Pathfinder: the Lowdown

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virgil
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Post by virgil »

The constant changes, like watching WoW patch notes, is further evidence that Pathfinder is merely one or two guys' house rules who analyze the rules with their 'gut' rather than any kind of objective viewpoint.
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Post by Roy »

I'll cover some of these in a bit more depth.
Lago PARANOIA wrote:Is Polymorph fixed yet?
No. You still have to go dumpster diving, in fact you do so more than you would before.
How about monster levels? Is that fixed?
What is this about?
Do spellcasters still burn experience points to craft magic items?
No, just the cash. And while before you could mitigate the XP cost by 'riding the Gravy Train', that is to say intentionally burning enough XP to be one level behind while all the extra gear ensures you are not actually any weaker, then you get extra XP for being lower level so you can catch up, now you don't even need to. You just double your cash.
MGuy wrote:How did the barbarian take a step back? I thought they actually gave them Rage abilities on top of just still having all of their 3.5 stuff.
Usual PA nerf stuff. Most rage abilities are useless. Like 'darkvision for 1 round' useless. A few are worthwhile, so you'll just spam those. The entire system introduces more bookkeeping when it was supposed to be less.
How do you feel about the skill system (other than it being stolen from saga)?
Aside from it being stolen from saga and bastardized in the process, the Fly skill makes it worse as it is a skill tax for the already skill deprived non casters. Which means if you want to be relevant, you have 1 + Int skills as you need Fly in order to keep up. Meanwhile casters, even if they did take that skill are not any worse off, as they've freed up a point from their skill tax.
How have bard's taken a step back? I thought they couldn't get any worse
More bookkeeping, in addition to their songs not lasting as long. Considering how weaksauce they were without heavy inspire pimping as is and I doubt anyone there was competent enough to even consider the possibility of +14 songs or whatever...
What have they changed about monsters exactly? I thought they were being kept pretty much the same.
Let's see...

The CMB bullshit, aka just auto attack it because maneuvers will not succeed.
Feats. They get more of them, so now you have to pick more stuff and recalculate stat blocks. Also, existing feats, particularly Power Attack got nerfed, and that affects just about every melee enemy ever.
Undead get Cha to HP, like Con for most everything else. So now suddenly skeletons have 1 HP instead of 6 and zombies have 5 instead of 16... but Dread Wraiths have 188 instead of 104. Which means skeletons still die with one decent hit, but idiots (aka, their marketing base) will think they're less dangerous and use more... except they still do the same damage. Zombies are just joke enemies instead of at least being able to possibly survive long enough to fight back, and Dread Wraiths will just slaughter you.
If you kept the feats the same and just used the bonus abilities a fighter gets (along with the increase in bonus feats given every 2 levels) would that make them any better?
Not really. Still, the whole point of being a Fighter is to get feats. And if you get feats faster normally, you need fewer levels of it. Getting some small bonuses to your numbers spread way too thin to really matter does not justify the fact your class features still become less useful over time and not more, as you run out of worthwhile feats to take. Even if you go searching through every book in existence, you'd be hard pressed to find enough feats to justify the lack of real class features, as most feats are weaksauce.
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Post by Judging__Eagle »

virgileso wrote:The constant changes, like watching WoW patch notes, is further evidence that Pathfinder is merely one or two guys' house rules who analyze the rules with their 'gut' rather than any kind of objective viewpoint.
The WoW patches are based on PvP Arena results.

For ages, the "feral" druid specialty was considered so weaksauce, but Druids were considered so "over-represented" (all were "resto" or restoration (healing) builds) that Blizzard was basically grinding its wheels update after update before they decided to say "fuck it, Feral Druids outDPS Rogues, Rogues have special Rogue abilities, Panther/Lion Druids just get mad DPS".

The patches in WoW are based on not a few, but literally thousands of arena matches.

Since there are standings and records of who are "the top teams" for all of WoW, and in each battle-group, as well as each server, it's actually pretty easy to see if any single class or build is over represented.

With Paizil... their playtests are about "fun"; not looking at how Fighters just can't seem to deal with the crowd-control abilities of their enemies; or that Wizards are still able to 1-round their targets.
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Post by Ganbare Gincun »

MGuy wrote:Well I guess my last question would be:

What is salvageable from Pathfinder?

My meaning: What was actually a good idea or a step in the right direction that they made fall on its face? What half baked ideas can be made into a whole plan?
And furthermore, what good ideas can be derived from Trailblazer? Has anyone picked that up yet?
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Post by TOZ »

Is Trailblazer even released yet? The preview didn't show a whole lot.

Completely unrelated, when I went to check for Trailblazer availability, I see Mongoose publishing has released a how-to on publishing in the RPG business...
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Post by Surgo »

TOZ wrote:Completely unrelated, when I went to check for Trailblazer availability, I see Mongoose publishing has released a how-to on publishing in the RPG business...
Talk about the blind leading the blind, damn.

Then again, I guess they were somehow a successful publisher. Your products don't need to be better than shit to still be successful.
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Post by IGTN »

Surgo wrote:Then again, I guess they were somehow a successful publisher. Your products don't need to be better than shit to still be successful.
They're writing about how to publish successfully, apparently, not about how to "write well" or "achieve design goals" or any of that other stuff.
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Huh?

Post by Johnny Scott »

This a premature post, as the final version of the Pathfinder Game will not be available until GenCon, so none of the information the OP presents can be taken as fact.

Since all of his points are based on the Beta version rather than the final version, and some of the information he presents is not accurate based on even the Beta ruleset, I submit to you that the OP is a person with either an axe to grind against Paizo, or someone who did not fully understand the playtest process (which is reinforced by the fact that the OP refers to the Beta, but treats it like the final version of the rules).

Many of the "facts" posted are incorrect based on the rules found in the Pathfinder Beta rule book. For example:

I can tell you from my playtest that the Fighter is much more powerful now than he was in 3.5. I can also tell you that the new feat progression (1 every odd level) helps the PCs (including Fighters) grow in power more quickly.

As for the spells, the information we used during playtesting included clearer wording regarding spell effect (especially Dispel Magic), and duration. None were nerfed significantly, and in fact, quite a few were amped up a bit.

True, you will have to do a little adjusting to make some 3.5 books compatible with Pathfinder, but the amount of work necessary is not as dramatic as the OP makes it out to be. Adjusting a stat block for an NPC or monster should only take a matter of minutes to complete.

I, for one, am anxiously awaiting the Pathfinder RPG, and hope all of you will not take the OP's bitter pill of a post as the gospel truth.

Pathfinder is the next logical step for the 3.5 ruleset (a version 3.75, if you will), and is well worth using if 4E is not doing for you, or you are looking for a version of D&D that is close to that of 3.5.

Give Pathfinder a fair chance. I believe you will all be pleasantly surprised when you see the final product if you give it a chance.
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Post by NineInchNall »

Pathfinder is the next logical step for the 3.5 ruleset (a version 3.75, if you will), and is well worth using if 4E is not doing for you, or you are looking for a version of D&D that is close to that of 3.5.
:mischief: :ugone2far:

BAH HA HA HA HA HA! :rofl:

Your entire post amounts to, "You're wrong 'cause I say you're wrong."

Want to try again with some nice, meaty numbers and arguments?
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Post by TOZ »

I apologize for drawing the attention of the Paizo forums, but they did pose the question "Why all the hate for Pathfinder?"
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Post by Heath Robinson »

Some of the claims that Frank makes are not sufficiently backed up by evidence in the post he made. People who have been on the board for some time have seen evidence for quite a number of them, though. I, too, feel that Frank should add support to his post but just asserting that he's wrong without evidence is the wrong way to do so. At least in my opinion.

If you have evidence beyond "I feel this way" then I would love to see it. Numerical and rules evidence that is.


The power of the PF Fighter relative to the 3.5E Fighter is an irrelevent factor. The cross-party balance is not determined by how powerful your class was 2 years ago compared to the power of your class today. It's determined by how powerful you are compared to your other Partymembers.

You mentioned that several spells have been "amped up". The original problem was that Fighters do not get nice things and sorely needed help to pull their weight when compared to Wizards and Clerics. Increasing the power of Wizards and Clerics by improving their spells is not conducive to making the Fighter a more competitive choice.
Last edited by Heath Robinson on Mon Aug 03, 2009 8:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by virgil »

Please tell me that was highly evolved sarcasm.
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Re: Huh?

Post by Roy »

Johnny Scott wrote:This a premature post, as the final version of the Pathfinder Game will not be available until GenCon, so none of the information the OP presents can be taken as fact.
Hahaha. But ok.
Since all of his points are based on the Beta version rather than the final version, and some of the information he presents is not accurate based on even the Beta ruleset, I submit to you that the OP is a person with either an axe to grind against Paizo, or someone who did not fully understand the playtest process (which is reinforced by the fact that the OP refers to the Beta, but treats it like the final version of the rules).
This information was in the beta test thread. It was very obvious the entire thing was a farce from the start.
I can tell you from my playtest that the Fighter is much more powerful now than he was in 3.5. I can also tell you that the new feat progression (1 every odd level) helps the PCs (including Fighters) grow in power more quickly.
Thereby proving you do not understand the game and therefore your commentary regarding it should be summarily disregarded. But I will continue for the sake of humoring you.

To elaborate, feats are weaker now. So getting more of them is like an item at the store getting a mark up of 100% followed by a 25% discount. You think you're getting a good deal because it says 'sale', yet in actuality you are actually playing 150% of the normal price.

Further, as feats were not level appropriate and are even less so in PF, their value suffers from diminishing returns as each time you take a feat, you grab the next best one, therefore you are progressively taking weaker feats than before when you need to be getting stronger instead.

Now, the Fighter's sole purpose in existence is giving you feats. No, don't try to site the trivial number boosts that can best be called 'too little, too late'. You get more feats by default. As there are fewer feats worth a damn, and you get them in order from best to worst this further reduces the already near nonexistent value of the Fighter, as you have less need for extra feats both because feats matter less and because you're more likely to have all you need.
As for the spells, the information we used during playtesting included clearer wording regarding spell effect (especially Dispel Magic), and duration. None were nerfed significantly, and in fact, quite a few were amped up a bit.
Precisely. Casters are better.
True, you will have to do a little adjusting to make some 3.5 books compatible with Pathfinder, but the amount of work necessary is not as dramatic as the OP makes it out to be. Adjusting a stat block for an NPC or monster should only take a matter of minutes to complete.
Hahaha. You've just admitted to the problem. Several minutes per stat block each time. Even if that were true (hint: it isn't, because you practically have to rewrite the monster), go ahead and multiply that by > 1 creature per encounter, 13.33 encounters per level, 19 levels. The so called 'backwards compatible' product is taking WEEKS of extra time just to actually use. And I don't mean using it a little for weeks, I mean if you added the time together it would amount to weeks. Fuck that shit. If you're going to do something that requires that much work, it damn well better actually fix shit. PF does not do this. I've seen amateur house rules do it better. Fuck, I've WRITTEN better amateur house rules. It took me about... an hour.
I, for one, am anxiously awaiting the Pathfinder RPG, and hope all of you will not take the OP's bitter pill of a post as the gospel truth.
Hahaha. The OP is right. You can handwave windmill it off as 'bitter' all you want, but at the end of the day he's still right, and you're still wrong.
Pathfinder is the next logical step for the 3.5 ruleset (a version 3.75, if you will), and is well worth using if 4E is not doing for you, or you are looking for a version of D&D that is close to that of 3.5.
What does the scouter say about his lying level?

"IT'S OVER 9,000!"

Absolutely no part of that statement was correct, and further it was so blatantly incorrect so as to be an insult to this entire forum.
Give Pathfinder a fair chance. I believe you will all be pleasantly surprised when you see the final product if you give it a chance.
Rofl, Fail. Guess what? Most of us already have. And we've quickly come to the irrefutable conclusion it was irredeemable. Crusader of Logic. Perhaps you've heard of me. The players are almost universally incompetent, the devs are no better and are actively BANNING for providing useful feedback, and the whole thing is just a circle jerk echo chamber of Fail. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
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Post by FatR »

TOZ wrote:I apologize for drawing the attention of the Paizo forums, but they did pose the question "Why all the hate for Pathfinder?"
(shrugs) It introduces a metric crapton of small changes, without offering actual net improvement as a result. I, personally, not so much hate it (not like I paid anything for the book or intend to, and it is still nowhere as bad as 4E or many other RPGs), as regret the lost potential and don't see what it can offer to me. It is not better than my houserules. It is not good enough to become the "gold standard" of DnD and solve the problem of every second experienced 3.X GM having a list of houserules longer than my hand. They had a chance to make a worthy succesor for 3.X and blew it.
Last edited by FatR on Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by TOZ »

In case Lanx actually reads this thread again, I'm posting my reply to him here. Since Frost closed the thread we were talking in. Avoiding word getting out around the Paizo forum? The world may never know.
Lanx wrote:You have only to look at the way Trollman talks about S K Reynolds and his books to realize that this whole FAQ is nothing you should take too seriously. The Paizo community dared to disagree with him, so now he is sulking.

Edit: Sorry, TriOmegaZero, you posted while I was constructing my post. There are two things to note: he managed to nullify many of his points because he was (and is) not able to communicate in an acceptable form. His message was (and is): I am nobody whom you can take seriously. And second: he seems to be unable to accept that some points he presented were not so absolute and undeniable as he seems to think of them. In other words: His points are not the god-given truth to the gaming community.
Lanx, his tone has no bearing on his points. Yes, he is an asshole. But you cannot decry the fact that feats suck worse and spells are better, so Fighters < Wizards has grown, not shrunk.

His words don't have to be god-given. As we like to say on the Paizo board, it's just his opinion. The OP of the Pathfinder hate thread wanted to know why so serious, so I linked him a thread specifically designed to explain why people don't like Pathfinder. Sorry your blinded by the vitriol.
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Re: Huh?

Post by RandomCasualty2 »

Roy wrote: Rofl, Fail. Guess what? Most of us already have. And we've quickly come to the irrefutable conclusion it was irredeemable.
I wouldn't go so far as to say PF is irredeemable, only that it's not a holy grail of balance that you can run out of the box without houseruling. PF may well be a better starting point for house rules than 3.5 is. Of course, you'll still need a mountain to make PF playable and you're still better off using ToB than any of the PF warrior class rewrites.
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Re: Huh?

Post by Roy »

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
Roy wrote: Rofl, Fail. Guess what? Most of us already have. And we've quickly come to the irrefutable conclusion it was irredeemable.
I wouldn't go so far as to say PF is irredeemable, only that it's not a holy grail of balance that you can run out of the box without houseruling. PF may well be a better starting point for house rules than 3.5 is. Of course, you'll still need a mountain to make PF playable and you're still better off using ToB than any of the PF warrior class rewrites.
Except that it isn't, as you first have to add a bunch of house rules to the effect of removing 95% of PF's content and replacing it back to 3.5 just to have a decent starting point. Then you add your own house rules which replace more stuff... except by now you aren't using anything from their book. Which is probably what you were doing before.

Your post is not too different from the many people that claim 4th edition is a lot of fun if you do not actually play it, and instead make up a bunch of random stuff.
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Koumei wrote:Shad, please just punch yourself in the face until you are too dizzy to type. I would greatly appreciate that.
Kaelik wrote:No, bad liar. Stop lying.
Standard Paizil Fare/Fail (SPF) Type I - doing exactly the opposite of what they said they would do.
Standard Paizil Fare/Fail (SPF) Type II - change for the sake of change.
Standard Paizil Fare/Fail (SPF) Type III - the illusion of change.
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Re: Huh?

Post by RandomCasualty2 »

Roy wrote: Your post is not too different from the many people that claim 4th edition is a lot of fun if you do not actually play it, and instead make up a bunch of random stuff.
Well any edition. 3.5, PF, or 4E all seem to use that philosophy.

It's one reason I kinda look at anyone funny when they use the "But you're making up houserules" anti-PF or anti-4E argument, when 3E games are loaded with just as many house rules if not more. I mean I have never houseruled any system as heavily as I've houseruled 3.5
Last edited by RandomCasualty2 on Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

How is having a negative opinion of SKR something that would invalidate an opinion? He's a talentless hack who got fired because he wasn't good enough to write for fourth edition. Holy crap!

He's responsible for the unworkable mage subsystem in Monte Cook's abortive d20 WoD. He is responsible for the old broken crap like the 3rd edition Spelldancer. He did the deliberately unworkable system in Savage Species.

SKR is a talentless hack. And the fact that Pathfinder's Gods and Magic book looks like it was written by a talentless hack is unsurprising.

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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

C'mon, Frank, SKR isn't as bad as Bruce Cordell or Andy Collins.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Re: Huh?

Post by erik »

Johnny Scott wrote: I, for one, am anxiously awaiting the Pathfinder RPG, and hope all of you will not take the OP's bitter pill of a post as the gospel truth.

Pathfinder is the next logical step for the 3.5 ruleset (a version 3.75, if you will), and is well worth using if 4E is not doing for you, or you are looking for a version of D&D that is close to that of 3.5.
Are you a paid shill or just a fanboy?

To address the points/FAQ entries:

Are the books compatible with 3e? You admit they are not.

Was the playtest done in good faith? I have heard descriptions that they are not doing destructive playtests but are just trying to have fun. I have heard that they have derided folks doing playtesting who found actual faults.

Have they actually diminished the good things that fighters get? Lessened Power Attack's benefits. Charging more feats for than they cost in previous editions. Are combat DC's harder to meet now, with higher set DCs and lower bonuses? Is cleave really worse now? If you don't dispute those things, then it sure seems that fighters are much worse now.

Do casters get a bump to their mental stat? Do they still have a few brokezored spells? If they do then they haven't lessened them but instead have boosted them.

I will grant that 3.path is probably no worse than 3.5 was compared to 3rd edition, just a bunch of changes some good, some bad, and when taken as a sum of their parts it is not backwards compatible with other editions. It was insulting to me when 3.5 was offered as some sort of forward movement or improvement in design, just as it is insulting to hear 3.path offered as some sort of further improvement. If someone wants to offer up something as an improvement, then they should meet that bold claim solidly, otherwise they are completely full of crap.

Don't tell me fighters are more powerful, give examples of how this is so. The boon of extra feats appears repudiated by the diminished value of feats and combat options, so as of yet you've got nothing. If you want, perhaps make a min-maxed 3.path fighter and compare it in a same game test versus a min-maxed 3.5 fighter (i.e. see how well each can handle level-appropriate challenges).
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Post by Username17 »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:C'mon, Frank, SKR isn't as bad as Bruce Cordell or Andy Collins.
Yes. He totally is.

Look, I've talked to Andy Collins in person. He is an insufferable ass. And he writes a lot of bad rules, shitty fluff, and incomprehensible justifications for both. But he writes shit that you will for example Ever use in your damn life. Yeah, Complete Warrior and Libris Mortis were flawed books, but they never approach the uselessness or offensive lack of rules understanding that is indigenous to Savage Species or Unapproachable East. There is stuff in there that is a fairly decent idea.

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Post by ggroy »

Last edited by ggroy on Sat Mar 13, 2010 8:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by FatR »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:C'mon, Frank, SKR isn't as bad as Bruce Cordell or Andy Collins.
Gods and Magic book is indeed pretty dire (discounting art), though. I didn't even look at the mechanics, but the fluff is only good enough to keep you reading it and not good enough to think that reading it was worth your time. It is yet another bog-standard overbloated pantheon, with some gods making no sense and pretty much all of the evil ones being redundant, as they overlap with functions and domains of various archfiends. Also, it tries to be more mature, but, as in most cases, this attempt results in more pointless grimdarkness. Also, nearly all gods are so passive that you wonder, if there is any point in their existence, besides granting spells. Also, many of their names sound stupid. Also, and, perhaps, most importantly, you probably already have significantly more information about gods if you were collecting Pathfinder adventure paths: many issues include a much more detailed writeup for one of them.
Last edited by FatR on Mon Aug 03, 2009 10:25 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Look, I've talked to Andy Collins in person. He is an insufferable ass. And he writes a lot of bad rules, shitty fluff, and incomprehensible justifications for both. But he writes shit that you will for example Ever use in your damn life. Yeah, Complete Warrior and Libris Mortis were flawed books, but they never approach the uselessness or offensive lack of rules understanding that is indigenous to Savage Species or Unapproachable East. There is stuff in there that is a fairly decent idea.

-Username17
Okay, fine, but there's no way SKR approaches the suckitude of Bruce Cordell.

This guy wrote the 4E Draconomicon, the 4E Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, and motherfucking psionics. Not the 3.5E update, the shitty original 3.0E one. The one that ground combat to a halt and had fixed dice for damage.

Now I understand that SKR wrote bullfuck like Magic of Faerun, but at least when he got his hands on the Forgotten Realms it didn't cause NERD RAGE at the finished product.

Bruce Cordell fucked up the FR setting so hard that we're probably never going to get another Forgotten Realms sourcebook for this edition. Ever.


Also, David Noonan. He made Stronghold Builder's Guide. That's all.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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