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[Burrito Al Pastor]

Pathfinder: Tell me about it

Specifically, I've heard it fixes 3rd Ed without nerfing casters. If that's true, I'll fuck a goat.

Given that nobody ever managed to agree exactly what was wrong with 3e, it's impossible to say if it fixes what you didn't like.

But I don't think anybody can argue it nerfed casters. Wizards and clerics are unarguably better; turning is now just straight-up AOE d6s of healing, wizards can have a focus item instead of a familiar, and specialist wizards get domain-like special abilities in addition to being specialist wizards. (Meanwhile, sorcerers get the short end of the stick as usual; if there's one thing a d6 hd, 1/2 BAB class needs, it's Power Attack as a bonus feat!)

Oh, and Assassin is no longer a casting class, which makes me Very Unhappy.

[JDigital]

Pathfinder also uses the Unearthed Arcana style XP system, where each monster gives fixed value of XP regardless of the PCs' level. In D&D 3.5, a monster of a given CR gives less XP as you level up. In Pathfinder, the monster always gives the same XP, but you need exponentially more XP to reach each level. This makes it easier to combine monsters of different levels.

Pathfinder also has three rates of XP progression. "Fast" is equivalent to standard D&D, "Medium" requires 50% more XP than Fast, and "Slow" requires 50% more XP than Medium.

[Shinra]

Pathfinder, you say?

We've only gone through character creation, but so far it feels like an improvement. It doesn't fix the main issues I have with combat in D20 at high levels, but few people seemed as bothered about it as I was.

well, the trick here is to end your campaign at level 10. I still think pathfinder is too heavy on power creep, but the game is really intended to run old school style games - high level play, while obviously an option, isn't what they necessarily had in mind.

Pathfinder: Tell me about it

Specifically, I've heard it fixes 3rd Ed without nerfing casters. If that's true, I'll fuck a goat.

Given that nobody ever managed to agree exactly what was wrong with 3e, it's impossible to say if it fixes what you didn't like.

But I don't think anybody can argue it nerfed casters. Wizards and clerics are unarguably better; turning is now just straight-up AOE d6s of healing, wizards can have a focus item instead of a familiar, and specialist wizards get domain-like special abilities in addition to being specialist wizards. (Meanwhile, sorcerers get the short end of the stick as usual; if there's one thing a d6 hd, 1/2 BAB class needs, it's Power Attack as a bonus feat!)

Oh, and Assassin is no longer a casting class, which makes me Very Unhappy.

Yeah, I don't understand the whole 'pathfinder nerfs casters' thing when it clearly does not. I think the people who actually say this are the ones who think that 'buffing everyone else a lot and buffing casters only a little' = 'nerfing casters'. As if having a huge margin of power over everyone else was supposed to be a class feature.

You can easily fix the assassin thing though.

[Büge]

Given that nobody ever managed to agree exactly what was wrong with 3e, it's impossible to say if it fixes what you didn't like.

Grappling.

[Frocto]

Everything Skip Williams did, so grappling and dual-wielding.
CR system is just irreversibly fucked.
Class imbalances to, like, 20 magnitudes.
DMG is a waste of paper.

I think the people who actually say this are the ones who think that 'buffing everyone else a lot and buffing casters only a little' = 'nerfing casters'. As if having a huge margin of power over everyone else was supposed to be a class feature.

So are the classes actually balanced?

[jsnlxndrlv]

Dude, did you click my link? Click my link.

[Frocto]

No. I'm not reading the book to get the answer to a yes/no question.

[Burrito Al Pastor]

Two-weapon fighting is unchanged.

Grapple is... simpler, but not necessarily better. (For a given value of "simpler.") The process is better, but the math is still horribly skewed; if you aren't expressly built for grappling (full BAB, high strength, high dex, devoting all available feats to combat maneuver abilities), you're still fucked over if something with Improved Grab hits you.

Example: To grapple you, a behir (CR 8) must hit your Combat Maneuver Defense (10+BAB+str+dex+2 if you have Improved Grapple) with his grapple attack modifier of +22. Assuming that the old PHB2 guidelines for equipment and stats are still reasonably accurate, we can expect a 10th level fighter to have a dex of 14, a strength of 18 (including gauntlets of ogre power +2), and thus a CMD of 28. The behir will successfully grapple you on a d20 roll of 6 or more. (8 or more if you have Improved Grapple.) In order to escape from the behir, you must beat it's CMD of 29 with either an Escape Artist check or a grapple check; the grapple check would be a modifier of your BAB + your strength (+14 in the case of our aforementioned fighter.) Improved Grapple does not improve your check to escape from a grapple. (Escape Artist would provide him with a modifier of +15, less any armor check penalty, if he had full ranks and it was somehow a class skill for him.) Thus, on a 15 or more, the fighter can escape from the behir, who may attempt to grapple him again for free the next time he hits.

Note that this is for a fighter, who is a front-line combatant and who is supposed to be in melee with the behir. If this was, heaven forbid, somebody who wasn't a full-BAB class (a rogue or cleric, for example), they'd probably be right fucked.

[JDigital]

Pathfinder's grapple rules are simpler than 3.5, but still complex. The wordcount for the grapple rules is halved (about 800 words compared to 1,600 for D&D 3.5), although part of that is abstracted out into general combat manoever rules used for bull rush, disarm, etc. Contrast with 4E's "grab" rules, about 350 words, which amounts to "Attack vs Reflex, target can't move, target can roll Acrobatics or Athletics as a move action to escape".

Two-weapon fighting hasn't changed.

The CR system isn't perfect, because there are too many variables: very flexible monster statistics and ability sets, party composition, how many hit points and spells they've consumed so far, what spells they've prepared. A great deal of 4E's major changes seem to be about fixing the CR system, with the result that character classes and monster stats are more homogenous.

[Frocto]

so are the classes balanced

[jsnlxndrlv]

Yes.

[MadMAxJr]

Twilight: 2013 is one of those WORLD WAR 3 ENDS EVERYTHING settings.  The first 20 pages or so are a time-line that forks from ours in 1997.  I haven't finished reading it yet but it does a pretty good job of painting a picture of how things went from bad to nuclear winter.  Anybody ever read or perhaps play this setting?

[jsnlxndrlv]

Just gonna post this here for my own convenience. (It's basically Microscope except much more deliberately fantasy in setting.)

[Zach]

Has anyone read and/or played The Day After Ragnorok? I'm thinking of picking it up for my summer campaign.

Here's the part from the review that spoke to me:

The setting's premise: In 1945, the desperate Germans turn to their SS occultists to turn the tide of war to their favor by starting the end of the world! They magically summon Jörmungandr, the world-spanning Midgard Serpent of the Norse sagas, to attack the shocked Allies. In response, Truman sends a lone atom-bomb-armed B-29 on a suicide mission against the titanic, 300 mile wide, snake. The blast kills the creature, but its immense carcass falls across Europe and Africa crushing millions and sending a mega-tsunami to drown the Eastern United States while the Serpent's poisonous (and now radioactive) venom enters the environment, creating all manner of bizarre and malevolent life.


Now it's 1948 and the human race is trying to put back the pieces and face the realities of the world after the Serpentfall. The Narts, the legendary giants of Osseian folklore, awaken and serve Comrade Stalin as he expands the Soviet Union into what's left of Europe and the Middle East. The British Empire, who has relocated the throne to sunny Australia, has been exploring and experimenting with the remains of the Serpent, creating everything from super-fuels to organic pressure suits. The Western United States tries to hold itself together while the Eastern half of North America is broken into numerous city-states that war with each other and the supernatural horrors that surround them. The remnants of Nazi Germany plot and scheme in South America (yes, Antartica too) and strange cults worship the dead Serpent, preforming obscene rites in hopes of reviving it.

There is pretty much nothing that I don't like in there. It's Savage Worlds, which is currently my favorite generic system, for all its faults, and I doubt that this will be the year when I get to run one of my long-stewing campaign darlings.

[Büge]

 

[Büge]

 

[Mongrel]

WHAT.

I don't know if that's awesome or an utter disaster. It's cute as the dickens though.

[Lottel]

I've got the other pages around here somewhere. Let me check.

EDIT:
I'll find them eventually. There are two more pages of this. Some race detail and some powers. Pretty neat stuff.

[Burrito Al Pastor]

Wait, really? Those are new, then - that first page is about as old as 4e, but it was the only part when it came out.

Please to be finding additional pages.

[Dogstar]

I'm actually involved in a Fantasycraft campaign right now as a Human Intelligent Wizard Mage. 3.5+Crunch is a good way to put it.

I've played a little Dark Heresy as well, but when it gets down to it I love comedy games - I have a friend I'm still mad at because he didn't follow through on a promise to run Teenagers From Outer Space several years ago, and I have the books for Tales From The Floating Vagabond, My Life With Master, Maid RPG, and Big Eyes Small Mouth on my backup hard drive. Eventually I'm going to have to bear down and run one of these things, because that's the only way I'm going to be able to play any of them.