Café de Nuit

Paizo just announced their Pathfinder RPG, fully compatible with 3.5...

I haven't had time to read the whole thing...
It seems like a smart move!

Patrick
(I'm happy, I had no interest in 4E...)

I read the two press statements about this and reading between the lines Paizo were never gonna convert to 4E, however that fact that the manuscripts turned up late was golden as its true.

Paizo are not only contiuning to publish in 3.5 but there updating it and jokingly calling it 3.75, I for one am happy. While I have no grudge against 4E and will play it if put infront of me, I have no intension of upgrading as all my ravenloft material is in 3.5.

Now I know how the AD&D crowd felt all those years ago.

Yes, I'm no 4E hater or anything either, but I am just not reinvesting into a whole slew of books (Just how many PHB are they putting out?). And it just does not sound that cool (but that's neither here nor there).

But I think Paizo might / would have gone with 4E (not saying they would not have put out 3E still). I think it was Jacobs or Mona who said that while they were on ''wait & see'' mode, they missed two deadlines for stuff. They just could not wait anymore.

It makes sense from a business POV really.

And Paizo is usually very respectful of their customer, so I have high hopes!

Patrick

So Paizo is going to continue to support 3E? Excellent. I'm another who couldn't care less about 4th Edition, and I'm glad to see that it isn't going to be a completely dead ruleset.

I'm probably going to pillage 4E rules as and when they appeal to me, but I'm not buying into the new setting.

3.75 sounds like the best way to go, if you balance things like expenses and player familiarity. I've already started using static defensive scores for things like Spot/Listen/Sense Motive checks (assuming the passive person takes 10) and saving throws (likewise assume a 10 on their d20 roll) and making the active party roll the d20 instead. I'm still bitter about the shift to 4E, which I still think is motivated mostly by finances and only secondarily by rules updates, but if there are some good updates that come out of it, I'll adopt those with my players' consent.

On a completely unrelated note I love GameMastery's Critical Hit Deck (available also through Paizo.com) and I'm incorporating that into all my games now!

They just released the first update of Alpha Release One. It contains a few tweaks and some changes to the combat feat system. The next update, a major rework of the skills, should also be available soon.
I like what I have seen so far. While I am preordering 4th Ed, I will probably stick with 3rd Ed for a while and Pathfinder seems like a good way to do so.

*Gasp*
I just realized, if piazo is sticking with 3.something then we might see a hardback of Age Of Worms , Shackled City was great and its deserves a sequel.

cpt_machine wrote:*Gasp*
I just realized, if piazo is sticking with 3.something then we might see a hardback of Age Of Worms , Shackled City was great and its deserves a sequel.

They would need WotC to allow it. Which is rather improbable at the moment.

That is a shame, but I have gotten hold of the alpha release manuscript and its pretty good.

I cant wait to see what they do with the Bard and Druid.

Eric Mona said the next release SHOULD be by the end of the week or at the latest early next week!

yay!

It needs some tweaking IMHO (especially the skills) but there is a ton of good stuff in there! I want to convert some of this as soon as I get all releases for my RL game!

Patrick

Alpha 2 just came out.

I have not had a chance to look at anything...

Just download the updated file!

Yum!

Patrick

Where does the talk about "Tian Xia" come from? (An Asian style area in the Pathfinder series.)

I saw there's a Gazetteer that talks about the Pathfinder setting. Is it mentioned there?

I just downloaded the alpha file and read through it. Interesting stuff, though they don't revamp the Vancian magic system.

Hello HB

The Vancian system (for better or worse) is there to stay.
Buhlman has already said he is not reinventing the wheel. What they want is a continuation of 3.5 (which suits me fine btw).

The Asian theme is part of the Pathfinder world I think... Some people want Asian PC classes, etc. But, again, that is not the intent of PFRPG. Maybe (much) later down the line, IMHO.

I still have stuff to go over, but I really like most of this stuff. Now, if I can just find a way to incorporate this into my ongoing RL game... (Ducks as my players probably start throwing things at me! )
Patrick

Yep, in that case, Pathfinder is an interesting item, but still ultimately only a pebble under the wheels as I continue my full-scale retreat from d20.

Well, I downloaded Alpha 3 and I'm giving it a skim. I like what I see for the most part. Especially the idea of giving the player extra choices wherever possible, and making the base classes stand up to prestige classes.

I love the racial tweaks. Each race (other than human and half-elf) get two favored classes to choose from. The racial ability adjustments are no longer a complete wash. I like what they did with gnomes and elves to reflect their innate magic.

Hey HMB, one of your pet peeves is gone: monks and paladins can apparently multiclass freely. The core class tweaks seem pretty spiffy too. I like that animal friends are no longer the only option for druids, rangers, wizards, paladins, and sorcerers. Just because I hang out in the woods doesn't mean I want a snake following me around. Works especially well for the Paladin, with his weapon bond instead of a mount.

Sorcerer bloodlines seem to give them a much needed boost (though still no diplo on the class skills, grumble). I especially like the arcane one that finally gives decent metamagic to Sorcs, who really ought to be the best at it. I could see altering the Fey bloodline to a Shadow Fey one for RL, and maybe making a Mists bloodline.

Fighter's a bit boring, but that's always been the case. Now at least they've got a power boost at higher levels, even if it's a boring one. Rage points and the ki pool are good inventions to give options to the Barbarian and Monk.

I like the cantrips-at-will idea, and I like that they removed cure/inflict minor wounds to make it work. Good idea for the Scientist PrC from LotB, which had that brokenness in it.

Ooh... I like the skill system. Cross-class no longer sucks. Monks can feint, HMB! Although I wonder if the +3 for class skills will become meaningless at high levels. good riddance to Concentration. Never noticed Open Locks was redundant with Disable Device, but now that they mention it, it's obvious.

Not sure about turning now healing at the same time. Makes sense logically, but seems a little too easy.

Like the new grapple and the overall streamlining of combat maneuvers.

Ooh, I really like the specialist wizard powers. And a very nice extension of the Domain idea. Every domain always had a few dud levels because there was just no good spell of approximately that level that fit the theme. But opening the door to non-spell powers, genius!

I kind of like breath of life, as a very short window-of-opportunity raise dead.

Overall, pretty spiffy. For someone like me, who has no intention of switching to 4e anytime soon, but is quite happy with 3.5, it's a welcome little boost. Not a huge do-over. Just a nifty little revamp I may plunder from.