Quote from: thedungeondelver;1028312And yet, all Paizo can seem to do is copy, not innovate.  Note, I'm not even disagreeing about WotC's constant blundering, but it's not like Paizo came roaring out of the gate with a totally unique RPG that was a refutation of everything WotC was doing with D&D and totally rocked the gaming world (that crown goes to 1990s White Wolf).  They took 3rd edition D&D, bolted on ridiculous, I mean approaching Role-Master levels of complexity, and called it a day while they ground out a decade's worth of splat-books.  Now, they're scrambling to go 5e.

Right. Pazio is good at picking up the collateral damage in WOTCs wake. By chance or design they were perfectly in place to collect the huge loss in the fanbase WOTC effectively deliberately lost with 4e. And if they adopt 5e then they may well be in place to absorb the massive loss WOTC will take if they do return to the "5 year plan" blunder once again and 6e is some abysmal failure. Its WOTC so odds are it would be.

But. So far WOTC has not screwed up 5e. They are digging their holes elsewhere though. Who knows if the stupid will hit 5e hard later. WOTC is unpredictable and so hellbent on failure sometimes it is a wonder they have made it this far.

Quote from: Omega;1028343Right. Pazio is good at picking up the collateral damage in WOTCs wake. By chance or design they were perfectly in place to collect the huge loss in the fanbase WOTC effectively deliberately lost with 4e. And if they adopt 5e then they may well be in place to absorb the massive loss WOTC will take if they do return to the "5 year plan" blunder once again and 6e is some abysmal failure. Its WOTC so odds are it would be.

But. So far WOTC has not screwed up 5e. They are digging their holes elsewhere though. Who knows if the stupid will hit 5e hard later. WOTC is unpredictable and so hellbent on failure sometimes it is a wonder they have made it this far.

I think, though, that based on what I've heard despite the praise 5e has gotten and the good social cachet D&D has these days in the media with Stranger Things and so on that they're really down to their last defensive ring; if WotC blows a "6e" on the scale of 4e as far as optics...I could see Hasbro simply shuttering them.

of course I've also heard faint rumors that Hasbro is looking to sell WotC but I honestly can't back that up.

What do you mean "they are digging their holes elsewhere"?  What have you heard or seen?

If WotC do drop the ball with a 6e, a 5e based Pathfinder may be the best thing since sliced bread...although if they keep it as Math Finder, I doubt I'd bother with it.

If Paizo doesn't get on the 5e train, then they won't be the ones to keep 5e alive should WotC screw up again. Kobold press has made probably the biggest splash so far with the Tome of Beasts, but there really isn't an heir apparent yet as far as 3rd-party adventures go.

As someone who started with D&D 3.5 and actually enjoys Pathfinder as well, I am cautiously optimistic about this new edition of Pathfinder.

Hopefully they can lighten up the math and be more like 5E without having to be a total clone.

Starting out as a total clone of 3.5 actually worked for Pathfinder back in 2009 because of how badly 4E did, which allowed Paizo to gain a lot of the fans who felt alienated by WOTC's decisions back then. But now 5E is a very successful game and people love it, so it may be hard for Paizo to keep their mojo going.

After all, the original Pathfinder's success was like lightning in a bottle.

"Instead, most things, like moving, attacking, or drawing a weapon, take just one action, meaning that you can attack more than once in a single turn! Each attack after the first takes a penalty, but you still have a chance to score a hit."

nothing has changed, still shitting on the Martial characters by the looks of it.

Quote from: Omega;1028343Right. Pazio is good at picking up the collateral damage in WOTCs wake. By chance or design they were perfectly in place to collect the huge loss in the fanbase WOTC effectively deliberately lost with 4e.

There was no chance involved.  The OGL let them know in advance that all they had to do was copy WoTC's previous work, and they had a built in audience to effectively steal.  And because of the OGL, 4e was dead before it was even born.

Quote from: Batman;1028356"Instead, most things, like moving, attacking, or drawing a weapon, take just one action, meaning that you can attack more than once in a single turn! Each attack after the first takes a penalty, but you still have a chance to score a hit."

nothing has changed, still shitting on the Martial characters by the looks of it.

Ever since 3e, D&D is the only form of fantasy entertainment that actively tries to neuter the most common archetype of hero in it.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028358Ever since 3e, D&D is the only form of fantasy entertainment that actively tries to neuter the most common archetype of hero in it.

This is sad, but true.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1028330What's wrong with negative or positive energy? Also it actually is in 5e still in tiny amounts.

The problem with positive/negative energy, prior to 4e/5e, was that they bundled healing and damage into a single package while justifying it with poor logic. This was only exacerbated in Pathfinder when they tried to stretch it beyond what WotC intended it for. 3e positive/negative energy is pointlessly and stupidly complicated compared to necrotic and radiant damage in 4e/5e. I grew to dislike the fluff's lack of logic so much that I am writing a blog post about how to depict positive and negative energy in a rational world building exercise.

In 3e (and earlier editions too), positive energy healed the living and harmed the undead while negative energy did the opposite. Where the logic breaks down is when undead creatures drain the level/hit points/ability scores/etc from the living ostensibly to sustain themselves. Trying to explain the metaphysics in a logical manner would require breaking the link between damage and healing.

4e/5e did not have positive and negative energy as such. 4e/5e separated the effects into healing magic, necrotic damage and radiant damage, which are all completely different things. This was easy to explain from a fluff perspective without requiring backwards world building (i.e. forcing the world building to conform to idiosyncratic rules rather than the other way around). Unsurprisingly, this made them so much easier to adjudicate than what Paizo did.

Paizo... oh god, they turned positive and negative energy into damage types and had to devise all sorts of weird rules and rules exceptions. Positive energy damage only affected the undead, negative energy damage only affected the living. Sometimes they healed too, sometimes not. They did not count as energy types, despite having "energy" in their names. Negative energy affinity made certain living creatures healed/harmed as undead. Attacks that dealt posi/nega damage did not affect living or undead creatures.

So I really hope Paizo learns something and adopts 5e's elegant damage mechanics instead.

What? There's no consistent metaphysical explanation for level drain? I'M QUITTING D&D FOREVER.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028358Ever since 3e, D&D is the only form of fantasy entertainment that actively tries to neuter the most common archetype of hero in it.

I feel it's a problem specific to 3E and the OGL/SRD that Pathfinder is based off of. I felt pretty damn heroic in 4th Edition and in the one 5th Edition campaign I played a Fighter in (and Martials in general).  I don't get what the penalty is supposed to represent? Or why they penalize moving more than 5 feet? OR why you need 3 different feats and 4th+ level just to move forward, make an attack, then step away while the robed guy behind you ports in a flaming elemental with the same amount of effort?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028357There was no chance involved.  The OGL let them know in advance that all they had to do was copy WoTC's previous work, and they had a built in audience to effectively steal.  And because of the OGL, 4e was dead before it was even born.

Have fun with your delusions. The problem was D&D 4th edition was its own RPG and shared little with its predecessors other than the same. In contrast Paizo embraced 3.X fully and dominated the market. The proper fix was to address the shortcoming of 3.X by using the mechanics that most consider to be part of D&D. Something D&D 5e was able to do quite well. And as it turns out the market was in the mood for the type of fix 5e represented.

Quote from: estar;1028367Have fun with your delusions. The problem was D&D 4th edition was its own RPG and shared little with its predecessors other than the same. In contrast Paizo embraced 3.X fully and dominated the market. The proper fix was to address the shortcoming of 3.X by using the mechanics that most consider to be part of D&D. Something D&D 5e was able to do quite well. And as it turns out the market was in the mood for the type of fix 5e represented.

The simple fact is, you're BOTH right. Before 4E's launch, before anyone but playtesters saw the mechanics the forums on both WotC and Paizo were rife with Edition Wars. WotC's treatment to older players (via a promotional video for 4e that bashed previous editions), the effective kill of the OGL/SRD, the pulling of ALL digital stuff from the stores, and cutting ties to Paizo with Dragon/Dungeon magazine was enough to make people exceptionally angry at WotC's decisions. Tack on their decisions and direction of the Forgotten Realms (something a LOT of people hated, system aside) and it would have to be a miracle for 4E to have succeeded as a system.

Then you get into the rapid changes the game made. They DID address a lot of the systemic issues 3.5 had. They did so in ways that were familiar with D&D players (it's called the Tome of Battle, and a smidge of Star Wars: Saga). Unfortunately they didn't listen to their playtesters. They didn't fix the math fast enough. They thought 2 hr long combat sessions were something people liked. They thought the best way to make characters balanced was to make them equal in terms of decisions and options at all levels. On one hand, they're right. An Epic level Fighter in 4E is a bad-ass warrior and is fun as hell to play. He isn't diminished by his magical counterparts and they work in a very awesome and cohesive unit. BUUUT on the other hand, they have the same resource expenditure. They're similar in many ways, too many ways for a lot of people. Not to mention how it looks in the books. 4E's books are dreadfully boring to read. They're not very thought-image provoking.

4e fixed things by keeping a lot of 3.x innovations and dumping nearly everything it had in common with AD&D. Nearly every "Why the hell did they do that?" thing in 4e was about fixing something 3.5 broke by dumping the AD&D-ism that made the 3.x idea just plain not work. And then, for some reason, people felt it had lost something essential.

Quote from: 3rik;1028331FFG Star Wars managed to get people to actually pay for demo versions.

I actually found those to be a pretty good deal.  They came with the specialty dice, maps, and tokens for PCs/NPCs/vehicles.