Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[K]

Am I the only one who thinks its hilarious that they nerfed finger of death, but flesh to stone is A-OK? Building a pathfinder wizard recently...most of out good buddy spells are still there. Despite the supposed wizard nerf.

When they designed Pathfinder, they avoided all the hard design decisions and did a surface job of cleaning things up.

So charm, illusion, and binding are still as powerful as your DM and you agree they are, but tossing down objectively good things like Solid Fog or a Wall of Force got a little less rewarding (but to be honest, not meaningfully nerfed).

So yeh. That happened.

I would have been honestly pleased to see some work done on charm and illusion so that it wasn't something I'd have to spend an hour talking about with every new DM, but apparently the 3.5 design philosophy of changing things for the sake of change and power creep was the order of the day.

[Sarandosil]

Funny, I just spent like all day reading crap from the Pathfinder board archives of the playtest period, and a lot of it is maddening. Man I missed so much discussion when I stopped gaming for several years, catching up is a headache.

Anyway, so magic item availability in metropolises caps out at 16k in Pathfinder, and you can't wish for items anymore, but the crafting rules still let you take any amount of money and turn it into power. What do you do with these?

Also, unrelatedly, has anyone ever used the prices straight out of the Stronghold builder's guidebook? How well do those work once you sever gold from item accumulation?

[For Valor]

Here's a better question:

Why are you bothering with Pathfinder?

[Username17]

Wealth by level in Pathfinder is weird. It's not quite as bad as wealth in 4e, but it's definitely a series of changes wrought by someone who couldn't be bothered to think things through or do math.

The assumptions in 3.5 is that you get money and magic items from encounters, and that is all fungible towards higher level gear. But, you spend about 10% of your incoming wealth on expendables - healing potions, stays at inns, whatever. And the wealth by level guidelines explicitly tell the DM to throw in extra treasure to compensate players if they end up spending more than that (Roy still lives in denial about this, but that is what the rules say). Now Pathfinder says that players should pick up the same amount of treasure, but that they should be flipping 100% of it into permanent wealth. So apparently, you're supposed to reimburse all of the potions that players quaff in the form of additional treasure. But as near as I can tell, it doesn't explicitly tell you to do that. That's just the only possible meaning of the claim that characters should have found 7,500 gp over 6th level, bringing their permanent wealth from 16,000 to 23,500.

To compound the confusion, Pathfinder did away with 3e's over-complicated and vaguely undesirable, but mathematically beautiful encounter XP and treasure tables and replaced them with non-scaling ones. And now they don't add up to anything. I mean seriously, you divide the expected treasure per encounter into the expected number of encounters that you get from dividing the XP awards into the XP required to level... and you just don't get the numbers the PCs are supposed to have at any particular level. I think the DM is supposed to follow the guidelines for a while and then shell game everything repeatedly to balance the wealth. Or something, because following the guidelines each encounter doesn't get you anywhere especially close to the guidelines for what people should have over all. I don't really understand the thinking there, except for maybe that "Math is Hard!"

Meanwhile, the basic thrust of the purchasing changes is that people above 10th level cannot buy level appropriate gear. At all. But Wizards can make level appropriate gear, and you're expected to get more gold and shitty +1 items, especially at high levels. So when you get to 12th level, Fighters can't have nice things and the party has a big pile of stuff that they can only use in reference to dumping on the Wizard so he can make awesome shit. And then it's his personal discretion as to what he makes for other players (if anything), after he makes himself some Int boosters and maybe turns himself into a Lich.

Yes, I have used the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. It encourages you to make live-in shops and libraries, which is actually kind of cool.

-Username17

[Sarandosil]

Here's a better question:

Why are you bothering with Pathfinder?

I figured someone would ask. Everyone I know who isn't playing 4th Edition has switched to Pathfinder, and a little bit of laziness in not wanting to have to hunt down a decent bargain on 3.5 books since I don't want to just use the SRD. I'll still run a 3.5 game if someone wants me to, but since they've all moved onto Pathfinder it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me to learn 3.5 and then learn Pathfinder on top of it. Keeping two sets of similar rules in my head would be seriously annoying, converting from 3.0 is enough of a hassle as it is.

For that matter I'd be surprised if anyone I game with actually came even close to breaking my game. There's only one of them who's really rules conversant, and last game I ran (which didn't really get off the ground, alas) I dropped every supplement I own on the table and said "here, use whatever you like." Not a single person used anything but core, and we only had one caster who I gather is too new to know fireball isn't the best thing ever.

Tldr; your rules-fu is no match for my magical tea party.

[K]

Pathfinder is a great edition for you then. It has more flavor than Core rules and not understanding anything about the rules means you may not even notice flaws in the rules before someone decides to change games.

[Sarandosil]

The assumptions in 3.5 is that you get money and magic items from encounters, and that is all fungible towards higher level gear. But, you spend about 10% of your incoming wealth on expendables - healing potions, stays at inns, whatever. And the wealth by level guidelines explicitly tell the DM to throw in extra treasure to compensate players if they end up spending more than that (Roy still lives in denial about this, but that is what the rules say). Now Pathfinder says that players should pick up the same amount of treasure, but that they should be flipping 100% of it into permanent wealth. So apparently, you're supposed to reimburse all of the potions that players quaff in the form of additional treasure. But as near as I can tell, it doesn't explicitly tell you to do that. That's just the only possible meaning of the claim that characters should have found 7,500 gp over 6th level, bringing their permanent wealth from 16,000 to 23,500.

Hmm. They do have this bit in the rules:

Table: Character Wealth by Level can also be used to budget gear for characters starting above 1st level, such as a new character created to replace a dead one. Characters should spend no more than half their total wealth on any single item. For a balanced approach, PCs that are built after 1st level should spend no more than 25% of their wealth on weapons, 25% on armor and protective devices, 25% on other magic items, 15% on disposable items like potions, scrolls, and wands, and 10% on ordinary gear and coins. Different character types might spend their wealth differently than these percentages suggest; for example, arcane casters might spend very little on weapons but a great deal more on other magic items and disposable items.

I extrapolated from this that you're supposed to spend 15% of your wealth on expendables, but yeah, it's not explicitly dealt with anywhere that I've seen.

. I mean seriously, you divide the expected treasure per encounter into the expected number of encounters that you get from dividing the XP awards into the XP required to level... and you just don't get the numbers the PCs are supposed to have at any particular level. I think the DM is supposed to follow the guidelines for a while and then shell game everything repeatedly to balance the wealth. Or something, because following the guidelines each encounter doesn't get you anywhere especially close to the guidelines for what people should have over all. I don't really understand the thinking there, except for maybe that "Math is Hard!"
...

-Username17

Well that makes me feel better, I thought I was being dumb with math when I couldn't get the treasure per encounter to match up to the Wealth by level guidelines.

Yes, I have used the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. It encourages you to make live-in shops and libraries, which is actually kind of cool.

Now if I can only get some players who would actually be interested in using it The book is like the whole reason I'm trying to get away from the WBL system, castles are what money should be for, and I'm hoping my players would start to look for stuff to use the money on once they realize they're not getting any magic items out of their horde of gold coins.

[Sarandosil]

Pathfinder is a great edition for you then. It has more flavor than Core rules and not understanding anything about the rules means you may not even notice flaws in the rules before someone decides to change games.

Er, well random reproach aside, do you actually have a suggestion as to what I can do with the crafting rules to get off the gold economy?

[cthulhu]

Pathfinder is a great edition for you then. It has more flavor than Core rules and not understanding anything about the rules means you may not even notice flaws in the rules before someone decides to change games.

Er, well random reproach aside, do you actually have a suggestion as to what I can do with the crafting rules to get off the gold economy?

Cap crafting at 16k items without 'plot device' wealth, like raw passion or whatever.

[Koumei]

Yeah, having them find the awesome stuff as treasure (usually "Now we quest for the Red Hat of Patferrick" or "I heard of the Brass Monkey Balls of Immortality! Let's steal them!") and not being able to spend their gold on said awesome stuff will go a long way to that. Basically, utilise your magical tea party to its fullest.

And people also probably won't be stealing every coin they can. Indeed, the only reason they'll pry the gems from the eye sockets of statues in temples is for the sake of defiling the temples, the same reason they wee in the fonts.

[hogarth]

To compound the confusion, Pathfinder did away with 3e's over-complicated and vaguely undesirable, but mathematically beautiful encounter XP and treasure tables and replaced them with non-scaling ones. And now they don't add up to anything. I mean seriously, you divide the expected treasure per encounter into the expected number of encounters that you get from dividing the XP awards into the XP required to level... and you just don't get the numbers the PCs are supposed to have at any particular level.

What do you mean? From glancing at it, it seems that the level 1 and 2 numbers add up about right:

• From level 1 to 2 is 13 CR 1 encounters = 5,200 gp. Divided by four PCs, that's 1,300 gp each, 30% more than the recommended 1,000 gp WBL (presumably to take into account selling items, buying potions, etc.).
• From level 2 to 3 is 13 CR 2 encounter = 10,400 gp. Divided by four PCs, that's 2,600 gp, 30% more than the 2,000 gp needed to go from 1,000 gp WBL to 3,000 gp WBL.

Can you specifically point out where it starts to break down? I'm not doubting it does -- Jason specifically mentioned generating the tables with a formula and then randomly changing numbers in tables to make them "look nice".

[Username17]

To compound the confusion, Pathfinder did away with 3e's over-complicated and vaguely undesirable, but mathematically beautiful encounter XP and treasure tables and replaced them with non-scaling ones. And now they don't add up to anything. I mean seriously, you divide the expected treasure per encounter into the expected number of encounters that you get from dividing the XP awards into the XP required to level... and you just don't get the numbers the PCs are supposed to have at any particular level.

What do you mean? From glancing at it, it seems that the level 1 and 2 numbers add up about right:

• From level 1 to 2 is 13 CR 1 encounters = 5,200 gp. Divided by four PCs, that's 1,300 gp each, 30% more than the recommended 1,000 gp WBL (presumably to take into account selling items, buying potions, etc.).
• From level 2 to 3 is 13 CR 2 encounter = 10,400 gp. Divided by four PCs, that's 2,600 gp, 30% more than the 2,000 gp needed to go from 1,000 gp WBL to 3,000 gp WBL.

Can you specifically point out where it starts to break down? I'm not doubting it does -- Jason specifically mentioned generating the tables with a formula and then randomly changing numbers in tables to make them "look nice".

Adding up to a number 30% off isn't "adding up right". Like, at all.

Let's pick a random level. You're seventh level. At "medium" advancement, you need 16,000 XP to gain a level. You're supposed to pick up 9,500 gp worth of permanent wealth by the time you hit level 8. Your normal encounters net the party 2,600 gp. Assuming a party of 4 or 5 PCs, you personally get 800 XP every time you beat a CR 7 encounter. So you advance after 20 encounters, after which you will have picked up a total of 52000 gp. Your personal share in a 4 person party is 13,000, which is noticeably more than 9,500 gp.

If you're advancing "fast" at 7th level you only need 11,000 XP to go up a level, but treasure drops are 50% bigger. So you advance in 14 encounters, and your share of the treasure is 13,650 gp.

Let's bump it up to 10th level. Now you need 50k XP to go up a level and you're supposed to pick up 20k GP while doing it. You get 2,400 XP for going up a level, and take home 5,450 GP per encounter. So in the 21 encounters it takes to go up a level, your share of the treasure is 28,612 gp. Which is more than 20k. By a substantial margin.

-Username17

[hogarth]

Adding up to a number 30% off isn't "adding up right". Like, at all.

So if you have to sell stuff at half price, you're basically fucked?

Your personal share in a 4 person party is 13,000, which is noticeably more than 9,500 gp.

It's 30% more, just like levels 1 and 2.

So basically you're spazzing out because Jason's estimate of wastage is different from yours? Yawn.

[Roy]

Am I the only one who thinks its hilarious that they nerfed finger of death, but flesh to stone is A-OK? Building a pathfinder wizard recently...most of out good buddy spells are still there. Despite the supposed wizard nerf.

This is why it's Pathfailure. Direct save or dies were already weak, and easily blocked. Indirect ones were just as good, but harder to block and better.

Funny, I just spent like all day reading crap from the Pathfinder board archives of the playtest period, and a lot of it is maddening. Man I missed so much discussion when I stopped gaming for several years, catching up is a headache.

Anyway, so magic item availability in metropolises caps out at 16k in Pathfinder, and you can't wish for items anymore, but the crafting rules still let you take any amount of money and turn it into power. What do you do with these?

Also, unrelatedly, has anyone ever used the prices straight out of the Stronghold builder's guidebook? How well do those work once you sever gold from item accumulation?

Wow, they fucked over beatsticks again?

SBG makes you worse at building strongholds than having no book for building strongholds.

Here's a better question:

Why are you bothering with Pathfinder?

Also this.

And why the hell do so many people around here beat off to gold as flavor text? Yeah, I get it, you can't have gold walls without breaking WBL. The alternative is you can have a one million gold stash, and no one fucking cares because you can't buy anything you care about with it.

Which is the exact same problem you get in low magic games, or any game without a mage mart. And the Den nerd rages at these people, while doing the same goddamn thing themselves.

Guys. Seriously, what the fuck?

[Username17]

Adding up to a number 30% off isn't "adding up right". Like, at all.

So if you have to sell stuff at half price, you're basically fucked?

If you have to sell at half price, you're fucked in any version of wealth by level, since you drop a lot of wealth every time you do that.

Your personal share in a 4 person party is 13,000, which is noticeably more than 9,500 gp.

It's 30% more, just like levels 1 and 2.

So basically you're spazzing out because Jason's estimate of wastage is different from yours? Yawn.

Try not to be such a dipshit all the time. First of all, it's 36%, and the 10th level example is 43%. So no, it isn't "just like 1st level". But the point isn't even that it happens to be more (although it does), the point is that it doesn't add up to anything at all. There's no formula there. There's no ability to actually generate the numbers they are asking for with any transformation.

The encounter tables give you more treasure than the amount you are supposed to keep, but not by any consistent or explained amount. And not by as much as you'd lose trading in whatever funky treasure you happened to get for stuff you actually wanted at the suggested retail exchange rate of 2:1. So the Wealth by Level tables are pretty much fiction from day one - no one bad enough at math that they are enticed by Pathfinder in the first place is going to be able to get the numbers to come out "right" given the inputs they are asked to put in.

Also, I suspect that the Pathfinder magic item generation tables aren't actually set to give the average outputs they say they are, but I can't be fucked to check.

-Username17

[Roy]

Even if they can, it has all the failings 3.5 core does with magic items, and a few more stemming from the fact all physical stat items are one item and all mental stat items are one item.

Which means using random treasure gets you an incredibly high amount of vendor trash. Even more than 3.5.

Sure, PF lies to you and says you don't need RNG items to stay on the RNG, but that just means that they are a bad liar, and should stop lying. It doesn't mean you'll actually do anything with a Ring of Shooting Stars other than convert it to a large pile of gold, and then convert that into something you actually care about.

[hogarth]

If you have to sell at half price, you're fucked in any version of wealth by level, since you drop a lot of wealth every time you do that.

Right; the idea of wealth-by-level is built on a house of cards, and you're complaining that Paizo forgot to take the "Rules of Draw and Stud Poker" out of the pack before building theirs. Lame.

[Username17]

The Pathfailure system for purchasing magic items is actually much crazier and more of a pain in the ass than people are giving it credit for. What you are supposed to do is let people bust out the magic item catalog and make selections for things they want that are below the threshold of cost for the settlement - 16k for a metropolis - and then you have a 3 out of 4 chance of being able to actually find it for purchase. There is no rule I've seen on how often you should be able to make that roll - Jason appears to simply say:

The GM should keep a list of what items are available from each merchant and should replenish the stocks on occasion to represent new acquisitions.

Which is maddening and unhelpful. But whatever. The real shopping trip is where the city has a random number of random rolls off the magic item charts. For example, I will roll up an actual city's magic items-for-sale section:

• Headband f Vast Inteligence +4 (16,000 gp)
• +2 Dart (8,300.5 gp)
• Staff of Swarming Insects (22,800 gp)
• Scroll of some 4th level spell (700 gp)
• Staff of Healing (29,600 gp)
• Necklace of Adaptation (9,000 gp)
• Metamagic Rod of Silent Spell, Lesser (3,000 gp)
• Potion of some 2nd level spell (300 gp)
• Mirror of Lifetrapping (200,000 gp)
• Bracers of Armor +6 (36,000 gp)
• +5 Heavy Steel Shield (25,170 gp)
• Ring of Protection +5 (50,000 gp)
• Rod of Negation (37,000 gp)
• Wand of some 3rd level spell (11,250 gp)
• Ring of Wizardry II (40,000 gp)

That was an incredible amount of work. However it shows an interesting lesson: in Pathfinder, high level warriors are super fucked.

-Username17

[Slade]

Isn't there a feat or trait that lets Fighters craft there own magic stuff. (Master Craftsmen)

Not that it makes the randomly rolled shopping better (that is horrible), but at least he isn't 100% dependent on the Wizard to make his gear.

[Sarandosil]

Yeah there is, but it's still loaded with dumb restrictions, such as only being able to craft armor/weapons and wondrous items (rings should have been included in that list), and not being able to craft any use items or spell trigger items. Then there's also the fact that each requirement you don't meet pushes up the craft DC by 5, so you're generally looking at a craft DC 5-15 higher than you would be if you were a wizard who could supply the spell requirements himself.

[RobbyPants]

And why the hell do so many people around here beat off to gold as flavor text? Yeah, I get it, you can't have gold walls without breaking WBL. The alternative is you can have a one million gold stash, and no one fucking cares because you can't buy anything you care about with it.

Some people want to be able to justify spending money on stuff like castles and airships and stuff. If you could get another bonus on your caster level or something, then no one buys those things.

[MfA]

Which is maddening and unhelpful. But whatever. The real shopping trip is where the city has a random number of random rolls off the magic item charts.

So what you do is go to a library, summon planar ally and give the hound archon or whatever a shopping list and a list of cities.

[Roy]

And why the hell do so many people around here beat off to gold as flavor text? Yeah, I get it, you can't have gold walls without breaking WBL. The alternative is you can have a one million gold stash, and no one fucking cares because you can't buy anything you care about with it.

Some people want to be able to justify spending money on stuff like castles and airships and stuff. If you could get another bonus on your caster level or something, then no one buys those things.

That's nice and all. But it still doesn't happen because those things are all low level stuff, but by the time you can afford them you are not low level.

Airships? If it's not level 1-8, no one cares. Even if it's free. Same with normal ships, for that matter.

Castles expire even sooner.

[hogarth]

Which is maddening and unhelpful. But whatever. The real shopping trip is where the city has a random number of random rolls off the magic item charts. For example, I will roll up an actual city's magic items-for-sale section:

Is the using the tables in the Gamemastery Guide? I haven't taken a look at it.

That does seem rather heavily weighted away from weapons and armor, doesn't it...

EDIT: Oh, I see -- that's using the tables in the PRD. For some reason, I thought the core rulebook didn't have random treasure charts.

[Username17]

Which is maddening and unhelpful. But whatever. The real shopping trip is where the city has a random number of random rolls off the magic item charts. For example, I will roll up an actual city's magic items-for-sale section:

Is the using the tables in the Gamemastery Guide? I haven't taken a look at it.

That does seem rather heavily weighted away from weapons and armor, doesn't it...

EDIT: Oh, I see -- that's using the tables in the PRD. For some reason, I thought the core rulebook didn't have random treasure charts.

It's a pretty ghastly procedure. What you do when you go for some retail therapy is you roll up 4d4 Medium Magic Items (note: a majority of Medium Magic Items are below the catalog threshold), and 3d4 Major Magic Items. Off the chart. Which is very similar to, but not exactly the same as, the chart in the DMG.

For Medium and Major items, 1 in 5 items is a Weapon or Armor. But of those, a fairly large proportion are not actually big enough to warrant being on the list at all, and of course the vast majority of weapons and armor you roll off the damn charts are going to be something that none of the players want to use.

Bottom line: if the players saw that random draw in a shopping trip, they'd be ecstatic, because your chances of actually finding a level appropriate shield or ring of protection for sale is incredibly low. The fact that the only weapon on the list is essentially a joke isn't even weird, but it also isn't even relevant because they have a 75% chance of being able to purchase any particular +2 weapon they don't give a fuck about anyway.

You average finding 1.5 pieces of major magic item weapons or armor for sale. I leave it to your imagination how many of those items are +4 Banded Mail or +3 Icy Burst Greatclubs that you don't even want.

-Username17