Pathfinder Is Still Bad

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Apr 16, 2015 7:50 pm

Souran wrote:So people are getting their physical copies of "Pathfinder Unchained" and instead of being the BIG BOOK OF D20 FIXES people thought that they were getting it is instead quite literally just a pathfinder version of unearthed arcana.

I don't understand why people are surprised by this. Paizo had the opportunity to make the BIG BOOK OF D20 FIXES when they first made the game. They had people offering to do destructive testing and hard core mathhammering for them for free. They had a mature system with nearly a decade of people poking at it and writing down the failure points and then archiving them in publicly accessible databases.

If Paizo was ever going to "fix d20" they would have done it in 2009, when people who were really good at that sort of thing were offering to do it for them and let them sell the product. They didn't do it then, so they obviously aren't going to do it now.

-Username17

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Thu Apr 16, 2015 8:10 pm

Even still, it's hilarious to see how badly they are failing to hit the expectations of even Paizoites. The closest thing I've seen to a positive review of the VCM system is "One or two of them might be sort of useful for somebody who has a bunch of extra feats to burn"

But burning 6 feats to get a 1/day smite, a half level lay on hands, and a bunch of features nobody ever gave a fuck about (detect evil and aura of good are your 1st and 3rd level benefits) is so laughably bad that even people who support Paizo in most things are saying "dude that's awful".

souran · Post by **souran** » Thu Apr 16, 2015 8:32 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
I don't understand why people are surprised by this. Paizo had the opportunity to make the BIG BOOK OF D20 FIXES when they first made the game. They had people offering to do destructive testing and hard core mathhammering for them for free. They had a mature system with nearly a decade of people poking at it and writing down the failure points and then archiving them in publicly accessible databases.

-Username17

In 2009 it was conventional wisdom that letting the rogue sneak attack a slightly larger number of types of creatures and giving the fighter some benefits to his will save against fear were sufficient fixes for these classes.

I still like 4E in part because it at least addressed the fighter/wizard issue. The fix was not palitable to most people, but at least it did something.

It has taken six more years for "caster edition/caster supremacy" to become an issue that is not simply shouted down on their own forums.

Even paizo fans WANT there to be some attempt made at actually fixing the game. That was why this product was big deal. However, even after a big reveal where even the reviewers are wondering how much of this content will ever see play anywhere there are still a ton of people lineing up to give Paizo money because this is the closest thing to 3.5 D&D that is being sold.

Pathfinder needs a revision desperately. Paizo ACTED like this was some sort of first step. Instead this book is 99% stuff that NOBODY will ever think about in another month.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Apr 16, 2015 8:47 pm

I am legitimately surprised that they didn't use the opportunity to make ballsier moves. I didn't expect them to do something that would fix the game but I am surprised that they at least didn't try some more radical ideas. Everything I'm hearing about sounds pretty damn tame.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Thu Apr 16, 2015 11:09 pm

souran wrote:In 2009 it was conventional wisdom that letting the rogue sneak attack a slightly larger number of types of creatures and giving the fighter some benefits to his will save against fear were sufficient fixes for these classes.

Pretty sure the fighter part is not true.
And honestly the rogue wouldn't have been as bad, if it weren't for all the rogue nerfs, making monsters (and other classes) stronger and all the skill changes (less punishing non-class skills and the changes specifically to nerf rogues like sleight of hand and tumble)

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Thu Apr 16, 2015 11:56 pm

The iterative attack replacement can be capped to the same average damage as a standard iterative attack if you just limit the multiplier for exceeding AC by 5n to however many iterative attacks you would have otherwise had. Lots of characters would still be using Power Attack 100% of the time either way, btw, because the marginal utility of getting another hit against the marginal utility of giving it up for a pre-multiplier bonus to damage reduces as your attack bonus increases, just as before.

A difference to consider is that it's more swingy. Inside of the levels where attacker and defender are on the same RNG (which is the only place you care about this rule in the first place), the Unchained rule turns a bellcurve into a flat line. A string of four of the same number on a d20 is a one in one-hundred-and-sixty-thousand chance ordinarily, but the Unchained rule outputs nothing but that. If your AC exceeds the monster's last attack by an even 20, he still gets an unbroken string of hits for every last one of his attacks 5% of the time, and even if one or more of your attacks completely eclipses his AC, you still whiff it 5% of the time. I think. The way it's been described in this topic, this rule wouldn't invalidate auto-misses but would lessen the effect of auto-hits.

Let's compare the outputs of two characters, both of them with a BAB of 19, no additional attack mods, 40 damage per hit, and an enemy immune to crits, the first using the Pathfinder Unchained rule, and the other using typical iterative attacks:

UNCHAINED CHARACTER:
5%: Miss
20%: 40 damage.
25%: 80 damage.
25%: 120 damage.
25%: 160 damage.

ORDINARY CHARACTER:
~0.47%: All misses.
~10.92%: 40 Damage
~40.9%: 80 Damage
~39.37%: 120 Damage
~8.9%: 160 Damage

Both average 98 damage.

A more complete table for 19 BAB vs. 20 AC:

Code: Select all

~0.47%&#58; All misses.

~8.9%&#58; Hit/Miss/Miss/Miss
~1.4%&#58; Miss/Hit/Miss/Miss
~0.47%&#58; Miss/Miss/Hit/Miss
~0.15&#58; Miss/Miss/Miss/Hit

~27%&#58; Hit/Hit/Miss/Miss
~8.9%&#58; Hit/Miss/Hit/Miss
~3.0%&#58; Hit/Miss/Miss/Hit
~1.4%&#58; Miss/Hit/Hit/Miss
~0.47%&#58; Miss/Hit/Miss/Hit
~0.15&#58; Miss/Miss/Hit/Hit

~27%&#58; Hit/Hit/Hit/Miss
~8.9%&#58; Hit/Hit/Miss/Hit
~3.0%&#58; Hit/Miss/Hit/Hit
~0.47%&#58; Miss/Hit/Hit/Hit

~8.9%&#58; All hits.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 1:11 am

souran wrote:Which basically means that this will be a big book of shit nobody cares about because you can't ever find a game that uses these house rules adjustments to the 3.5 houserules that are pathfinder.

I've played in plenty of 3.5E home games where stuff from Unearthed Arcana was allowed, so I'm not sure why Pathfinder home games will universally ban the Pathfinder version of Unearthed Arcana.

Insomniac · Post by **Insomniac** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 2:05 am

Unchained, huh? Seems pretty tame and lame to me. Its not even Unearthed Arcana. At leas that introduced things with some traction, like Fighter and Wizard Variants, Wildshape Rangers, Savage and Divine Bards, Spontaneous Divine Casting and Gestalt rules.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 6:54 pm

Seerow wrote:Even still, it's hilarious to see how badly they are failing to hit the expectations of even Paizoites. The closest thing I've seen to a positive review of the VCM system is "One or two of them might be sort of useful for somebody who has a bunch of extra feats to burn"

A new subsystem with a bunch of options, and almost all of them are mediocre to the point of useless? So ... a Paizo product?

I was hoping for something different too, but it doesn't really surprise me. While some of PFs design issues may be down to bad mandates, I think a lot of it is just people having no idea how to write mechanics, and trying new territory won't fix that.

There definitely was some hype about a guy who appeared to understand math joining Paizo. But maybe he's just one writer among several and can't overrule people. Or his reputation was overhyped. Or ... even in an experimental book, the mandate is to keep the same balance paradigm from main-line PF.

I could certainly believe that last one. Paizo has frequently taken a stand-point of "the rules work perfectly fine - there aren't even really errors, just stuff we have to 'clarify' so people use it right" And commercially speaking, it works for them. So it's entirely possible that they'd cripple their experimentation for the sake of not admitting PF core could be flawed.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 7:05 pm

PF's selling point seemed to have been "We are exactly the same as 3.5 but better so you can port over your level 15 fighter!", more meaningful changes to the game may have alienated their fans. Heck, 4e is sometimes held up as an example of "the evils of 'balance' in RPG design" by people who want to justify their MTP'ing of everything.

...or am I giving PF designers too much credit and they really did honestly think a +2 to saves vs fear was what it took to solve caster disparity?

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 8:37 pm

I understand that they're selling point, and what their ravenous fans demand, is that they don't stray too far from 3.5 but this book was supposed to be them letting loose (Why else name it unchained?) where hey 'could' release whatever they want and always be able to say "Well these are just optional so fuck sticking to tradition". I legitimately thought that this would be where they actually cut loose a bit.

I mean 'this' would be the chance they get to actually truly break out of their shell and not really have to worry about splitting the fanbase because it could all be disavowed as 'experimental'. This could've been the book (or the start of a small book series) where they could poke around and see where what was the least offensive changes they could make to the game in prep for a new edition. It seems like a colossal missed opportunity.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 8:55 pm

MGuy wrote:It seems like a colossal missed opportunity.

Isn't that their unofficial motto?

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 9:34 pm

MGuy wrote:I understand that they're selling point, and what their ravenous fans demand, is that they don't stray too far from 3.5 but this book was supposed to be them letting loose (Why else name it unchained?) where hey 'could' release whatever they want and always be able to say "Well these are just optional so fuck sticking to tradition". I legitimately thought that this would be where they actually cut loose a bit.

I mean 'this' would be the chance they get to actually truly break out of their shell and not really have to worry about splitting the fanbase because it could all be disavowed as 'experimental'. This could've been the book (or the start of a small book series) where they could poke around and see where what was the least offensive changes they could make to the game in prep for a new edition. It seems like a colossal missed opportunity.

But why do it here instead of developing a new system, then nickel and diming people to playtest it like WotC did with the Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic, the Tome of Blue and that other one?

I really don't understand how intelligent people on the Den get caught up in marketing bullshit so easily.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 12:42 am

Mask_De_H wrote:
MGuy wrote:I understand that they're selling point, and what their ravenous fans demand, is that they don't stray too far from 3.5 but this book was supposed to be them letting loose (Why else name it unchained?) where hey 'could' release whatever they want and always be able to say "Well these are just optional so fuck sticking to tradition". I legitimately thought that this would be where they actually cut loose a bit.

I mean 'this' would be the chance they get to actually truly break out of their shell and not really have to worry about splitting the fanbase because it could all be disavowed as 'experimental'. This could've been the book (or the start of a small book series) where they could poke around and see where what was the least offensive changes they could make to the game in prep for a new edition. It seems like a colossal missed opportunity.
But why do it here instead of developing a new system, then nickel and diming people to playtest it like WotC did with the Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic, the Tome of Blue and that other one?

I really don't understand how intelligent people on the Den get caught up in marketing bullshit so easily.

That's exactly my point. I 'thought' this WOULD be them doing exactly that. I assumed that this was the first book in possibly a line of books that they were going to release to start testing the waters for their new edition. That's why I'm surprised that they didn't take this opportunity to start doing that.

Insomniac · Post by **Insomniac** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 3:07 am

I think if they did some radical things, like Tome level martial classes and Feats that Actually Matter but prefaced it with, "Yeah, we're whipping our dicks out and sticking them in the mashed potatoes but all of this is optional," Paizo probably thought it would be decried as revolutionary cheese that would be banned for Pathfinder Society play and deep-sixed by Pathfinder DMs the world over. Nobody would buy it because its gonna hit d20pfsrd.com in its totality crunch-wise and why spend money on a book that is just gonna get disallowed all time?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 3:49 am

Pathfinder being unbalanced is not particularly obscure trivia relegated to the corners of the internet where people give a shit. Caster edition is a meme people used to convince their friends to play 4e (and now 5e) all the time. Even Pathfinder itself made mad bank on the claim that they were going to fix 3.5. Seriously. Name something the 4e or 5e community consistently praises about their respective editions that isn't "they don't have 3.5's balance problems" - and those games aren't even remotely fucking balanced!

Every single flavor of post-3.5 D&D has sold itself by claiming that it was balanced and being different enough from 3.5 (in PF's case if just barely) that the claim seems plausible if you only examine it by squinting at it in a dark room while wearing sunglasses. And for the most part that's worked. Pathfinder's decision not to rock the boat is completely fucking stupid. Everyone wants the boat rocked. Every edition of D&D since 3.5 has sold itself on rocking the boat. Rock the fucking boat. You can't lose by claiming to balance your game and actually changing shit up - the worst case is you fail and people spend a year telling their friends you succeeded and everything's awesome now so spend cashmonies on the books.

Pathfinder Unchained very obviously did not rock the boat. You could probably count the number of people who have been swayed from the "Pathfinder is unbalanced" to "Pathfinder is balanced" camp on one hand. The number of people who are going to switch to Pathfinder from other editions because of Pathfinder Unchained is zero. It's just another generic splat to push with optional all over it so your DM is more likely to veto it.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 4:44 am

MGuy wrote:That's exactly my point. I 'thought' this WOULD be them doing exactly that. I assumed that this was the first book in possibly a line of books that they were going to release to start testing the waters for their new edition. That's why I'm surprised that they didn't take this opportunity to start doing that.

Why would you think that though? It's not offering new classes and material that you can claim plausible deniability on (like the 4e test books) but offering alternate versions of base classes with the same name (like Unearthed Arcana, which PU is clearly meant to be) along with some extra miscellaneous crap. Although, to be fair, this might be a misguided attempt at testing the waters; who knows?

DSM: if rocking the boat was what people wanted, 4e wouldn't have crashed and burned. 3e was sold on simplifying, 3.5 was sold on balance, PF was sold on balance and backwards compatibility (which means they couldn't rock the boat much at all to start) and 5e is trying to be all things to all people and is as conservative as you can get. And why does Pathfinder need to make people switch (or how were they going to get people to switch with a bloody splatbook)? They're in a comfortable lead with no legitimate challengers to the throne. Suckers will buy for the claims and if word of mouth goes bad, just pocket what people like and call it a day.

And another thing: fucking nothing outside of Gestalt rules and Traits/Flaws had any traction for reasons other than optimizing in UA. Not even Wildshape Rangers (which you'd think would be a thing people would want). Fuck, outside of Domain Wizards, Traits/Flaws and a couple of the ACFs, nothing in that goddamned book is useful outside of edge case builds.

It's a stupid book full of bloatware crap like UA and most every late period 3.5 product. This is not news or surprising or even really relevant except to keep this thread lurching like the zombie it is.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 6:53 am

You're alternating between gibberish and making my point. Pathfinder was explicitly sold as a rebalancing of 3.5. When you see people pitching 4e to friends or strangers, you never see them talking about 4e's merits - you see them talking about 3.5's flaws. When you see people pitching 5e to friends or strangers, you never see them talking about 5e's merits - you also see them talking about 3.5's flaws. If Pathfinder hadn't done that, do you think it would have done better or worse? If 4e and 5e's word of mouth didn't include heavy doses of "3.5 has problems, look over here," do you think it would have done better or worse?

Yes, Pathfinder did better than 4e, and will probably do better than 5e. That is not the point. The point is that the each and every single one of those games' fanbases actively talks about how they want a better balanced D&D, and they want it so much they'll pay you money to promise it and not deliver. Pathfinder made the minimum necessary changes to dazzle some fanboys into believing it had fixed some things, but that jig is basically up. If they want to improve their market share (instead of pushing splats to an increasingly apathetic customer base), they need to do the same thing they did last time - make some promises, and change shit around enough to bare minimum confuse people into thinking those promises might have been fulfilled (and preferably actually fix some things, but these are the PF devs we're talking about, so...).

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:56 am

DSMatticus wrote:You're alternating between gibberish and making my point. Pathfinder was explicitly sold as a rebalancing of 3.5. When you see people pitching 4e to friends or strangers, you never see them talking about 4e's merits - you see them talking about 3.5's flaws. When you see people pitching 5e to friends or strangers, you never see them talking about 5e's merits - you also see them talking about 3.5's flaws. If Pathfinder hadn't done that, do you think it would have done better or worse? If 4e and 5e's word of mouth didn't include heavy doses of "3.5 has problems, look over here," do you think it would have done better or worse?

5e is sold on being simpler than 4e and/or a return to form. 4e was sold on being radical and revolutionary and on a general idea of "3.5 is for old losers". The math just working was more of a selling point for 4e than fixing 3.5's imbalances, and that was just pie in the sky, system agnostic posturing. Fuck, man, if you get down to it, they didn't actually fix shit, the Druid becoming a second class citizen being just how things hashed out power wise. Pathfinder was also a return to form to an edition people liked more than the current with some added smoke and mirrors and feel good "community involvement". Balance only polls with the forum crowd, and most of them have no idea what they want the balance point to be. Some of them don't even get the game breaks down because nobody fucking plays optimized casters in their games and level 20 runs the same as level 5 to them.

Yes, Pathfinder did better than 4e, and will probably do better than 5e. That is not the point. The point is that the each and every single one of those games' fanbases actively talks about how they want a better balanced D&D, and they want it so much they'll pay you money to promise it and not deliver. Pathfinder made the minimum necessary changes to dazzle some fanboys into believing it had fixed some things, but that jig is basically up. If they want to improve their market share (instead of pushing splats to an increasingly apathetic customer base), they need to do the same thing they did last time - make some promises, and change shit around enough to bare minimum confuse people into thinking those promises might have been fulfilled (and preferably actually fix some things, but these are the PF devs we're talking about, so...).

Fanboys will pay a lot of money for a lot of things, balance being one of them. They will also pay money for things like good art, evocative classes and features and gimmicky shit. The former two are also likely to actually widen the market share by getting new players into the hobby on cool points alone. Releasing spot fixes isn't going to do dick diddly for their market share, because the only people who a) care deeply about balance and b) will pay money for this balance are fanboys who already have drank the Kool-Aid and assholes like us (and we probably don't or won't pay for it until forced by social pressures). They basically have to release a new edition to get an influx of new people. Shell games and splatbooks are good enough for keeping the committed, at least for awhile. Yeah, they might complain, but fuck 'em; they'll keep buying unless you fail cataclysmically at everything (like nWoD), confuse and alienate your base (like 4e or nWoD, really) or some hot new thing steals your thunder (like 2e and 4e).

EDIT: New dude, we don't have hard numbers, but we do have some signs of general shakiness; the speed of Essentials getting released, the speed of 5e getting announced, PF beating the sum total of D&D material sold on ICv2 sales data around 2010, the reprinting of 3e material during 4e's run, and the old "hundreds of thousands and millions" chestnut. Most damningly, it failed to beat its predecessor's numbers (which we had) and ended up losing to a bastard cousin of said predecessor.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:30 am

Ok, wait a minute, anyone care to explain what the "caster edition" argument is?

Because yes, I'm perfectly aware that PF gave casters a lot of new cool toys.

However, PF also took away the most borked toys casters had:
-Wish nerfed into the ground.
-Polymorph/shapechange and friends nerfed into the ground so casters don't get to cherry pick monster abilities at will.
-No incantrix/shadowcraft mage/Initiate of the sevenfold veil/Cheater of Mystra borked or other borked Prc mages.
-Casters can no longer use a single spell to get a gold wyrm as their pet out of thin air before 20th level.

So far, I've yet to see anything new in PF that comes anywhere close to the above. Casters in PF still rule above, but not as high, since all of their top tricks have been cut. 3.5 was a lot more caster edition than PF.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 12:16 pm

Let me say with as little condescension as possible that I don't think you really understood what made 3.5 caster edition. 3.5 was not caster edition because it had some cheesy bullshit (and while PF tossed out some of the cheese they've created plenty of their own to replace it, so you can't really claim an improvement in this area - if you think there has been, dumpster dive harder). 3.5 was caster edition because even without attempting to pile cheese into a mountain that reaches the heavens, casters were just plain better than you.

The cleric is a better fighter than the fighter, and is also a full caster on top of that. The druid is a better fighter than the fighter, gets a pet who is a better fighter than the fighter, and is also a full caster on top of that. The wizard if they really, really want to be can still be a better fighter than the fighter, but it doesn't really matter because the reason wizards are awesome is because for a single spell they can (and usually will) deny multiple opponents actions for multiple rounds, reducing the fight to little more than cleanup. And with hitpoint bloat being what it is, the fighter swinging his sword just cannot deal enough damage to matter next to the the wizard's red-light-green-light control of the battle.

In PF, every casting class has additional features baked right into it relative to its 3.5 counterpart - it's a straight up buff, and if you look hard enough some of them are actually awesome. The fighter, meanwhile, is only marginally improved (bigger numbers, yeah, that'll make everything better). Plus, there are a ton of new full and partial casters who also make the fighter look like a joke. And magic item crafting no longer costs experience, so wizards get more cool toys than you. PF is just 3.5 shuffled around with a bunch of new content that slots into the same old wizards rool fighters drool paradigm.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 12:37 pm

Maglag wrote:Ok, wait a minute, anyone care to explain what the "caster edition" argument is?

DSM basically hits it out of the park. Casters aren't better than you in 3.5 because they are able to take advantage of weird bullshit power loops and employ broken combos that come online at level 15 or higher. They are better than you because they are better than you. Because Wizards and Druids and Clerics will take actions that win encounters and Fighters won't. Because casters hit above 50% on the same game test and non-casters do not.

Maglag wrote:Because yes, I'm perfectly aware that PF gave casters a lot of new cool toys.

This is 100% of the issue. What a Caster could theoretically do or not do in a 20th level no-holds-barred game doesn't mean dick diddly because you are not playing in one of those and neither is anyone else. What matters is how good casters do in the actual encounters they have at the levels people actually play at with the tools they are allowed to use. And looked at that way, Casters get, as you've noted, "a lot of cool new toys."

And Fighters now have to spend two feats to get Improved Trip and it isn't as good.

-Username17

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 12:41 pm

DSMatticus wrote:Let me say with as little condescension as possible that I don't think you really understood what made 3.5 caster edition. 3.5 was not caster edition because it had some cheesy bullshit (and while PF tossed out some of the cheese they've created plenty of their own to replace it, so you can't really claim an improvement in this area - if you think there has been, dumpster dive harder). 3.5 was caster edition because even without attempting to pile cheese into a mountain that reaches the heavens, casters were just plain better than you.

The cleric is a better fighter than the fighter, and is also a full caster on top of that. The druid is a better fighter than the fighter, gets a pet who is a better fighter than the fighter, and is also a full caster on top of that. The wizard if they really, really want to be can still be a better fighter than the fighter, but it doesn't really matter because the reason wizards are awesome is because for a single spell they can (and usually will) deny multiple opponents actions for multiple rounds, reducing the fight to little more than cleanup. And with hitpoint bloat being what it is, the fighter swinging his sword just cannot deal enough damage to matter next to the the wizard's red-light-green-light control of the battle.

And that was even more true in 3.5, in particular because the cleric/wizard could call an even stronger cleric/wizard as a standard action.

So again, where did PF did worst than them in that department?

DSMatticus wrote: In PF, every casting class has additional features baked right into it relative to its 3.5 counterpart - it's a straight up buff, and if you look hard enough some of them are actually awesome.

Between 3.5's ACFs like Abrupt Jaunt and Precocious Apprentice, stuff like Hummingbird Familiar, and super specialist that could be taken at 2nd or 3rd level if I remember correctly, I don't see any buff, only Pathfinder having a better organized wiki to help you find that stuff.

DSMatticus wrote: The fighter, meanwhile, is only marginally improved (bigger numbers, yeah, that'll make everything better). Plus, there are a ton of new full and partial casters who also make the fighter look like a joke. And magic item crafting no longer costs experience, so wizards get more cool toys than you. PF is just 3.5 shuffled around with a bunch of new content that slots into the same old wizards rool fighters drool paradigm.

At least PF casters have to pay something for their gear.

A 3.5 caster only paid gold/exp for magic gear if they wanted, between stuff like Thougt Bottles or plain wish SLA abuse. Otherwise 3.5 casters got their gear 100% free in a single day if that.

FrankTrollman wrote:
Maglag wrote:Ok, wait a minute, anyone care to explain what the "caster edition" argument is?
DSM basically hits it out of the park. Casters aren't better than you in 3.5 because they are able to take advantage of weird bullshit power loops and employ broken combos that come online at level 15 or higher. They are better than you because they are better than you. Because Wizards and Druids and Clerics will take actions that win encounters and Fighters won't. Because casters hit above 50% on the same game test and non-casters do not.

Again, my question is why do you claim PF is worst than 3.5 in that regard?

FrankTrollman wrote:
Maglag wrote:Because yes, I'm perfectly aware that PF gave casters a lot of new cool toys.
This is 100% of the issue. What a Caster could theoretically do or not do in a 20th level no-holds-barred game doesn't mean dick diddly because you are not playing in one of those and neither is anyone else. What matters is how good casters do in the actual encounters they have at the levels people actually play at with the tools they are allowed to use. And looked at that way, Casters get, as you've noted, "a lot of cool new toys."

And Fighters now have to spend two feats to get Improved Trip and it isn't as good.

-Username17

I've been in games with incantrixes and shadowcraft mages (whose cheese can and will come online much earlier than 20th level). I've seen other people claim they've been in such games, including how they owned everything with cheaters of mystra. In the recent OSSR relentlessimp keeps complaining about how the adventure writers didn't take in account the casters using magic to get magic gear for free while mass-calling outsider slaves.

You yourself wrote the tomes that are based on casters spamming wish SLA for gear starting at 7th level until gold becomes worthless trash, so yes, that kind of extreme cheese saw play in 3.5, and PF rules specifically balanced that bit out if nothing else.

karpik777 · Post by **karpik777** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 12:55 pm

maglag wrote:-No incantrix/shadowcraft mage/Initiate of the sevenfold veil/Cheater of Mystra borked or other borked Prc mages.

It is only because they replaced those with spells and feats (ie. Blood money and Sacred geometry)

Also note how in Unchained they gave Monk full BAB but nerfed his will save because a full BAB, all good save class would be OP, but had no problems with giving divine casters Paladin's Divine grace as a feat.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 1:15 pm

Pathfinder is Caster Edition because none of the 3.5 stuff you're naming is available before level 7 and the majority of it either comes in late-cycle expansion books or is often spot-nerfed by DMs in actual play (I've never been allowed to use Planar Ally/Binding as described in the PHB). Pathfinder, on the other hand, gives out free extra hit points, special attacks, and other goodies at level 1-6, where most games happen, and in the core book.