford. Guess what's there.


[*]So your ancient Cheliax people are the Cheleys living in Cheland speaking Chelish; and your conquered territories are Norchel and Wechel and Suchel (in the fucking North, West, and South).

I had such hopes when they started with "Sandpoint", but it didn't happen, there's places with East Asian names around English towns and Russian rivers, all overlapping and jumbled up like someone's just broken a piñata‎.


And no one calls any-fucking-thing the "Realm of the Mammath Lords", ever, not even the mammath lords, because they have an actual name which is not alphabet soup and people use it for them and everything about them. It's Mongol-ya (next to Siber-ya and Kamkut-ya and Russ-ya and Georg-ya), not the "Land of the Horse Lords".

See that, how one part of the world has lots of places called -land, and another part everything called -ya, which means land.


And yes, we call Deutchland Germany like the Romans did (who are not the people in Roman-ya, which is on the way to Russ-ya from Rome), but whatever, there's still a lot of common ground in how place names work, and more so in medieval times than now we've modernised a bunch of stuff by renaming it after some 16th-19th century dick in a fancy coat no one's heard of any more.


And not to put too fine a point on it, but Elves actually live in Elvony or Alfland, with the capital at Elom, home amongst the elms. Elf. Elm. Home. Elom. Not Kyonin.

[hogarth]

Well, yeah, I see your complaints as a bit too picky. And you are correct that the Garund nations are more off the wall than the ones in Avistan.

My ideal kind of campaign setting is one where I can plop down a module like The Keep on the Borderlands in multiple places without having to explain that everyone is a pirate, or a ghost, or a pirate ghost, or whatever gimmicky bullshit is going on in that part of the world.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Taldor: Monsters have been coming out of a patch of wilderness in greater-than usual numbers. A patrician who owns an estate nearby has been halfheartedly paying some people to man a fort to hold them off. He'll reward adventurers who go underground and permanently deal with the problem.

Varisia: One of the city-states has a border-fort that's being harassed by monsters. Tensions with other Varisian city-states keep them from diverting many of their forces to protect it. Maybe when you check out the monster lair, there's a new room where you fight a robot head that shoots eye beams at you.

River Kingdoms: One of the River Kingdoms has a border-fort that's being harassed by monsters. Tensions with other River Kingdoms keep them from diverting many of their forces to protect it, and the king will lose lots of authority if he/she actually leaves the kingdom to deal with it personally.

Osirion: There might be a pyramid nearby, and the city has lots of brown people. Maybe you fight a mummy in the caves.

Mendev: The army is much more worried about the demon invasion than some generic monsters. You can't get them to help at all.

Irrisen: It is snowy a lot. The towns are ruled by witches who are huge jerks, and they'll probably demand that you give them lots of treasure if you ask them to lend some tiny fighting men to go dungeon-delving with.

Mwangi Expanse: There's lots of jungle. About half the people in the keep are black, but if you leave the adventure to go to the city then most of them will be black.

Katapesh: The keep will get attacked by gnoll slavers at some point. And someone will try to sell the party drugs.

Druma: You probably buy and sell magic items from a merchant who is also a priest of the ruling theocracy. Trading to get stuff you actually want is easier, but if you stab the merchant and/or take his bling then you'll get really well-armed hit squads sent after you.

Brevoy: If the campaign drags on for multiple in-game years, then the (Russian-veneered) Game of Thrones plot occupying the nation might trivialize the PC achievements.

Nirmathas: People are worried about Molthune invading, but that might actually make it easier to recruit some henchmen if you say that the dungeon could give them fighting practice and loot to better equip themselves.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

So, for a different topic of pathfinder stuff and nonsense: in working on a sorcerer character of the sage bloodline (I just like intelligence as a casting stat much better than charisma, and the arcane bloodline is pretty much the best one as far as I can see), and I was trying to find ways to cover one of the sorcerer's weaknesses, and mimic a bit of the wizard's prepared casting shtick. So far, I've found the mnemonic robes, which allow 1/day casting from a written source of a spell, the rings of spell storing, and pages of knowledge. Are there any other ways for a sorcerer to simulate prepared casting in pathfinder that I've missed?

Actually, the main Arcane blood line is one of the two worst in the core rules (Abyssal being the other one). However, the Sage variant looks a little better, since it gives you a damage dealing 1st-level power instead of Arcane Bond. Not much better, because it's not a lot of damage and your bloodline arcana doesn't become useful until you get to higher levels. Still an improvement in your usefulness at low levels, though.

I've never tried to emulate prepared casting with a sorcerer in Pathfinder, so I can't help you with that.

[rasmuswagner]

Actually, the main Arcane blood line is one of the two worst in the core rules (Abyssal being the other one). However, the Sage variant looks a little better, since it gives you a damage dealing 1st-level power instead of Arcane Bond. Not much better, because it's not a lot of damage and your bloodline arcana doesn't become useful until you get to higher levels. Still an improvement in your usefulness at low levels, though.

I've never tried to emulate prepared casting with a sorcerer in Pathfinder, so I can't help you with that.

Nor can you help anyone with anything else, because you're a fucking moron. You take Sage for the ability to use Int over Cha. Losing Arcane Bond for a piddly ranged touch attack is a cost, not a benefit.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

You know, I had a brain fart and forgot that they increased the warrior's hit points, and thus the minions you face at 1st level. So yeah, at 1st level, you don't even have a shot at taking out an unwounded kobold with 1d4 damage.

[Username17]

Also, Arcane Bond still gives you one extra spell of your highest level each day, right? That makes it one of the best abilities at first level (one extra color spray), and unlike most of the other bullshit Bloodline powers it scales to your level. Now, the Wizard is still better, and their ability to cast any one of their known spells out of their arcane bond is much better because of their larger number of spells known. But there are damn few bloodline powers that are as good as arcane bond even so.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

So I've been wondering.

What are exactly the design goals of Pathfinder? Aside from a few odd quirks to the game engine (no technically empty levels, we have prestige classes, swift actions out the ass etc.) I don't actually see an overarching design philosophy to the game. Unlike, say, 4E D&D. Granted, 4E D&D's design goals were retarded, but you couldn't say that it was lacking in vision.

What exactly is Pathfinder's endgame? Like, if for some reason the USSC ruled the d20 SRD unconstitutional and the game designers were forced at gunpoint to shit out another game with the Pathfinder brand, what would the game look like?