Quote from: BronzeDragon;10991291st?

Idk how many of you play 3.5, but his assessment that a lot of feats suck is spot on.

He also lays the groundwork there for PFs powerseep problem.

Quote from: Catulle;1099134Ryan Dancey?

That is not a name widely associated with designing DnD mechanics.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;10991291st?

Quote from: Catulle;1099134Ryan Dancey?

Monte Cook. The infamous Ivory Tower Game Design essay: http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=13812.0

Quote from: Jaeger;1098930My Advice. Don't play PF2/D&D.

Plenty of other fantasy games out there.

So true. Is there an index of RPGs by genre? Like pulp, pseudo-medieval fantasy, etc?

Quote from: Shasarak;1098958I am sorry man, but Paizo doubled down on all of those things and you dont even want to know how many different types of Dragons they have now.

I never understood why they couldn't have used a random generation table. Having a bazillion types of dragons complete with nonsensical naturalistic ecologies is just silly. Dragons are magic. They don't have to make sense!

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1099006Don't bother.

Box actually likes 4E, and the guys that wrote those objections also love 4E.

I've learned not to talk to crazy people.

I'm not saying that I liked 4e. I only said that it fixed some long-standing problems with the rules. It was not perfect, but a lot of the backlash was misinformed and 4e didn't bomb financially despite what propaganda would tell you. WotC's response was to throw out the baby with the bathwater. In fact, during the development of 5e their blogs included numerous instances where they recreated mechanics from 4e without realizing it.

The problem with 4e wasn't the rules, but all the other PR stuff that went horribly wrong. The tiefling mocking the gnome video, the promised online tools never materializing, that truly awful replacement for the OGL that forced publishers to stop selling supplements for previous editions, and countless other things I can't remember.

The kinds of stuff they elaborated on in the Wizards Presents: Races and Classes and Wizards Presents: Worlds and Monsters preview books wasn't inherently bad. I found much of it refreshing and logical, because I myself found the thirty years of accumulated baggage unworkable.

If you really think that I'm crazy, then I implore you to provide solid rebuttals of the various critiques of the D&D mechanics. Although you can certainly decry 4e for making classes feel homogeneous, it at least tried to address problems that even Gygax complained about back in the day as well as problems introduced by Wizards of the Coast in the first place.

Quote from: sureshot;1099025Honest answer imo most gamers do not know what the fuck they want. They want to complain about martial caster disparity. Then whine even louder that one took away the power of their caster and that they are now "nerfed". Let me put some glycerin tears in my eyes while I pretend to care. They want to be able to complain about the flaws of any rpg yet don't you damn dare change a thing about it. It is why I ban that kind of talk at my games non-negotiable no exceptions . One does not complain about the flaws of an rpg continually then turn around and say not to change anything so those flaws can be improved. I can respect not liking changes in an rpg. Not the weird dichotomy of point out flaws and being resistant to fixing the same flaws.

It is so annoying, too.

Quote from: Daztur;1099054While 5ed does borrow a lot from 4ed under the hood in actual play it feels a lot more like a cleaned up 3.5ed. There's nothing hypocritical about disliking 4ed and liking 5ed. I find 5ed a bit bland but it's basically fine and I'd rather play it than 4ed.

4ed does have some good aspects though. It was a lot of fun reskinned for a mecha vs. kaiju game I played with CaveBear a while back. My PC was a shardmind grapple fighter reskinned as a Tremors worm/shai halud (got to use a gummiworm as my mini) and it was good for long epic smashy battles. Just not too good for standard D&D attrition-based dungeon crawling.



Right, but on the other hand just because you think a flaw sucks and that flaw got fixed doesn't mean you can't complain about HOW that flaw got fixed. For example I complained a lot about 3.5 martial/caster disparity and 4ed fixed that (while for some bizarre reason retaining the idiotic 3.5ed decision to give fighters hardly any skills) however I didn't much like HOW 4ed fixed that so instead of playing 4ed I went and played OSR games instead which tend not to have 3.5ed's martial/caster disparity, at least in the single digit levels. 5ed has that disparity but not as bad as 3.5ed so I can deal with it and get my martial casters up to par with the party's casters by doing some charop.

Execution is everything. In order to fix the problems, you need to know what those problems are. Given that the writers have demonstrated their ignorance of the rules at length, I propose that we place the munchkins in charge of development. Given their clearly competent grasp on game design, they are obviously the best suited to fixing the rules.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1099190Given that the writers have demonstrated their ignorance of the rules at length, I propose that we place the munchkins in charge of development. Given their clearly competent grasp on game design, they are obviously the best suited to fixing the rules.

Honestly, I have a couple of munchkins I run each iteration of game system project by specifically to find abuse-able elements in the system. Especially early on they found some truly egregious combos that enabled me to close them.

In short, munchkins do have a place in game design. I wouldn't want one to be lead developer, but for finding unintended exploits, they're fantastic.

Quote from: Morblot;1099052At least they did in 2017... There's an old catalog to be found here: http://www.alliance-games.com/Home/11/1/79/1162?articleID=127270

Edit: Diamond and Alliance are affiliates, in case anyone was wondering: https://www.diamondcomics.com/Home/1/1/3/305?articleID=36047

It looks like they no longer supply the D&D books, but agreed, they did at one point.

On Amazon, I've been spot-checking the relative position of Pathfinder versus D&D Player's Handbook, and pretty consistently I've seen the 5th edition PHB in 1st place.  

There are 56 user reviews on the site now and most are positive (overall 4 star rating compared to 5th edition PHB 4.5 star rating).  For something that's 600+ pages, I think splitting into a volume boxed-set would have been appropriate (like having all the spells in a separate book) so you can more easily reference the parts you need.  It sounds like the size of the book and the insufficiently durable covers are problems for some people (covers ripped, bending, etc).  

3 (out of 5, currently) 1-star reviews appear to be upset that Paizo represents 'PC culture'.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1099190I never understood why they couldn't have used a random generation table. Having a bazillion types of dragons complete with nonsensical naturalistic ecologies is just silly. Dragons are magic. They don't have to make sense!

What is wrong with monster ecologies?  It is not as if they spring into existence from someones head.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1099190So true. Is there an index of RPGs by genre? Like pulp, pseudo-medieval fantasy, etc?.

No index that I know of.

OSR/D&D5e has made other fantasy RPGs thin on the ground by comparison.

The "D&D genre" of fantasy has absolutely run roughshod over the hobby. The true legacy of the OGL was to increase and cement D&D's dominance of the RPG industry.

So outside of established systems (Like d100) there is little incentive to make an promote a non d20 fantasy rpg.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1099190I'm not saying that I liked 4e. I only said that it fixed some long-standing problems with the rules. It was not perfect, but a lot of the backlash was misinformed and 4e didn't bomb financially despite what propaganda would tell you. WotC's response was to throw out the baby with the bathwater. In fact, during the development of 5e their blogs included numerous instances where they recreated mechanics from 4e without realizing it..

While technically true in some respects, many did not like the specific implementation of the fixes. And the WOTC PR department did not do them any favors either.

Not that there weren't some god ideas. This can be seen by 5e implementing some of the better ideas with its own spin. And while WOTC made money with 4e, but then to be outsold by their clone was a humiliation not to be borne. So, 5e.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1099203It looks like they no longer supply the D&D books, but agreed, they did at one point.

On Amazon, I've been spot-checking the relative position of Pathfinder versus D&D Player's Handbook, and pretty consistently I've seen the 5th edition PHB in 1st place.  

There are 56 user reviews on the site now and most are positive (overall 4 star rating compared to 5th edition PHB 4.5 star rating).  For something that's 600+ pages, I think splitting into a volume boxed-set would have been appropriate (like having all the spells in a separate book) so you can more easily reference the parts you need.  It sounds like the size of the book and the insufficiently durable covers are problems for some people (covers ripped, bending, etc).  

3 (out of 5, currently) 1-star reviews appear to be upset that Paizo represents 'PC culture'.

Lets look at the top 1 star review:

QuoteYou want to play a paladin but not a sword-and-board style (as you could do in 1E)? Too bad, you gotta take a shield feat anyway. Want to be devoted to good but not a deity (as you could do in 1E)? Too bad, gotta serve a deity. Want to use a spear with grace instead of brute force (as you could do in 1E)? Too bad, it's not an option anymore. Want to take an AoO as a paladin (as you could do in 1E)? Too bad, that's only for fighters now.
Want to take a 1 level dip into fighter (as you could do in 1E)? Too bad, multiclassing is insanely complicated now and will take a feat tax, a feat and wait until 4th level to get that basic option back.

Half of these complaints are wrong, half are nonsensical and the other half are complaints about how Paizo can not seem to fit 10 years of character options into the core book.

Yes the rest of us seem to understand that some options are not going to be in the first book but not this brainiac. Oh I can not make a Cleric without worshiping a Deity?  No shit Sherlock, its a Cleric.  Oh my Paladin can not make attacks of Opportunity!  Just read the rules dumb ass.  Come on.

A one star review from someone who can not even read the book he is supposed to be reading, can not understand the game that he is supposed to be playing and can not even comprehend the concept of space-time in the world that he is supposed to be inhabiting.  My only possible explanation is an over dose of soy based products.

I remember when everyone said that Starfinder was going to tank.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1099230I remember when everyone said that Starfinder was going to tank.

Did it?  

I know a lot of gamers, but I don't know anyone who is playing it.  I do know some people who were interested, but I don't think they ever got a group going with it.  

I remember when Eric Mona really wanted to keep Polyhedron going, even though nobody else seemed to care.  I would wager that as long as StarFinder covered the production costs, it could have been allowed to continue as a vanity project.  They do need to move product and good companies will take a stab at 'the next big thing'.  As long as they're prudent, they can experiment.  

In any case, I do participate in a lot of gaming discussions, and even there, I don't hear people bringing up Pathfinder as an example of any type of interesting game design.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1099241Did it?  

I know a lot of gamers, but I don't know anyone who is playing it.  I do know some people who were interested, but I don't think they ever got a group going with it.  

I play biweekly in my local Starfinder Society sessions. There's continuing support for the game with the Society and regular book releases. I didn't expect it to knock D&D off the top of the hill, but it seems to be a solid RPG product.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1099190Execution is everything. In order to fix the problems, you need to know what those problems are. Given that the writers have demonstrated their ignorance of the rules at length, I propose that we place the munchkins in charge of development. Given their clearly competent grasp on game design, they are obviously the best suited to fixing the rules.

Yeah, it boggles the mind that WotC etc. never hired some of the biggest CharOp nerds as at least consultants to do some sanity testing of their rules. Would catch so many things like the BS 5ed Lucky feat even aside from obscure synergies that the designers don't foresee. One thing that 5ed does well, however, it it's harder to synergize a lot of stuff because of stuff like Advantage and the Concentration rule so a hypothetical 6ed could clean up a lot of little things by making small tweaks instead of an overhaul that'd piss off a lot of people.

For Pathfinder the way the game is set up you really NEED some huge munchkins to make sure all of the rules work well together and I don't think the devs that they have are all that good at that sort of thing. The more crunchy a ruleset you have the more munchkin power you need to make everything work well together. If you don't then the sort of behavior the rules reward will be different than the sort of behavior that the devs WANT the rules to reward and things go sideways.

Of course you probably don't want the munchkins in the driver's seat or you'll get silly shit like The Gaming Den (//www.tgdmb.com/viewforum.php?f=1) but they should be an important part of the development process of any half-way crunchy game.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1099190So true. Is there an index of RPGs by genre? Like pulp, pseudo-medieval fantasy, etc?.

This page is more Products by Genre, but sorting by rank will push the major systems to the top.

https://www.rpggeek.com/browse/rpggenre

Pathfinder 2e is the first game to be awarded the Polygon Recommends Badge.