Paizo employee attempt to unionize and new store

[Nathaniel3W]

I have to admit that 4e encounters were fun and easy to put together. An adventure would be 3-4 combat encounters, 1-2 skill challenges, and a boss fight. You could make the combat encounters plus or minus one or two challenge levels for your characters. Add more 1-hp minions and dangerous terrain to give your controller a fun encounter. Add more brutes to give the defender and striker a fun time. The boss fight would usually end up being a slog, so I'd reduce the boss' hp a little so I would stop delaying the inevitable. As much as we love to complain about 4e, I had some good times with it.

One of my complaints about 4e is how obvious the optimal builds are. Prior editions had allowed for crazy builds and surprising freeform emergent gameplay. 4e was pretty strictly the format I described in the paragraph above, so the game became the metagame of optimizing your characters to beat the game, and every level-up and every combat round came with an obvious "right" choice of what you were supposed to do. And it felt like if you made a suboptimal character, you were just slowing down the adventure.

Also, it's always a good time to tell people how much RPG.net sucks. This discussion right here would have banned everyone for multiple reasons if it had occurred under the thought-police RPGnet mods. Fat-shaming, gender realism, and disparaging unions would probably get us all banned. Even discussion of D&D edition pros/cons is forbidden because it reignites "edition warring."

Oh, and just so you know: You. Yeah, you personally. You. Your favorite edition of D&D sucks. And you're fat.

 

[Morblot]

Pathfinder didn't do anything new. In fact, Pathfinder added powercreep and shitty art.

IN DEFENSE OF PATHFINDER

The Core Rulebook is pretty good IMO; the consolidated skills and simpler class skill mechanics, for example, are a clear improvement, and the class balance overall is better. I'm not sure I love the unlimited cantrips, though, especially as detect magic is a cantrip and thus the PCs are always going everywhere with their radars on, exhausting the GM with their constant "is it magical?" questions. Anyway, it is fair to call it 3.75e, i.e. an improvement over 3.5.

The Advanced Player's Guide is also decent, despite some questionable core classes; the class archetypes especially are a cool idea and a decent way to customize one's character. They suffer from balance problems, yes, but still. However Paizo lost the plot sometime later and the entire game turned into a joke with one horrible supplement after another.

The art has its moments, but I suppose mostly in the bestiaries; the human and humanoid characters are always awful.

Edit. Also, it's not fair to say PF added powercreep; that was in the system since 3.0.

 

[Tacgnol]

PF also made it perfectly viable to invest in a single class and not do the silly multiclassing you always saw in 3e/3.5 where a character might have 4+ classes.

Their unchained takes on OGL classes were also usually vastly superior to the base class (with the exception of the Unchained Barbarian, which I don't think anyone prefers).

 

[Bohrain]

This is the person behind the union, btw, from the union's own website
https://twitter.com/spellsinsugar

Shay Snow
Shay (they/them)
Agender

WORKERS UNITE AT THE CAFETERIA!

Imagine being so fat you give up on ever finding your junk again.

The upside is that people can always lose weight.

The downside is that I'm not sure they qualifies as people.

Maybe it becomes a he or she again if it loses enough weight as you no longer need a plural for something that weights as much as multiple people.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Their unchained takes on OGL classes were also usually vastly superior to the base class (with the exception of the Unchained Barbarian, which I don't think anyone prefers)

What's unchained in the first place and how many people at Paizo must pay for this?

 

[mediocrepoet]

Ismaul That was a good post and certainly showed me where you're coming from. I can even agree with parts of it. The ease of encounter design tended not to stick out for me as much because I tended to "cheat" a bit if designing monsters and just specify the stuff I'd need for the table with the exception of a few more major NPCs and/or NPC adversaries that were more like counterparts to the PCs. I basically did things that way in each game that I've run though.

The place where 4E was weaker, is in PC builds, and that spelled the system's fall. The way of presenting every ability as a "power" that's written in a samey way made well, everything seem samey. That and the at-will/per encounter/daily power structure. But in practice the powers were vastly different even if they looked alike, they played very differently. The real weakness for me was that the powers were purely tactical in nature, they were written, almost all of them, as combat abilities only.

I think this is spot on though and what sticks out in most people's minds when they think of 4E (certainly it's what sticks in mine). That you could literally cut and paste abilities between classes, add some flavour text and you were done. That and some of the flavour was more anime-like than prior editions which I didn't care for. Some of this had to do with the movement abilities you described such as teleporting racials, all the shifting, etc. as well as things like laser clerics.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful reply.

 

[Tacgnol]

Their unchained takes on OGL classes were also usually vastly superior to the base class (with the exception of the Unchained Barbarian, which I don't think anyone prefers)

What's unchained in the first place and how many people at Paizo must pay for this?

I think James Jacobs was mostly behind the Unchained Barbarian (Swaps strength and con bonuses from rage with flat bonuses to attack, damage and temp hp. Nerfs a lot of the good rage powers).

To be fair, Unchained barbarian is better for two weapon fighters as flat damage and attack are more useful than strength bonuses, but worse for anyone else. Temp HP also does fix sudden barbarian death syndrome, but that was easily fixable by taking one feat (raging vitality) anyway.

 

[Ismaul]

Pathfinder didn't do anything new. In fact, Pathfinder added powercreep and shitty art.

IN DEFENSE OF PATHFINDER

The Core Rulebook is pretty good IMO; the consolidated skills and simpler class skill mechanics, for example, are a clear improvement, and the class balance overall is better. [...]

I'll grant that PF might've been an incremental improvement on 3.5e. For me though, that was too little, and 4E was out at that time and seemed more interesting as I was tired of 3.5E by that point, especially from a DM's point of view. I was ready to try something new.

Funny thing though, I never intended to run 4E, I wanted to do something else than D&D, more indie, expriment with different sorts of rule systems, yet my group wasn't ready for that so we went for 4E. Glad of it overall. The campaign was memorable, even though I felt somewhat constrained by the combat-centric rules; but that had always been the case of D&D. I houseruled a bunch of stuff into the system, adding things such as Fate aspects (traits, flaws and goals), plus Fate points as rewards for putting yourself into dire situation in accordance to your flaws and goals. Funnily the designers ended up doing the same in 5E with Inspiration.

PF also made it perfectly viable to invest in a single class and not do the silly multiclassing you always saw in 3e/3.5 where a character might have 4+ classes.

Multiclassing was quite the shitshow in 3E. Some levels were worth more than others, especially the first ones, which is why you had cheesed characters that dipped in many classes for one or a couple of levels to get that class' advantages. On the other hand, multiclassing with spellcasting classes was seriously flawed, as spell progression and power shat the bed as it was tied to caster level. So if you had a Wizard 5/Fighter 5, you cast as a 5th level character, meaning your spells were way too weak and easy to resist for level 10 enemies. Base attack bonus was shit also, as it made it harder to hit things if you multiclasses in a non-fighter/barbarian (without full-BaB progression) class. Prestige classes were the supposed fix, but man was that a shitty patch on top of a shit problem lol.

4E went the other way with it, by removing multiclassing and turning it into feats that gave your the main class ability of the other class, and for more feats allowed you to swap powers from your class with powers of another. That fixed all 3E's multiclassing problems, but it made less sense, as changing jobs is something that seems natural yet was made impossible in that system. The lack of simulation on the player side was not a good thing from the player's point of view. I guess if you really wanted to change class you could rebuild your character from scratch with another class and make him multiclass into the old one, but it's not very intuitive or organic as an approach.

 

[Ismaul]

You could easily homebrew lots of cool spell of 2nd edition into a ritual for the 4th.

Indeed porting 2E stuff into 4E was great. You just had to know that 4E "powers" were made for combat, while if you wanted something for outside combat encounters, you could do pretty much anything with rituals.

Actually, if I had to rank the edition for what they did best:

2E was king to strike your imagination, so many settings and ideas. A font of inspiration.
3E was king for player builds. Tinkerers, customizers and powergamers were greatly accomodated there.
4E was king for DM convenience and flexibility, and tactical encounter design.

Sadly for 4E, players didn't see its advantages looking at the rules, they saw the reduced PC customization options compared to 3E, and the sameness in class presentation compared to 3E's heterogeneity. Everyone wants to be special rather than like the others, and 4E didn't deliver on that on paper, only in play. When the designers realized that and tried to recover with the 4E Essentials line, the game was already derided by many and it was too late. We learned that the way rules are presented are also part of a class' feel and flavor.

 

[mediocrepoet]

PF also made it perfectly viable to invest in a single class and not do the silly multiclassing you always saw in 3e/3.5 where a character might have 4+ classes.

Multiclassing was quite the shitshow in 3E. Some levels were worth more than others, especially the first ones, which is why you had cheesed characters that dipped in many classes for one or a couple of levels to get that class' advantages. On the other hand, multiclassing with spellcasting classes was seriously flawed, as spell progression and power shat the bed as it was tied to caster level. So if you had a Wizard 5/Fighter 5, you cast as a 5th level character, meaning your spells were way too weak and easy to resist for level 10 enemies. Base attack bonus was shit also, as it made it harder to hit things if you multiclasses in a non-fighter/barbarian (without full-BaB progression) class. Prestige classes were the supposed fix, but man was that a shitty patch on top of a shit problem lol.

This reminds me of the first version of d20 Star Wars which was basically 3E in spaaaaaaace! We were converting a campaign over from WEG's D6 system and one of our players had decided that the way to make his character "fit" was a bunch of dips. Like 1-2 levels of noble, 1-2 of scoundrel, etc. These are all 3/4 BAB classes, so he had taken all of the +0 BAB levels and ended up with something like a 6th or 7th level character with a BAB of like +2. Then was frustrated that he couldn't do anything... Of course, his saving throw modifiers were ridiculously high.

My character, by contrast, had a mixture of full BAB classes and would basically blender everything in a round, including our converted over BBEG. What a shit show.

 

[Ismaul]

PF also made it perfectly viable to invest in a single class and not do the silly multiclassing you always saw in 3e/3.5 where a character might have 4+ classes.

Multiclassing was quite the shitshow in 3E. Some levels were worth more than others, especially the first ones, which is why you had cheesed characters that dipped in many classes for one or a couple of levels to get that class' advantages. On the other hand, multiclassing with spellcasting classes was seriously flawed, as spell progression and power shat the bed as it was tied to caster level. So if you had a Wizard 5/Fighter 5, you cast as a 5th level character, meaning your spells were way too weak and easy to resist for level 10 enemies. Base attack bonus was shit also, as it made it harder to hit things if you multiclasses in a non-fighter/barbarian (without full-BaB progression) class. Prestige classes were the supposed fix, but man was that a shitty patch on top of a shit problem lol.

This reminds me of the first version of d20 Star Wars which was basically 3E in spaaaaaaace! We were converting a campaign over from WEG's D6 system and one of our players had decided that the way to make his character "fit" was a bunch of dips. Like 1-2 levels of noble, 1-2 of scoundrel, etc. These are all 3/4 BAB classes, so he had taken all of the +0 BAB levels and ended up with something like a 6th or 7th level character with a BAB of like +2. Then was frustrated that he couldn't do anything... Of course, his saving throw modifiers were ridiculously high.

My character, by contrast, had a mixture of full BAB classes and would basically blender everything in a round, including our converted over BBEG. What a shit show.

Yeah, 4E "fixed" that problematic Base Attack Bonus and Spell caster level disparity by making it the same for everyone, multiclassed or not. It's just 1/2 your level, and you add it to all rolls. What differed between characters was your attribute bonus, your equipement bonus, and any competence bonus from class and feats. With just that you could have more than +10 variation between characters of the same level, and that's plenty enough on a d20 scale. 4E fighters also had a generic +1 class bonus to attack rolls with chosen weapons, so they remained superior to others in this. That's a great solution for 3E style multiclassing problems, yet 4E did away with true multiclassing despite that, go figure.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

AD&D had less issues than the amount created by attempting to "fix" AD&D

 

[Morblot]

4E went the other way with it, by removing multiclassing and turning it into feats that gave your the main class ability of the other class

Hah, so that's where Paizo stole the idea from! That's how you multiclass in PF 2e. At least in the playtest version, I've never even looked at the final book.

Yeah, 4E "fixed" that problematic Base Attack Bonus and Spell caster level disparity by making it the same for everyone, multiclassed or not.

They stole this also. Curious as PF was always (sort of) made for people who despise 4E.

(Btw, I personally have never played 4E and thus have nothing against it; my back then group just went to PF from 3.5 because it was more of the same.)

 

[Ismaul]

4E went the other way with it, by removing multiclassing and turning it into feats that gave your the main class ability of the other class

Hah, so that's where Paizo stole the idea from! That's how you multiclass in PF 2e. At least in the playtest version, I've never even looked at the final book.

Yeah, 4E "fixed" that problematic Base Attack Bonus and Spell caster level disparity by making it the same for everyone, multiclassed or not.

They stole this also. Curious as PF was always (sort of) made for people who despise 4E.

(Btw, I personally have never played 4E and thus have nothing against it; my back then group just went to PF from 3.5 because it was more of the same.)

Yeah I think everyone knew a bunch of things that got fixed in 4E were actual problems 3e had. And those fixes were not why most people disliked 4E.

Not sure that the multiclassing thing was just a positive fix. But 4E went all the way with it, they even built in prestige classes into all classes. It's designed around having more choices of character development within classes, rather than by adding a class or prestige class. So 4E's fix that removed multiclassing had somewhat of an extensive replacement. Did PF 2e also go that troute?

 

[Morblot]

Did PF 2e also go that troute?

From what I remember, kind of, as there are often these "pick either A or B" style choices the players got to make as the characters leveled. But AFAIR it is often just a choice between two very underwhelming feats, not choosing an entirely different flavor for the character like it is in 5e.

But then again, making e.g. two fighters different from each other was already a thing in PF 1e with the archetypes I mentioned before. It's a genuinely cool system, even if some of the archetypes are vastly inferior to others. An example archetype I personally like is the mobile fighter: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/co...ypes/paizo-fighter-archetypes/mobile-fighter/

Re: PF 2e again, I'd be somewhat interested to hear if the release version fixed the most glaring issues of the playtest version, such as the HORRIBLE organization of the book, idiotic rules such as characters being unable to run for over 10 minutes without becoming exhausted for the rest of the day ( :D:D:D ), the wonky math, the very underwhelming feats, ..., ..., etc, etc. Too bad apparently nobody here has tried it.

 

[Bara]

Well looks like early adopters of PF2e books are semi-screwed over. They're doing they're own "beyond" now with digital companion tools.



Buy it all over again!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

why would someone want to play PF2e? Nothing about it is appealing.

 

[RangerBoo]

We defeated anti-Semitism goys!
https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/pathfinder-paizo-phylactery-lich-soul-cages/
When will these companies realize that Twitter and Tic Tok aren't real life?

 

[Bara]

So dumb as phylactery is also a word for a case in which christian relics were persevered. Which is most likely what it was original based off from with Gygax being a true nerd for this stuff.

Phylactery of Saint Andre

Spoiler

But no, words can only be owned by certain people now and in controlled contexts can't let imagery beings known for perverting the natural order of the world and gaining immortality by defiling holy rights or objects if they share the same word with a real world thing of a living religion.

 

[RangerBoo]

They keep shitting on the memories of the greats. Tolkien, Gygax, Roddenberry, Jordan, Lovecraft, Newman. I hate SJW's. They can not create, only desecrate and destroy. They are the true iconoclasts.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Soul is offensive as some beings like g*rmans do not have one, please use a different word.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Soul is offensive as some beings like g*rmans do not have one, please use a different word.

The Ginger Coalition demands recompense!

 

[JamesDixon]

Soul is offensive as some beings like g*rmans do not have one, please use a different word.

I wonder how JarlFrank feels about him ranking equally to a Ginger.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Soul is offensive as some beings like g*rmans do not have one, please use a different word.

I wonder how JarlFrank feels about him ranking equally to a Ginger.

iirc he's bulgarian or hungarian or somesuch living there

 

[mediocrepoet]

I'd just like any of this to start off with the person who might actually be offended by it being offended by it, not these White wastoids being "offended" on behalf of X group for Twitter points or whatever the hell.