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Author Topic: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder  (Read 18832 times)

tenbones

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #60 on: October 04, 2021, 02:54:43 PM »
Sure! but you're not going to break the game by allowing it. (Edit: I should add the armor restriction penalty is probably the most complained about rule in Savage Pathfinder, since traditionally it's never been an issue in Savage Worlds. It's a vestigial thing they're pulling from "D&D" tradition to add Pathfinder verisimilitude)

Savage Worlds can handle it. One of the downsides of this being "Pathfinder" is the fact they translation includes things specific to D&D *and* Pathfinder. But the core mechanics are still Savage Worlds.

From your perspective - removing classes writ-large will *not* hurt your game AT ALL. You could remove those Class Edges and play straight up with SWADE Core + whatever gear, Powers out of the Savage Pathfinder, and sprinkle anything from other Savage settings mechanics you want in there and you'll be perfectly fine.

Just treat such casters as "a different school of magic". I've added Martial arts back into my game, so people can be martial artists without being a Monk, and monks can formally use specific Martial Art schools now with their Monk abilities, as an example. Now not all monks are the same. And not all open-hand fighters are actually Monks (but they don't have all the nifty Monk mystical abilities either.)



« Last Edit: October 04, 2021, 02:58:47 PM by tenbones »

Marchand

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #61 on: October 05, 2021, 11:46:20 PM »
Late to this and only skimmed thread, apologies if I missed this:

It also means reworking the Cleric Class Edge to better reflect these changes.

Savage Worlds Cleric Rework

So now, not all Clerics can even Heal. Only those whose Gods have it in their purview.

OK but does anyone ever want to play a non-healing Cleric?
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tenbones

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #62 on: October 06, 2021, 11:24:02 AM »
Late to this and only skimmed thread, apologies if I missed this:

It also means reworking the Cleric Class Edge to better reflect these changes.

Savage Worlds Cleric Rework

So now, not all Clerics can even Heal. Only those whose Gods have it in their purview.

OK but does anyone ever want to play a non-healing Cleric?

Sure! The point is making the options fit the conceits. If you're approaching the game from a Tank/Healer/DPS viewpoint, in my games you'll be fine as long as you accept the conceits that go along with your choices. I get people play with these basic assumptions about Clerics.

There is a reason Clerics have powers - you're an agent of a deity that has agendas. Healing people is not high on the list - or even in the wheelhouse of most deities. And the deities that DO heal people as part of their domain, do so for equally important reasons. Whatever that agenda is - it's your PC's agenda in my games (unless you want to be miserable)

The question to "heal" or "not heal" - is sometimes last thing my players are concerned with when playing a Cleric, because first and foremost I make the meaning of playing a Cleric important. Where we start the game, the disposition of the locals, the general view held by people of the God in question all factor into players in my game in their choice of playing a Cleric. Yes, healing is a factor, but not the only one.

My goals in my writeup are to be true to the context of the Gods, not to make all Clerics be the same.

Edit: Not all clergy are Clerics. There are members of the faith that simply are Priests that do the daily administration of the church-body. Clerics are special
« Last Edit: October 06, 2021, 11:28:40 AM by tenbones »

Marchand

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #63 on: October 07, 2021, 12:18:49 AM »
OK but does anyone ever want to play a non-healing Cleric?

Sure! The point is making the options fit the conceits. If you're approaching the game from a Tank/Healer/DPS viewpoint, in my games you'll be fine as long as you accept the conceits that go along with your choices. I get people play with these basic assumptions about Clerics.

There is a reason Clerics have powers - you're an agent of a deity that has agendas. Healing people is not high on the list - or even in the wheelhouse of most deities. And the deities that DO heal people as part of their domain, do so for equally important reasons. Whatever that agenda is - it's your PC's agenda in my games (unless you want to be miserable)

Great stuff if you can get that level of player buy-in to the setting. I want to play in a game like that.
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tenbones

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #64 on: October 07, 2021, 11:28:32 AM »
It's super important for me as a GM to try and get my players to not play the mechanics of a game (though we all acknowledge their importance) but rather to see the mechanics as expressions of how the world operates.

This is why I've come to enjoy Savage Worlds vastly over d20. It's not that I can't get this same effect in d20 - it's that d20 is much more difficult to fine-tune when trying different things with it. It scales poorly by comparison.

With Savage Worlds I can drop a setting rule into the game and completely change one aspect of the game without affecting the other mechanical parts. The job for me as a GM is to produce the in-game reality of what these mechanics mean in the everyday lives of the PC's.

So having magical healing - as powerful as it is in Savage Pathfinder constricted to very specific types of Clerics reinforces the dogmas and practices of both the followers and layfolk as well as the general attitudes of the cultures in-game.

Conversely ALL the other Clerics have their place too, and some are not well liked, but they're all given their due. And of course those non-Healing Clerics have their own special abilities that make them respected/feared specifically as dictated by their creeds.

Players that walk into my games from the D&D-mindset find that my games will make demands of them that are very personal for their PC's because I want their PC's to have experiences and backgrounds that directly shape their views of the world, and therefore the game. And not all of them are "accurate" views. Just like not all philosophies and religions have all the answers. Most new players to my games get caught up in these "complexities" of competing dilemmas... and that's when their PC's come alive and stop being a pile of numbers and mechanics.

Savage Worlds is not the only answer to these problems - it's just an excellent tool for a GM to resolve those problems to the limits of their own skill.

nielspeterdejong

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #65 on: November 23, 2022, 05:29:15 AM »
I for one am curious about the system, why don't you create a thread explaining it?

I mean imagine you're teaching it so someone can GM/Play the thing.

By "the system" I mean SW Pathfinder and how you've modified it to get the results you're getting.

I'll explain it here since I'm not sure how popular Savage Worlds is around these parts...

Like Shrieking, I'm trying to get the Pathfinder context-specific stuff out and the stuff I want in doing the least amount of work possible. That said my documents are already getting into the 100-page mark... so heh. In my defense a lot of it is new content specific for my Greybox take which is 1e with 2e elements.

So for example...

The Savage Pathfinder Cleric takes its queues directly from from Pathfinder 1e Core. Clerics there are pretty generic and they're healbots, lets face it. I *never* liked that in D&D and I like it even less in Pathfinder where they went ALL-IN on the idea. To me Clerics should be representatives of their Deities and should reflect that in their abilities. 'Faiths and Pantheons' is one of the best books ever written for D&D in any edition. It remains the standard for me in how Clerics should be written up. So that means converting all the deities from the Greybox to Savage Pathfinder, and retooling the Domains to match. It also means reworking the Cleric Class Edge to better reflect these changes.

Savage Worlds Cleric Rework

So now, not all Clerics can even Heal. Only those whose Gods have it in their purview. I've listed the general creeds and dogmas of their respective deities so players can play confidently on how they want to express their characters without trying to pigeonhole themselves into their alignment ideas. Yes Alignment exists, but the dogmas are more important. I'll be adding more deities later - like all the non-human ones. The Realms have a LOT of Gods and Pantheons...

New/Different Races
I've also retooled the races. Savage Pathfinder goes with a 4-point score for their Pathfinder races, which is good. However their versions of the standard D&D races are specific to Pathfinder's Golarion setting. I was aiming for Greybox Realms - with a few tweaks tossed in to nod towards directions I'm going later - Spelljammer (so Sun Elf stats are also Imperial Elf stats).

Savage Realms Races

I'm working on Martial Arts system pulling inspiration from Oriental Adventures, as well as fighting styles from 7th Sea leveraging the Savage Worlds Pirates of the Spanish Main fencing school systems. It's still a work in progress (as is everything).

New Classes
I'm also working on new Class Edges - Currently working on the Cavalier from 1e D&D, with elements from the Pathfinder game I liked. It's still rough, and I'm testing it out. I'm on tap to make more Orders for it. I really wanted to fix the Cavalier from being so optimal at being mounted, which 1e Cavaliers had going for them. I think I landed on a good balance so Cavalier players are dangerous mounted or on foot. This is largely due to the Savage Worlds system being flexible.

Savage Cavalier

I plan on making some Class Edges from Oriental Adventure as well - the Sohei, the Samurai, and the Kensei Prestige Edge. The Samurai will be built similar but different in emphasis to the Cavalier. The Sohei will be a "Mystic" similar to the Ranger or Paladin in Savage Pathfinder, but with a different emphasis to create distinction between it and the Monk. The Kensei is still under a lot of consideration from me... Some OA classes will not need creating as the Savage Pathfinder classes already cover them - Ninja are Assassins, etc.

Likewise I'll be doing a pass over the Al-Qadim classes. Pretty sure the Sha'ir will get its own Class Edge. The others, we'll see.

Setting Rules -

I modified the Heavy* spellcasting modifier to be a Legendary quality, *because* I use the Heavy modifier rules as the Savage Rifts rule. This effectively lets me scale Pathfinder straight into Rift's level of power at Legendary (slightly earlier for some classes).

I also play that without the 4-wound limit. This is a modern D&Dism which I don't like, where it's exceedingly difficult to die. Dead is dead. Between the established rules and Bennies, PC's should have these things factored in before going into combat.

Savage Pathfinder does a good job of getting back to the meat-and-potatoes style play I like: Casters are powerful, but *really* frail. Warriors are super-dangerous in combat. But because of the system, it allows you to dial it out/in to get as granular as you like without missing a beat.


I tried looking up the Races of Pathfinder in Savage Worlds, but it states that I need access to view the content.

tenbones

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #66 on: November 24, 2022, 12:18:01 AM »
Weird. I can't edit the post... Probably because it's old.

Here try this.

Savage Pathfinder Share

nielspeterdejong

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #67 on: November 24, 2022, 04:09:28 AM »
Weird. I can't edit the post... Probably because it's old.

Here try this.

Savage Pathfinder Share

That works, thank you :)

Svenhelgrim

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #68 on: November 24, 2022, 12:58:53 PM »
The way you [Tenbones] describe Savage World and your retooling of Clerics makes me think it would be a great system to use for Hârn.  I have tried running D&D and it’s just thematically WRONG.

I need elemental wizards and clerics who do stuff that their god represente instead of generic healbots with maces.

I will definitely look into Savage Worlds.

Dropbear

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #69 on: November 25, 2022, 07:36:10 PM »
With all the talk about D&D - anyone play or considering playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder? I'm a D&D refugee and Savage Worlds has increasingly become a thing at my table.

I'm interested in what others (if any) have to say about their experiences with it thus far. Or if you're interested and have questions - I'd be happy to try and answer them, especially in regards to play-differences between D&D and Savage Worlds...

I’m a refugee from D&D as well and am working on SW and C&C to be my asylums. I am already invested in both as systems, meaning I have picked up a lot of both companies’ product. The sell to the group begins as soon as the Fantasy Companion physical product comes in, and I’m going for a Primeval Thule campaign.

We’ve used SWADE to play Deadlands already and the system got buy in from the group. I am also writing up a setting of my own and trying to decide which system I prefer to set it up under. I am a huge fan of Amazing Adventures as well.

Dropbear

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #70 on: November 25, 2022, 07:44:47 PM »
With all the talk about D&D - anyone play or considering playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder? I'm a D&D refugee and Savage Worlds has increasingly become a thing at my table.

I'm interested in what others (if any) have to say about their experiences with it thus far. Or if you're interested and have questions - I'd be happy to try and answer them, especially in regards to play-differences between D&D and Savage Worlds...

I’m a refugee from D&D as well and am working on SW and C&C to be my asylums. I am already invested in both as systems, meaning I have picked up a lot of both companies’ product. The sell to the group begins as soon as the Fantasy Companion physical product comes in, and I’m going for a Primeval Thule campaign.

We’ve used SWADE to play Deadlands already and the system got buy in from the group. I am also writing up a setting of my own and trying to decide which system I prefer to set it up under. I am a huge fan of Amazing Adventures as well.

Argh. Three GSDs caused my post to necessarily be truncated. Their bellies required filling….

I’m leaning towards SW for a couple of reasons tbh. The powers are easy to use, for one. My homebrew setting deals more with gadgets than magic, but SW powers offer a pretty solid framework of guidelines for gadget capabilities.

Dropbear

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #71 on: November 25, 2022, 07:57:42 PM »
With all the talk about D&D - anyone play or considering playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder? I'm a D&D refugee and Savage Worlds has increasingly become a thing at my table.

I'm interested in what others (if any) have to say about their experiences with it thus far. Or if you're interested and have questions - I'd be happy to try and answer them, especially in regards to play-differences between D&D and Savage Worlds...

I’m a refugee from D&D as well and am working on SW and C&C to be my asylums. I am already invested in both as systems, meaning I have picked up a lot of both companies’ product. The sell to the group begins as soon as the Fantasy Companion physical product comes in, and I’m going for a Primeval Thule campaign.

We’ve used SWADE to play Deadlands already and the system got buy in from the group. I am also writing up a setting of my own and trying to decide which system I prefer to set it up under. I am a huge fan of Amazing Adventures as well.

Argh. Three GSDs caused my post to necessarily be truncated. Their bellies required filling….

I’m leaning towards SW for a couple of reasons tbh. The powers are easy to use, for one. My homebrew setting deals more with gadgets than magic, but SW powers offer a pretty solid framework of guidelines for gadget capabilities.

Food in, food out. The GSDs made sure that I would realize the folly of trying to post here at the current time.

So with Primeval Thule I want to represent low magic in the setting. Removing the classes from the Savage Pathfinder stuff is an approach. Does Fantasy Companion actually contain a lot of the same stuff as SWPF? I have barely read the PDF as of yet, the care and training of these three GSDs has pretty much fallen solely on myself in the past month and a half whereas my wife and I were sharing duties before that.

They are exhausting!  But I love all three of them. Just don’t have much time right now, saw this thread, and thought I’d ask about this since Tenbones is here.

tenbones

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #72 on: November 26, 2022, 04:08:13 PM »
The way you [Tenbones] describe Savage World and your retooling of Clerics makes me think it would be a great system to use for Hârn.  I have tried running D&D and it’s just thematically WRONG.

I need elemental wizards and clerics who do stuff that their god represente instead of generic healbots with maces.

I will definitely look into Savage Worlds.

I've been told this before. It's not a concept I invented or anything, I just grew up deeply fascinated with religion - and I come from a very weird cultural background (Father was Pentecostal - the crazy snake-handling, strychnine-drinking kind, Mother was Catholic, but my maternal Grandfather was Zen Buddhist and I was blasted in the face with all of it). It seemed very clear to me unless you were running a monotheistic campaign world, Clerics wouldn't be uniform in their expression of abilities either mechanically or narratively.

It was 2e Faiths and Pantheons that really clarified what I wanted with their Speciality Priests. It was trivially easy too - simply nuke the Cleric class, and the only kind of Cleric you could be is a Specialty Priest. That simple. The funny thing is the Pathfinder Cleric is the exact opposite of what I want - it's a glorified Healbot. Savage Pathfinder in doing a direct translation pulled all that Healbotty horror over to their game. Fortunately Savage Worlds is wonderfully easy to tweak by design. So I simply recreated the 1e/2e Specialty Priests of the Realms over to Savage Worlds and bingo-is-your-name-o.

Hehehe of course my players coming over from 5e that are new to my kind of games were... mildly discombobulated... at the idea that only clerics of Gods whose portfolio's govern healing could actually *heal*. But that's their problem.

Savage Worlds core and the Fantasy Companion are *excellent* apocrypha to Savage Worlds Pathfinder (which is self-contained) as they give you options to tweak and wholesale gut the things you don't like in the Savage World Pathfinder rules with very little effort.


tenbones

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #73 on: November 26, 2022, 04:16:37 PM »
Does Fantasy Companion actually contain a lot of the same stuff as SWPF?

Surprisingly no. The Fantasy Companion was designed specifically to be a setting neutral sourcebook for Fantasy tropes for the Savage World's Core book. In fact, you don't even NEED Savage Pathfinder at all (but I'd recommend it).

The big differences are these: Savage Pathfinder uses Class Edges to represent the "classes" you'd find in D&D. They're optional of course, even in Savage Pathfinder (the option being you make normal Savage Worlds characters and everyone gets a free Background or Profession Edge instead). The Fantasy Companion has all the elements of the Savage Pathfinder 'Class Edges' broken down into discrete parts, plus a WHOLE lot more. They can be used interchangeably, but you'll have to decide if you want allow your Savage Pathfinder "classes" to dip easily into other Class-schticks. Personally? I don't give a flip. In my campaigns it's your character, as long as you can justify learning an ability/skill/stat upgrade in-game then I'll let you buy it. This puts the onus on the player to DO that.

So yes the Fantasy Companion is absolutely worth the purchase, ESPECIALLY if you want a more granular set of mechanics for you to customize your game. There is VERY mild overlap with SWPF. Definitely worth getting if you're really hands-on with your campaigns.

Corolinth

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Re: Anyone playing Savage Worlds Pathfinder
« Reply #74 on: November 28, 2022, 03:04:59 PM »
I assume that you are referring to channel energy when you say that Pathfinder doubled down on clerics as healbot. Regardless, it's worth mentioning that's only for approximately half of clerics, as the other half do the opposite of healing with the same class features that typically get clerics labeled as healbots.

Magical healing is a necessity in D&D prior to about 4th edition, because mundane healing simply takes too long. It's cool to want clerics to do something other than healbot, but not having healing at all isn't actually an option. This is baked into the design of D&D, and a lot of other games. You can get by with an evil cleric who spontaneously casts inflict spells, because they can always load all cure spells the following day and recover everyone in downtime, but you at least need that option, minimum. It is what it is. I wouldn't personally call this a design flaw in the system itself, but I think that's a fair argument to make.

I'm inclined to be more favorable to your idea*, because SWADE is a lot more generous with mundane healing. Not having magical healing could actually work, because any wild card with a d4 healing has a pretty good shot at recovering a significant chunk of your total wound capacity. You just need a chance to take a breather and pull out the first aid kit. You don't actually need someone who has the healing power. It's handy, but "savvy woodsman with bandages and herbs" is plenty.

It's an interesting idea. I share a lot of your opinions on the matter. I really liked the 2E Forgotten Realms treatment of specialty priests because it mattered what god your cleric worshiped. The gods themselves all have different powers, and that should translate to their priests. The way domains are handled in SWADE does a far better job of making a cleric's god matter than the domains of 3E ever did, especially once you start to work in the concept of trappings.

The only thing in SWADE that I see making clerics a healbot is that they get the healing power plus some amount of other stuff. Giving them three powers rather than healing + 2, or picking some other deity appropriate power for their freebie and forcing them to select healing if they want it is a thing you could do, I suppose. However, if you take away the healing power entirely for certain gods... what makes a cleric different from a sorcerer who worships that god? You could certainly do that, but all clerics have access to cure light wounds in D&D. If you're taking away the healing power from certain clerics based on their god, is this still a SWADE conversion of D&D/PF? The question is a bit philosophical, I'll admit.

*I was initially skeptical, because I've been down this road before numerous times. Someone gets the notion that it would be awesome to have a game with no healing, because healing sucks so lets just not have healers, and 9/10 times the game is dogshit. This is because the person with the big brain idea to get rid of healers didn't actually address anything about the game that made healers necessarily, they just deleted the healing abilities and any classes based around healing. Granted, I see this happening more frequently in video games, but it pops up in tabletop games as well.