Pathfinder 1e: How well did it do what it set out to do?

[Endarire]

Greetings, all!

It's been about a decade since Pathfinder 1e launched, and recently Pathfinder 2e launched, marking the end of official new material for Pathfinder 1e, at least for now.

PF1 set out to be a successor to and sorta reboot of D&D 3.5, to compete with D&D 4e, and to rebalance D&D 3.5. There may have been other notable goals, and, if so, list them in your talking points below.

I assume PF1 did some things worse and better than D&D 3.5. (This is a somewhat subjective analysis.) Mention what you think went worse or better in your talking points below.

An early analysis of D&D 3.5 to Pathfinder 1e is in Saph's 3.5/Pathfinder Handbook (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?136890-The-3-5-Pathfinder-Handbook&p=7609693) which compares PF's core and early releases to D&D 3.5's content at the end of its official run.

Let's keep this discourse civil and on topic. D&D 4e/5e and other systems may have influenced PF1, but aren't the main focus here.

Thankee!

[Kurald Galain]

It solved most of the common issues and complaints in regular gameplay, although it did not solve issues and complaints from high-level high-op forum debate.

As corollary to the above, it is better, but by no means perfectly, balanced.

It gives more and more flavorful choices to low-level characters, enabling many character concepts earlier and easier (e.g. a concept that in 3E may require level 8+, two prestige classes, and careful planning ahead; could be done in PF by just taking the archetype at L1, and done).

It had a massively popular public campaign with an overarching metaplot spanning ten years.

And it outsold 4E by a wide margin, ousting D&D as the best-selling RPG brand until 5E reclaimed the title.

...so overall it did pretty well, I'd say.

[Endarire]

What was this meta narrative?

What forum logic optimization factors weren't fixed?

[FauxKnee]

Kurald did a nice job hitting the highlights of what Pathfinder 1e did well. Overall it managed to raise the floor and lower the ceiling, but it is far from perfect.

While the core spell list did receive some well-deserved nerfs, magic is still absurdly powerful. (Examples: wish can no longer safely produce magic items. Spells like polymorph now grant abilities from a specified list instead of giving carte blanche access to monster abilities.)

My biggest pet peeve with Pathfinder is that they gave everyone more feats, but nerfed many martial feats. Fighters get actual class features now, but it is not like they were overpowered and required the nerf bat. Feats for spellcasters do not seem to have been toned down. (Compare the feats required for a bog-standard reach trip fighter between editions and take a peek at the Dazing Spell and Sacred Geometry Pathfinder feats.)

[Goaty14]

What forum logic optimization factors weren't fixed?

Well, I'd imagine it's that letting tiers and whatnot largely stay the same* (irrespective of details; casters > everybody else) is a widely-known flaw among forumers/optimizers that PF did not fix in the slightest. Groups who are lower-op and run the chance of somebody accidentally breaking the game, have the more obvious things patched (and therefore it's harder to accidentally break the campaign), but the more complex things are still there, and thus little difference between both systems, from a PoV of high system mastery.

*I'll compromise that SoP/SoM addresses this, but it's 3rd party, and thus not a part of the discussion afaik.

Also, your link (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?136890-The-3-5-Pathfinder-Handbook&p=7609693) is broken

[Kurald Galain]

My biggest pet peeve with Pathfinder is that they gave everyone more feats, but nerfed many martial feats.
People have been repeating that tidbit for ten years now, but if you look at the grand list of nerfed fighter feats, it turns out this list largely consists of a single feat only: Improved Trip. The "many, many other" nerfed feats just... aren't there.

Feats like Power Attack are actually stronger in PF, and PF adds interesting martial feats like Step Up (prevents enemies from 5'-ing away), Lunge (add +5' to your reach), Hurtful (free attack on an intimidate), and Blinding Critical (guess what that does). And funnily, PF's Greater Trip feat gives OAs to the entire party, as opposed to just yourself.

And yes, PF contains a whole lot of feats that are crappy or worthless, but then so does 3E. We just tend to ignore all of those in forums, because there's not much point in debating them.


Feats for spellcasters do not seem to have been toned down.
The spells themselves have been toned down; and concentration checks are not nearly as guaranteed-to-pass as in 3E. And an important distinction is that Divine (free) Metamagic doesn't exist in PF. Sacred Geometry is still ridiculous though (and usually banned).

Overall, I'd say that PF martials remain viable party members until around level 12 (and campaigns usually don't go higher than that anyway); whereas in 3E, they are often considered usless around level 5 and up, except TOB of course (and according to some forum users, level one and up...) So that's a clear improvement to party balance. Not perfect, but still a big help.

[Psyren]

It's been about a decade since Pathfinder 1e launched, and recently Pathfinder 2e launched, marking the end of official new material for Pathfinder 1e, at least for now.

Well, it's the end of hardback supplements - but not necessarily the end of new material.

Anyway, I think one of the most key contributions of PF1 to the medium isn't as obvious. Yes, it crucially continued 3.5 at a time when that was what people wanted most, and yes, it added a bunch of compatible material that even folks who didn't want to switch could use in their 3.5 games with little trouble. But for my money, Pathfinder's biggest contribution to tabletop was that it definitively proved the commercial viability of an open-source gaming system.

3.5 laid the foundation for this by making Core (and a few other books like UA) open-source, but Pathfinder extended that to every single splatbook they ever released. Yes, product identity things like the setting and named NPCs/deities couldn't be used, but all the mechanical stuff - classes, feats, spells, items, monsters etc. - could be. Not only did that make the game much more accessible to newcomers, it was also a boon for third party creators - publishers, designers, app-makers, even wiki editors. Any new mechanic or rules element Paizo invented was fair game to be shared, included in a searchable database or app, or incorporated by anyone else to use as a stepping stone in their own works. It proved once and for all what the gamers already knew - that people will still pay for books and pdfs even when they can find rules text online, and that punishing people for trying to make that stuff more convenient to access or search through was only hurting the game. This is especially useful when your game is as complex or loaded with material as PF/3.5 were.

[Gnaeus]

Anyway, I think one of the most key contributions of PF1 to the medium isn't as obvious. Yes, it crucially continued 3.5 at a time when that was what people wanted most, and yes, it added a bunch of compatible material that even folks who didn't want to switch could use in their 3.5 games with little trouble. But for my money, Pathfinder's biggest contribution to tabletop was that it definitively proved the commercial viability of an open-source gaming system.

3.5 laid the foundation for this by making Core (and a few other books like UA) open-source, but Pathfinder extended that to every single splatbook they ever released. Yes, product identity things like the setting and named NPCs/deities couldn't be used, but all the mechanical stuff - classes, feats, spells, items, monsters etc. - could be. Not only did that make the game much more accessible to newcomers, it was also a boon for third party creators - publishers, designers, app-makers, even wiki editors. Any new mechanic or rules element Paizo invented was fair game to be shared, included in a searchable database or app, or incorporated by anyone else to use as a stepping stone in their own works. It proved once and for all what the gamers already knew - that people will still pay for books and pdfs even when they can find rules text online, and that punishing people for trying to make that stuff more convenient to access or search through was only hurting the game. This is especially useful when your game is as complex or loaded with material as PF/3.5 were.

This cannot be overstated. I think the PFSRD is the greatest advance to gaming in my lifetime. No more dragging a trunk of books to cons (and then having to hide it when not in use). No more flipping through 2 dozen supplements at every level in case drow of the underdark had some key spell or feat. And no, a giant folder of PDFs doesn’t equate.

And the NPC/monster databases by CR are cool too! I’m running my daughters through the Temple of Elemental Evil/Scourge of the Slave Lords series, but in pf. And I just look at the book and their levels and realize (I need a CR 4 evil fighter type) or (I need CR 2 mooks) and they’re all statted out. I have all the PF books. Upstairs. All our in play rules are done from our iPhones. If this was their only improvement (and it isn’t) it would be huge.

[Lans]

One source of contention was that while it made some classes stronger, it also made some monsters stronger leaving the weaker classes about where they were.

[Gnaeus]

One source of contention was that while it made some classes stronger, it also made some monsters stronger leaving the weaker classes about where they were.

I guess so? I mean there are some niche classes that underperform, like swashbuckler and kineticist. But even without performance enhancers like spheres or PoW, there are some solidly tier 3 fighter and monk options. Some trash ones also, to be sure. But if I was going to be in a game and was told I had to build a 10th level fighter or a 10th monk using those actual classes I’d way rather be in PF.

[Vrock Bait]

Well, I'd imagine it's that letting tiers and whatnot largely stay the same* (irrespective of details; casters > everybody else) is a widely-known flaw among forumers/optimizers that PF did not fix in the slightest. Groups who are lower-op and run the chance of somebody accidentally breaking the game, have the more obvious things patched (and therefore it's harder to accidentally break the campaign), but the more complex things are still there, and thus little difference between both systems, from a PoV of high system mastery.

*I'll compromise that SoP/SoM addresses this, but it's 3rd party, and thus not a part of the discussion afaik.

Also, your link (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?136890-The-3-5-Pathfinder-Handbook&p=7609693) is broken

The tier thing was never something considered “broken” by developers. Monte Cook himself stated that wizards are more powerful because they require more work, so power is effectively the reward for doing more math when creating a character. That kind of unbalance is the charm of 3rd Edition, isn’t it?

[Angrith]

Granted, I've never actually played 3.5, only PF. My knowledge comes from browsing the SRD and reading discussions here on the forums. That said, I think PF improved on the skill system. The simplified system for taking cross-class skills as well as consolidating things like "spot" and "listen" into a single "perception" make skills more approachable. I can't offer more in-depth analysis without actual play experience, but it's something I do greatly appreciate.

EDIT: Clarity

[AvatarVecna]

How well did it do what it set out to do?

I think it did pretty well. The SRD copypasted over pretty well, I think. :smalltongue:

[Goaty14]

The tier thing was never something considered “broken” by developers. Monte Cook himself stated that wizards are more powerful because they require more work, so power is effectively the reward for doing more math when creating a character. That kind of unbalance is the charm of 3rd Edition, isn’t it?

Huh, well that's news to me, and I guess that also supports the conception of Mathfinder :smalltongue:

Anywho, the question was on what issues posed by forum-people (or whatever you prefer to call us nerds) weren't fixed, not what designer issues weren't fixed. I'd also argue* that the charm of 3.5 isn't within inherent imbalance - you can play in a party that's balanced against each other and still play how 3.5 was intended to be played, no? That said, whatever the charm of 3.5 is, is probably something along the lines of a group consensus and beyond just me saying what I think.

*I'd also also like to argue that designers giving wizards more avaliable work but fighters less is some BS game design, but I'm 17 years too late on that one :p

[Psyren]

This cannot be overstated. I think the PFSRD is the greatest advance to gaming in my lifetime. No more dragging a trunk of books to cons (and then having to hide it when not in use). No more flipping through 2 dozen supplements at every level in case drow of the underdark had some key spell or feat. And no, a giant folder of PDFs doesn’t equate.

And the NPC/monster databases by CR are cool too! I’m running my daughters through the Temple of Elemental Evil/Scourge of the Slave Lords series, but in pf. And I just look at the book and their levels and realize (I need a CR 4 evil fighter type) or (I need CR 2 mooks) and they’re all statted out. I have all the PF books. Upstairs. All our in play rules are done from our iPhones. If this was their only improvement (and it isn’t) it would be huge.

Precisely.


One source of contention was that while it made some classes stronger, it also made some monsters stronger leaving the weaker classes about where they were.

Uh, what? Which ones? Because Fighter, Monk, and Paladin are nowhere near where they were in 3.5. Core PF Rogue is eclipsed to an extent by all the good stuff 3.5 rogue got over its lifetime, but Unchained Rogue and various other additions redressed that balance. Not to mention that all the good stuff those classes got in 3.5 like Battle Blessing and Craven can just be ported in anyway if you really want to keep them.


Well, I'd imagine it's that letting tiers and whatnot largely stay the same* (irrespective of details; casters > everybody else) is a widely-known flaw among forumers/optimizers that PF did not fix in the slightest. Groups who are lower-op and run the chance of somebody accidentally breaking the game, have the more obvious things patched (and therefore it's harder to accidentally break the campaign), but the more complex things are still there, and thus little difference between both systems, from a PoV of high system mastery.

At the risk of yet another 50-page thread on the subject, not all of us believe spellcasters being superior is a "flaw" - or at the very least, not enough of one to sacrifice more important aspects of the game over. What PF did was reduce the distance between tiers (both in general, and in getting most of the "T5" classes to at least T4, and even T3 with certain options) which is all many of us were asking for.

[NigelWalmsley]

One source of contention was that while it made some classes stronger, it also made some monsters stronger leaving the weaker classes about where they were.

It also made the classes that were already strong stronger. The Wizard gets a bunch of free stuff for switching to Pathfinder, and the things it loses are mostly things that don't come up in actual play. I never really cares enough to make the switch, so it's possible the game evolved after release and I missed it, but my impression when I was looking into it initially was that it probably made practical sources of imbalance worse, especially if you took them at their word about "backwards compatibility".


That said, whatever the charm of 3.5 is, is probably something along the lines of a group consensus and beyond just me saying what I think.

Absolutely. The appeal of 3e is that classes work in a variety of ways. The Wizard is different from the Incarnate is different from the Binder is different from the Rogue is different from the Warblade is different from the Beguiler is different from the Warlock. The imbalance is a bug, not a feature, but it doesn't matter very much because the way the vast majority of people play TTRPGs is immensely tolerant of system faults. Consider, for example, the number of Monks who have ever been forced to take a non-proficiency penalty on their unarmed strikes. Even groups that claim to play "by RAW" are typically applying a lot of mind caulk and any number of gentleman's agreements (this, by the way, is true of every system, and should not be taken as an indictment of 3.5).

[Vrock Bait]

Huh, well that's news to me, and I guess that also supports the conception of Mathfinder :smalltongue:

Anywho, the question was on what issues posed by forum-people (or whatever you prefer to call us nerds) weren't fixed, not what designer issues weren't fixed. I'd also argue* that the charm of 3.5 isn't within inherent imbalance - you can play in a party that's balanced against each other and still play how 3.5 was intended to be played, no? That said, whatever the charm of 3.5 is, is probably something along the lines of a group consensus and beyond just me saying what I think.

*I'd also also like to argue that designers giving wizards more avaliable work but fighters less is some BS game design, but I'm 17 years too late on that one :p

See Snowbluff Axiom. But just saying that “balance” has never been what the community has wanted and bought. The last time they tried it, Pathfinder beat up Fourth Edition.

[NigelWalmsley]

See Snowbluff Axiom. But just saying that “balance” has never been what the community has wanted and bought. The last time they tried it, Pathfinder beat up Fourth Edition.

Actually, no, the backlash to 4e was largely driven by it's abandonment of the traditional 20-level paradigm. Now, I know that doesn't make sense, but at least that's something that 5e actually reverted, unlike the balance improvements. The notion that 4e failed because balance is was never particularly well supported, but the relative success of 5e (which has similar balance, though different overall mechanics) should have been the last nail in that particular coffin.

[Vrock Bait]

Actually, no, the backlash to 4e was largely driven by it's abandonment of the traditional 20-level paradigm. Now, I know that doesn't make sense, but at least that's something that 5e actually reverted, unlike the balance improvements. The notion that 4e failed because balance is was never particularly well supported, but the relative success of 5e (which has similar balance, though different overall mechanics) should have been the last nail in that particular coffin.

I don’t know about that. I came onto the scene during the 5th Edition Era and have only ever seriously played or built for 3rd, but from my research, that’s the most commonly cited reason.

[Kurald Galain]

The Wizard gets a bunch of free stuff for switching to Pathfinder, and the things it loses are mostly things that don't come up in actual play.
As already mentioned, the spells themselves have been toned down; and concentration checks are not nearly as guaranteed-to-pass as in 3E. Or did you mean that spells and concentration checks don't come up in actual play?


Actually, no, the backlash to 4e was largely driven by it's abandonment of the traditional 20-level paradigm.
I've been on this forum for over a decade, and this is the first time ever I've heard that argument. So no, I don't think that's quite it :smallamused:

[NigelWalmsley]

As already mentioned, the spells themselves have been toned down; and concentration checks are not nearly as guaranteed-to-pass as in 3E. Or did you mean that spells and concentration checks don't come up in actual play?

Backwards compatibility means that none of that really mattered. Yes, PF Glitterdust is worse than 3.5 Glitterdust. But (at least initially) PF was supposed to allow you to use existing 3.5 material. Meaning you could just cast Cloud of Bewilderment instead of Glitterdust, putting you up class features, and leaving your spell quality essentially untouched. There were some spells where you couldn't do that (Planar Binding, Polymorph), but those spells were largely TO.


I've been on this forum for over a decade, and this is the first time ever I've heard that argument. So no, I don't think that's quite it :smallamused:

Of course not. The point is that 4e changed a lot of things, and that if you're going to argue that "4e failed because X", you should at least make a claim that is different from Pathfinder and 5e (both of which prioritized improved balance). If you ask me, the primary reason 4e failed wasn't any particular bad decision (in fact, the design direction was initially well-received). It failed because it was badly designed. There are too many things wrong with too many parts of the system to try to blame it on any particular design choice.

[darkdragoon]

While there are some standouts the class changes are mostly noise despite commanding most of the attention.

The monster changes are more dramatic but also quite uneven.

In the case of Power Attack, its essence is gone because with the changes it simply could not exist as is, and Furious Focus drives that further.

For the rest, I'll just say that a lot of players were given "what they wanted" and now they have to live with it in light of the newer stuff.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

But for my money, Pathfinder's biggest contribution to tabletop was that it definitively proved the commercial viability of an open-source gaming system.
[...]
Any new mechanic or rules element Paizo invented was fair game to be shared, included in a searchable database or app, or incorporated by anyone else to use as a stepping stone in their own works.

I definitely agree, and not just because of Paizo's publishing model. Something a lot of people forget (or weren't around the internet in the mid-3e period to notice) is that Pathfinder really didn't do anything novel compared to other 3e-derivative games, at least initially. The Wizards forums were full of alternate skill systems, alternate magic systems, alternate advancement systems, and so on, and everyone and their brother who published an OGL setting book put their own spin on classic races and classes and introduced a few new ones of their own (which tended to be a part-fiendish race and a gish class, because Elric is cool I guess :smallwink:). Pathfinder didn't have any big gimmick to distinguish itself from a generic D&D-type system, Golarion didn't have any big hook to make it more than a generic D&D kitchen sink setting with the serial numbers filed off, and Paizo didn't have any big-name designers lending their reputation to the effort.

The thing that set Pathfinder apart was its development process. Paizo drew on existing mechanical and setting inspiration for its initial version, publicized their design goals for their new RPG, and ran the first major RPG playtest for a full year over multiple iterations, which is very similar to the process an open-source software project uses when it forks an existing project for a specific reason and works to build a supportive community around the new project as it slowly diverges from the old project one beta release at a time. I'm quite convinced that if Paizo had just dropped Pathfinder 1.0 on the market like any other OGL product it would have been lost in the noise of all the other 3e-alikes and quickly forgotten, but the transparency and investment the initial messaging and later playtest produced were what set it apart from the pack.


The tier thing was never something considered “broken” by developers. Monte Cook himself stated that wizards are more powerful because they require more work, so power is effectively the reward for doing more math when creating a character. That kind of unbalance is the charm of 3rd Edition, isn’t it?

That's not at all what he said. :smallannoyed: Misinterpreting the Ivory Tower Game Design article is a pet peeve of mine, so, to repost a rant of mine on the topic from another thread:


The Ivory Tower Game Design article is widely misinterpreted (often because "ivory tower game design" became a buzzword phrase and many people discussed it without actually reading the article in depth), but the two important takeaways are quite different from the "3e's imbalance was a devious master plan" narrative usually thrown around.

Firstly, the point the article was making was not about design but about presentation, how the designers didn't provide much advice or explanation about design principles and just left it for players to work out. This article (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/2498/roleplaying-games/thought-of-the-day-ivory-tower-design) explains this point pretty well.

Second, the key point of the section you quoted comes in the next paragraph, where he says


Arguably, this kind of thing has always existed in D&D. Mostly, we just made sure that we didn't design it away -- we wanted to reward mastery of the game.)

That "reward system mastery" bit is always taken out of context--he's not saying they wanted to secretly add in a bunch of imbalance for some reason, he's saying that the design team didn't want to rip out a lot of the stuff that had been in D&D from the beginning and thereby confuse and alienate AD&D players, likely because resurrecting 3e was a huge risk for WotC at the time and they needed to get the AD&D gamers on board.

So, basically, he's saying they didn't want to pull a 4e and sacrifice everything on the unholy altar of Balance Uber Alles, something which was bad enough when the actual 4e did it but would have basically nuked the game line for good had they done it for 3e and resulted in an unrecognizable RPG landscape today.

Anyone who tells you "Monte Cook says 3e is deliberately imbalanced because..." has either never actually read the article or is putting words in Monte's mouth to push their own arguments.


If you ask me, the primary reason 4e failed wasn't any particular bad decision (in fact, the design direction was initially well-received). It failed because it was badly designed. There are too many things wrong with too many parts of the system to try to blame it on any particular design choice.

Agreed. The design goals for 4e are pretty much the same as the design goals of PF 1e, 5e, and a lot of peoples' homebrew systems, in theory; it's the actual design decisions and implementation details made in service of those goals that sunk it.

[Psyren]

Actually, no, the backlash to 4e was largely driven by it's abandonment of the traditional 20-level paradigm. Now, I know that doesn't make sense, but at least that's something that 5e actually reverted, unlike the balance improvements. The notion that 4e failed because balance is was never particularly well supported, but the relative success of 5e (which has similar balance, though different overall mechanics) should have been the last nail in that particular coffin.

Wrong, 5e is nowhere near 4e's balance. Casters still reign supreme (being able to martial+ better than ever - see also Moon Druids, Valor/Swords Bards, Forge Clerics etc), and their primary change was merely to make castery subclasses for almost every martial, and even those are behind the full casters in power. At least 4e tried (unsuccessfully) to pretend their powers weren't actually magic; 5e gave up on even that.

But that's fine, giving up on chasing the useless unicorn of class parity was one of the best decisions 5e made.


Backwards compatibility means that none of that really mattered. Yes, PF Glitterdust is worse than 3.5 Glitterdust. But (at least initially) PF was supposed to allow you to use existing 3.5 material. Meaning you could just cast Cloud of Bewilderment instead of Glitterdust, putting you up class features, and leaving your spell quality essentially untouched. There were some spells where you couldn't do that (Planar Binding, Polymorph), but those spells were largely TO.

Backwards Compatibility means the GM has a lot more standing to ban/cherry-pick things from 3.5 that he can't deal with without seeming unreasonable. The player can't whine at them about how X 3.5 splat material is first-party and so it should be allowed regardless of its power level anymore.


...and Paizo didn't have any big-name designers lending their reputation to the effort.

While I agree with almost everything else you wrote, this part is definitely false. PF's core design team had been the minds behind Dragon Magazine for many years before PF, not to mention participating on several 3.5 books (including core books like the Monster Manual - check the credits.) As sometimes controversial as the likes of SKR, JJ and JB have been, they were far from unknowns (in tabletop terms at least) and that did give PF a name recognition boost out of the gate. Hell, Monte Cook himself (he of Ivory Tower fame) has top billing in the CRB.

[NigelWalmsley]

Wrong, 5e is nowhere near 4e's balance.

Yes, it is. 5e is pretty much just as balanced as 4e, it's just that characters are interesting. It is as direct and explicit a refutation of your thesis that improving balance will ruin the game as we are ever likely to get. Improved balance is practically the only 4e change 5e didn't abandon. Your argument might make sense if it was about skill challenges, or level caps, or monster design. But for a variable to explain a difference, it has to actually vary.


Casters still reign supreme

That doesn't make the game less balanced. What classes are the best has nothing to do with how much imbalance exists. What matters is how much the best classes are the best by. The gap between the best and worst 4e builds was massive, to the point that if you picked the wrong one there simply weren't abilities for you to take.


At least 4e tried (unsuccessfully) to pretend their powers weren't actually magic; 5e gave up on even that.

It sounds like what you care about isn't actually balance, but something like "class identity". In which case, sure, maybe 5e has more of that. But that's different from balance, so you should stop telling people who want balance that it will destroy the game. Because it manifestly does not do that, and you don't even seem to understand what you're complaining about anyway.


Backwards Compatibility means the GM has a lot more standing to ban/cherry-pick things from 3.5 that he can't deal with without seeming unreasonable. The player can't whine at them about how X 3.5 splat material is first-party and so it should be allowed regardless of its power level anymore.

At the time PF released, the problem with 3e wasn't that DMs didn't have enough tools to balance the game themselves. You could already cherry-pick as much as you wanted, and indeed basically everyone who plays 3e does. If all Pathfinder brings to the table is a veneer of legitimacy for that, rather than actual balance fixes, I really don't see the point of switching over.

[Vrock Bait]

Yes, it is. 5e is pretty much just as balanced as 4e, it's just that characters are interesting. It is as direct and explicit a refutation of your thesis that improving balance will ruin the game as we are ever likely to get. Improved balance is practically the only 4e change 5e didn't abandon. Your argument might make sense if it was about skill challenges, or level caps, or monster design. But for a variable to explain a difference, it has to actually vary.



That doesn't make the game less balanced. What classes are the best has nothing to do with how much imbalance exists. What matters is how much the best classes are the best by. The gap between the best and worst 4e builds was massive, to the point that if you picked the wrong one there simply weren't abilities for you to take.



It sounds like what you care about isn't actually balance, but something like "class identity". In which case, sure, maybe 5e has more of that. But that's different from balance, so you should stop telling people who want balance that it will destroy the game. Because it manifestly does not do that, and you don't even seem to understand what you're complaining about anyway.



At the time PF released, the problem with 3e wasn't that DMs didn't have enough tools to balance the game themselves. You could already cherry-pick as much as you wanted, and indeed basically everyone who plays 3e does. If all Pathfinder brings to the table is a veneer of legitimacy for that, rather than actual balance fixes, I really don't see the point of switching over.

Look up “Beastmaster Ranger”. Look up “moon druid”. Compare.

I rest my case.

[Peat]

Think it did a good job. Captured the 3.5 market, added a bunch of stuff that got praised, made most options look more attractive. Didn't end caster supremacy but I don't think they ever set out to do it so there we go.

[NigelWalmsley]

Look up “Beastmaster Ranger”. Look up “moon druid”. Compare.

I rest my case.

Look up Yogi Hat Ranger. "Hey look, this thing is broken" isn't a sufficient argument that one system is more imbalanced than another. Frankly, it's actually a fairly difficult question to answer in a rigorous way. For example: does the existence of Pun-Pun mean that 3e is infinitely imbalanced?

[Vrock Bait]

Look up Yogi Hat Ranger. "Hey look, this thing is broken" isn't a sufficient argument that one system is more imbalanced than another. Frankly, it's actually a fairly difficult question to answer in a rigorous way. For example: does the existence of Pun-Pun mean that 3e is infinitely imbalanced?
But you’re arguing the size of the gap between the tier one bourgeois and the truenamer proletariat is the measure of a system’s balance. If you’re finding any problems with this, those problems are with what you said in the first place.

[Psyren]

Look up Yogi Hat Ranger. "Hey look, this thing is broken" isn't a sufficient argument that one system is more imbalanced than another. Frankly, it's actually a fairly difficult question to answer in a rigorous way. For example: does the existence of Pun-Pun mean that 3e is infinitely imbalanced?

Moon Druid isn't "broken." It's just a caster that happens to be very good at both its own job and that of a martial - a distinction that's much less meaningful in 4e since everyone can do out of combat magic anyway.


Yes, it is. 5e is pretty much just as balanced as 4e, it's just that characters are interesting.

You clearly haven't read things like wild shape, or the spell entries, between editions then. When one edition lets you fly "until the end of the encounter" while the other lets you do it for hours for example, big difference to utility.



It sounds like what you care about isn't actually balance, but something like "class identity".

No, I'm talking about power, and not needing costly "rituals" to do anything meaningful outside of combat.


At the time PF released, the problem with 3e wasn't that DMs didn't have enough tools to balance the game themselves. You could already cherry-pick as much as you wanted, and indeed basically everyone who plays 3e does.

GMs with the system mastery to do that don't need books at all. Not all of them have that level of comfort with the systems they play. Designers create for the inexperienced or less assertive ones too. Not to mention that sanctioned/organized play is a thing, where 3.5 material isn't allowed at all.


But you’re arguing the size of the gap between the tier one bourgeois and the truenamer proletariat is the measure of a system’s balance. If you’re finding any problems with this, those problems are with what you said in the first place.

Also this.

[AvatarVecna]

I'm not saying 5e is a significantly unbalanced game - it's not balanced per se, but it's a lot harder to just completely ditch the noncasters without regretting it a bit. The kinds of spells available and the changes to how magic works in general mean it'll never be anywhere close to what 3.5 was in that regard, but that doesn't make it a balanced game.

4e is a balanced game, almost to the point of its detriment. It's difficult to see how anybody could argue otherwise However balanced 5e may or may not be, it's got nothing on 4e.

[NigelWalmsley]

But you’re arguing the size of the gap between the tier one bourgeois and the truenamer proletariat is the measure of a system’s balance. If you’re finding any problems with this, those problems are with what you said in the first place.

That's not what I'm arguing. What I'm arguing is that you can't just point to a thing that exists in the system as the be all and end all of the balance of that system. Yes, there are imbalanced things in 5e. But there are also imbalanced things in 4e. You have failed to make a coherent argument for why we should consider the imbalance in 5e larger. And I suspect that you won't, because it's not actually true. "4e failed because balance" is a meme that exists because there's a large component of the D&D player base that is resolutely opposed to the idea that you can use math to understand and improve game systems. It's the same people who insisted that the Fighter was actually totally fine for years.


You clearly haven't read things like wild shape, or the spell entries, between editions then. When one edition lets you fly "until the end of the encounter" while the other lets you do it for hours for example, big difference to utility.

Sure? "The characters have more utility" is a claim that is not, in fact, inconsistent with "the balance is similar, but the characters have more interesting abilities". You have correctly identified an interesting ability. An astute observer will note that this is an argument for my position rather than yours.


No, I'm talking about power, and not needing costly "rituals" to do anything meaningful outside of combat.

So stuff that has nothing to do with class balance? "Casters should do X" is completely unrelated to class balance. As we can see from 5e preserving balance gains while going from casters not doing X to casters doing X. Since your concern is totally unrelated to the question "are classes balanced", it seems to me that there's very little reason to take your insistence that class balance will ruin the game seriously. It won't even take away the thing you like!


Designers create for the inexperienced or less assertive ones too.

Yes. Which is why "you can fix the problem yourself" is the same as not fixing the problem. If the issue is that DMs don't have the skill and discretion to balance the game, saying "you can use your discretion to balance this" is the same as admitting failure.


4e is a balanced game, almost to the point of its detriment. It's difficult to see how anybody could argue otherwise

Well, that would be the character build that is totally immune to damage. If that counts as "balanced", it seems like the term is without meaning.

[AvatarVecna]

That's not what I'm arguing. What I'm arguing is that you can't just point to a thing that exists in the system as the be all and end all of the balance of that system. Yes, there are imbalanced things in 5e. But there are also imbalanced things in 4e. You have failed to make a coherent argument for why we should consider the imbalance in 5e larger. And I suspect that you won't, because it's not actually true. "4e failed because balance" is a meme that exists because there's a large component of the D&D player base that is resolutely opposed to the idea that you can use math to understand and improve game systems. It's the same people who insisted that the Fighter was actually totally fine for years.



Sure? "The characters have more utility" is a claim that is not, in fact, inconsistent with "the balance is similar, but the characters have more interesting abilities". You have correctly identified an interesting ability. An astute observer will note that this is an argument for my position rather than yours.



So stuff that has nothing to do with class balance? "Casters should do X" is completely unrelated to class balance. As we can see from 5e preserving balance gains while going from casters not doing X to casters doing X. Since your concern is totally unrelated to the question "are classes balanced", it seems to me that there's very little reason to take your insistence that class balance will ruin the game seriously. It won't even take away the thing you like!



Yes. Which is why "you can fix the problem yourself" is the same as not fixing the problem. If the issue is that DMs don't have the skill and discretion to balance the game, saying "you can use your discretion to balance this" is the same as admitting failure.



Well, that would be the character build that is totally immune to damage. If that counts as "balanced", it seems like the term is without meaning.

in 5e infinite speed is possible.

I can point to outliers and claim they're representative of the system's balance as a whole too.

[Endarire]

Fellow sentient beings, let's return to our primary point of Pathfinder 1e!

[Psyren]

That's not what I'm arguing. What I'm arguing is that you can't just point to a thing that exists in the system as the be all and end all of the balance of that system. Yes, there are imbalanced things in 5e. But there are also imbalanced things in 4e. You have failed to make a coherent argument for why we should consider the imbalance in 5e larger. And I suspect that you won't, because it's not actually true. "4e failed because balance" is a meme that exists because there's a large component of the D&D player base that is resolutely opposed to the idea that you can use math to understand and improve game systems. It's the same people who insisted that the Fighter was actually totally fine for years.



Sure? "The characters have more utility" is a claim that is not, in fact, inconsistent with "the balance is similar, but the characters have more interesting abilities". You have correctly identified an interesting ability. An astute observer will note that this is an argument for my position rather than yours.



So stuff that has nothing to do with class balance? "Casters should do X" is completely unrelated to class balance. As we can see from 5e preserving balance gains while going from casters not doing X to casters doing X. Since your concern is totally unrelated to the question "are classes balanced", it seems to me that there's very little reason to take your insistence that class balance will ruin the game seriously. It won't even take away the thing you like!

If a caster can equal a martial in melee combat, but also do magic combat that the martial can't do, and then have out of combat utility with their magic that the martial doesn't have, that is not balance. 5e has all of those things, 4e doesn't, therefore 5e is less "balanced" than 4e. It's as simple as that.

But don't misunderstand me - that is not a bad thing. 5e succeeded in spite (and I would argue, because) of the fact that it allowed the classes that use magic more heavily to have a higher ceiling than the ones that didn't. That's totally fine. Well, it's fine for me anyway, I get the feeling you'd rather they didn't do that, but that's where we are.


Yes. Which is why "you can fix the problem yourself" is the same as not fixing the problem. If the issue is that DMs don't have the skill and discretion to balance the game, saying "you can use your discretion to balance this" is the same as admitting failure.

You're assuming that every GM (or even just the inexperienced ones) are jonesing for balance to the same degree you are, and thus want to "fix" a game like 5e. They aren't - and besides, the folks who truly feel that way and/or value balance above all else have 4e right there waiting for them.



4e is a balanced game, almost to the point of its detriment. It's difficult to see how anybody could argue otherwise.

I thought so too, and then I met him :smalltongue: Regardless, tangent over, happy to get back on topic.


Fellow sentient beings, let's return to our primary point of Pathfinder 1e!

Very well -

Another thing I personally like about Pathfinder is the Golarion setting. Yes, I know it's just about the most broadly appealing kitchen sink imaginable, but I happen to think a setting like that is just what an RPG needs to have. Like Faerun, at least one setting should be built for traditional quasi-medieval swords and sorcery before I start throwing out curveballs like Ravenloft's Mists and Eberron's lightning trains.

In particular, I think the nations of the Inner Sea were well designed. If I sit down with inexperienced tabletop gamers and start droning on about Galt this and Geb that and Cheliax the other, their eyes could be forgiven for immediately glazing over. But if instead I point at Galt on a map and say "fantasy France, circa the Reign of Terror, complete with magic guillotines" - they immediately have a frame of reference. Same with pointing at Andoran and saying "fantasy America, shortly after independence". More than once I've delivered the one-line spiel for each nation and immediately had someone say "ooh, can I be from there?" Which is my personal metric for whether a fantasy location has been set up well.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

While I agree with almost everything else you wrote, this part is definitely false. PF's core design team had been the minds behind Dragon Magazine for many years before PF, not to mention participating on several 3.5 books (including core books like the Monster Manual - check the credits.) As sometimes controversial as the likes of SKR, JJ and JB have been, they were far from unknowns (in tabletop terms at least) and that did give PF a name recognition boost out of the gate. Hell, Monte Cook himself (he of Ivory Tower fame) has top billing in the CRB.

When I said "lending their reputation to the effort" I was referring to games that rely on the "celebrity designer" phenomenon to attract players, like how Monte Cook's material is all billed as "Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved" and "Monte Cook's Iron Heroes" and "Numenera by Monte Cook" and so forth. PF's design team had a bunch of name recognition between them among longtime gamers just like 3e's design team did, but the game was being pitched on the strength of its design goals rather than "Jason Buhlman's Pathfinder" or "Pathfinder: Skip Still Hates Sorcerers!" or the like.


Another thing I personally like about Pathfinder is the Golarion setting. Yes, I know it's just about the most broadly appealing kitchen sink imaginable, but I happen to think a setting like that is just what an RPG needs to have. Like Faerun, at least one setting should be built for traditional quasi-medieval swords and sorcery before I start throwing out curveballs like Ravenloft's Mists and Eberron's lightning trains.

In particular, I think the nations of the Inner Sea were well designed. If I sit down with inexperienced tabletop gamers and start droning on about Galt this and Geb that and Cheliax the other, their eyes could be forgiven for immediately glazing over. But if instead I point at Galt on a map and say "fantasy France, circa the Reign of Terror, complete with magic guillotines" - they immediately have a frame of reference. Same with pointing at Andoran and saying "fantasy America, shortly after independence". More than once I've delivered the one-line spiel for each nation and immediately had someone say "ooh, can I be from there?" Which is my personal metric for whether a fantasy location has been set up well.

Ehhh, fantasy counterpart cultures (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyCounterpartCulture) are fine for getting players up to speed quickly, but pretty much any DM can whip up a "X, but fantasy!" nation pretty easily. I feel that if a fantasy kitchen sink setting is going to do, say, "Ancient Egypt, but fantasy!" it at least has to give it the minimal creative twist of "Ancient Egypt meets Feudal Japan!" or "Ancient Egypt, but on floating islands connected by the Nile Air Current!" or whatever or they get one-dimensional pretty quickly.

Faerûn is a pretty good example of that approach, actually, because while you have nations of loincloth-clad barbarians in the icy north, primitive jungle tribes in the south, a druid-led island nation in the west, and so on, none of those cultures are straight-up fantasy!Vikings, fantasy!Amazonians, fantasy!Celts, or the like. And the nation that comes closest to being a fantasy counterpart (Mulhorand, being fantasy!Egypt with actual Egyptian gods and everything) is justified in being that way by the fact that its people and gods were literally stolen/transferred from the real Egypt. Golarion could stand to mix things up a bit more like that.

[Psyren]

When I said "lending their reputation to the effort" I was referring to games that rely on the "celebrity designer" phenomenon to attract players, like how Monte Cook's material is all billed as "Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved" and "Monte Cook's Iron Heroes" and "Numenera by Monte Cook" and so forth. PF's design team had a bunch of name recognition between them among longtime gamers just like 3e's design team did, but the game was being pitched on the strength of its design goals rather than "Jason Buhlman's Pathfinder" or "Pathfinder: Skip Still Hates Sorcerers!" or the like.

They might not have stuck their names in the PF title, but they still brought name recognition/clout to the project that other 3e-alikes didn't have. (That wasn't the only factor of course, and may not even have been in the top 3, but it was there.)


Ehhh, fantasy counterpart cultures (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyCounterpartCulture) are fine for getting players up to speed quickly, but pretty much any DM can whip up a "X, but fantasy!" nation pretty easily. I feel that if a fantasy kitchen sink setting is going to do, say, "Ancient Egypt, but fantasy!" it at least has to give it the minimal creative twist of "Ancient Egypt meets Feudal Japan!" or "Ancient Egypt, but on floating islands connected by the Nile Air Current!" or whatever or they get one-dimensional pretty quickly.

That's fine for you, but there is a sizeable market of GMs that are willing to pay so that they have to "whip up" as few things as possible. Designing a plot and encounters is plenty of work on its own without having to build a setting (including key NPCs and organizations) too - for those GMs, anyway.

You're also ignoring the benefits such counterparts have when combined with sanctioned play. For example, even if you're correct and "any DM" can whip up "fantasy Egypt," they're all going to do it differently - but having Paizo make "fantasy Egypt" means now you have one iteration of the concept that can be used at countless gaming stores and conventions around the world, getting the setup out of the way so that they can get to the action faster.


Faerûn is a pretty good example of that approach, actually, because while you have nations of loincloth-clad barbarians in the icy north, primitive jungle tribes in the south, a druid-led island nation in the west, and so on, none of those cultures are straight-up fantasy!Vikings, fantasy!Amazonians, fantasy!Celts, or the like. And the nation that comes closest to being a fantasy counterpart (Mulhorand, being fantasy!Egypt with actual Egyptian gods and everything) is justified in being that way by the fact that its people and gods were literally stolen/transferred from the real Egypt. Golarion could stand to mix things up a bit more like that.

I'm not seeing the big difference between Faerun and Golarion in this regard; neither game plays these tropes 100% straight. For example, Galt draws from La Terreur, but also other famous uprisings, and of course ladles several dollops of fantasy like the time when a hag coven ended up running the revolutionary council.

[Kurald Galain]

Ehhh, fantasy counterpart cultures (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyCounterpartCulture) are fine for getting players up to speed quickly, but pretty much any DM can whip up a "X, but fantasy!" nation pretty easily.
Writing down an idea is easy; but executing, at least for most GMs, is not. That is, Pathfinder's setting books and in particular their adventure paths are some of the best on the market; and that right there is Golarion's big "hook". Most players are fine with a Kitchen Sink as long as it's well-written.

Since Paizo was running Dragon Magazine for years before starting PF, they already had a reputation for story- and adventure writing, and I'm sure that contributed to PF's success.

This extends even to its public campaign. While 3E's Living Greyhawk and 4E's LFR were pretty popular for some time, their scenarios tend to be thin excuses to set up a couple of combats; whereas Pathfinder's PFS has a catchy setting, coherent ongoing storyline, and memorable characters. The writing of the latter is so much better it's not even in the same ballpark. I haven't played 5E's AL, I hope they've learned from that.

[Aotrs Commander]

Ehhh, fantasy counterpart cultures (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyCounterpartCulture) are fine for getting players up to speed quickly, but pretty much any DM can whip up a "X, but fantasy!" nation pretty easily. I feel that if a fantasy kitchen sink setting is going to do, say, "Ancient Egypt, but fantasy!" it at least has to give it the minimal creative twist of "Ancient Egypt meets Feudal Japan!" or "Ancient Egypt, but on floating islands connected by the Nile Air Current!" or whatever or they get one-dimensional pretty quickly.

Making up a genuine fantasy culture is VASTLY harder to do than to ape a real one; and NEITHER is easy if you're actually trying to do it PROPERLY, and not just slap an aethetic on top with a few social tweaks.

For my not-fantasy-Rome - a culture that I was already FAIRLY well as history-interested-person- versed in before I started, it took me a LOT of effort to write up. I had to reseach houses (domus) and buracracy and soldier's wages and cursus honarium and the structure of the legions and thermae (there's a subtle but big difference from Usual Fantasy Monoculture right there, you don't go to the pub for information, you go to the bathouse).



Paizo did right with Golarion, above and beyond Pathfinder. The thing Golarion struck ME with was that Paizo designed the world with the question very foremost in their minds of "what adventures can you have in this location?" That line of thinking - which is how you SHOULD design a world for a roleplaying game - was pressed home to me the first RPG Superstar contest, where I made it past the first couple of rounds and some of the judge's comments on the world-stuff I'd done on the round I failed to progress were like a light-bulb moment. Even Ravenloft, of which the stuff I read seemed to have made the most effort of cultures only sort of skimmed around this question, tacitly being "this is where this NPC enemy lives." It's designed less as a "here is the world as backdrop" and more "here are a set of adventure hooks" primariyl, and I think THAT is why it suceeds where Greyhawk and Faerun never have for me (and I never even looked in Eberron's direction.) Notable, if you read a lot of Golarion sourcebooks, down at the nitty-gritty detail levels, they'll basically throw and ongoing plot in (drug-ring in Magnimar or something), which is something I at first wasn't sure I apporved of (since I take the stance that any and all world source material should be fundementally written in-character as a latter-day scholar looking back, thanks Spaxcecraft 2000-2100AD), but when I started to twig what they were doing, I understood and approved. Taking that mindset has only improved my own world-building, frankly.

As I've noted previously Golarion remains unique in the annauls of any RPG world of any game that I started buying stiff just to READ and not because I had planned to run a game there. (I have bought basically every world sourcebook they put out - and likely will continue into the PF2 era - which is why I feel no particulary guilt about mining their extraordinarily generous PFSRD.

And that too, as observed previously, was an EXCELLENT idea, since it killed stone dead the problems that Rolemaster, AD&D and D&D 3.0/3.5 (and probably 4E) had of the latter adventures and books having to be essentially self-isolated mechanically for people who only bought the core rules.)

[Psyren]

Paizo did right with Golarion, above and beyond Pathfinder. The thing Golarion struck ME with was that Paizo designed the world with the question very foremost in their minds of "what adventures can you have in this location?" That line of thinking - which is how you SHOULD design a world for a roleplaying game - was pressed home to me the first RPG Superstar contest, where I made it past the first couple of rounds and some of the judge's comments on the world-stuff I'd done on the round I failed to progress were like a light-bulb moment. Even Ravenloft, of which the stuff I read seemed to have made the most effort of cultures only sort of skimmed around this question, tacitly being "this is where this NPC enemy lives." It's designed less as a "here is the world as backdrop" and more "here are a set of adventure hooks" primariyl, and I think THAT is why it suceeds where Greyhawk and Faerun never have for me (and I never even looked in Eberron's direction.) Notable, if you read a lot of Golarion sourcebooks, down at the nitty-gritty detail levels, they'll basically throw and ongoing plot in (drug-ring in Magnimar or something), which is something I at first wasn't sure I apporved of (since I take the stance that any and all world source material should be fundementally written in-character as a latter-day scholar looking back, thanks Spaxcecraft 2000-2100AD), but when I started to twig what they were doing, I understood and approved. Taking that mindset has only improved my own world-building, frankly.

Agreed - while I also like the "in-universe chronicler writes about the setting" approach, it does create problems when that person needs to talk about something that isn't common knowledge yet the GM should be aware of, such as how Razmir is a big fraud and how all the various levels of his giant magic pyramid scheme work. Lots of great hooks there, but if Volo somehow showed up in Golarion and stuck all that in a guidebook, logically he should either be dead, discredited or the entire scheme should have collapsed under its own weight.

[Aotrs Commander]

Agreed - while I also like the "in-universe chronicler writes about the setting" approach, it does create problems when that person needs to talk about something that isn't common knowledge yet the GM should be aware of, such as how Razmir is a big fraud and how all the various levels of his giant magic pyramid scheme work. Lots of great hooks there, but if Volo somehow showed up in Golarion and stuck all that in a guidebook, logically he should either be dead, discredited or the entire scheme should have collapsed under its own weight.

Ah, the subtly is LATTER-DAY scholar, not present-day scholar. As in "written in-character from the perspective of, basically, a faceless historian from the setting's future," which is what Spacecraft 2000-2100AD taught me (almost by a single sentence in th very first entry). Not from, like Volo as a character in and of himself. That allows you to present information that the PCs as character wouldn't know, while still keeping a requried level of seperation and immersion for the DM. This is important, because it allows you the room to say "no-one knows why this is," or "it is thought that" in a way in which speaking directly to the DM doesn't free right in the same way. It also gvies you much more freedom and ease if the information has to be adjusted at some point, because you can say "it was previously thought that," and not explictly be a retcon.

(I did this myself recently, where I renamed "darkning" to "nether," and just added a note that said "it was previously called that, but nether is now the accepted terminology." And that ADDS to the lore, because it's more realistic that these things - especially where poorly-understood get redefined all the time in real science.)

By adding the layer of having it be reported facts, it also allows you the latitude to be wrong (not necessarily in a deilberate way, but in a "oh crap, that doesn't make sense now I think about it" way) and fix it more easily in a way which stating things as objective fact doesn't.



[Self-indulgeant sidetrek]The first time I wrote something like it FOR the PCs, it was an in-character guide written by a noted scholar of the age for the world, but annotated (heavily) with sardonic and genre-savvy commentary by an Aotrs officer - the diea being that this document would presumably be handed out to the Aotrs forces quietly stationed on that particular planet (as they were, in the canon). This allowed me to convey comparisons (and some snark) that the externally-versed and technologically advanced Aotrs would be able to draw with other "fantasy planets" that writing as a more like a technical document wouldn't have let me draw (short-cuts for the players) without having to break the immersion, and I feel THAT is what the "latter-day scholar" thing is all about.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

That's fine for you, but there is a sizeable market of GMs that are willing to pay so that they have to "whip up" as few things as possible. Designing a plot and encounters is plenty of work on its own without having to build a setting (including key NPCs and organizations) too - for those GMs, anyway.

You're also ignoring the benefits such counterparts have when combined with sanctioned play. For example, even if you're correct and "any DM" can whip up "fantasy Egypt," they're all going to do it differently - but having Paizo make "fantasy Egypt" means now you have one iteration of the concept that can be used at countless gaming stores and conventions around the world, getting the setup out of the way so that they can get to the action faster.


Writing down an idea is easy; but executing, at least for most GMs, is not. That is, Pathfinder's setting books and in particular their adventure paths are some of the best on the market; and that right there is Golarion's big "hook". Most players are fine with a Kitchen Sink as long as it's well-written.


Making up a genuine fantasy culture is VASTLY harder to do than to ape a real one; and NEITHER is easy if you're actually trying to do it PROPERLY, and not just slap an aethetic on top with a few social tweaks.

For my not-fantasy-Rome - a culture that I was already FAIRLY well as history-interested-person- versed in before I started, it took me a LOT of effort to write up. I had to reseach houses (domus) and buracracy and soldier's wages and cursus honarium and the structure of the legions and thermae (there's a subtle but big difference from Usual Fantasy Monoculture right there, you don't go to the pub for information, you go to the bathouse).

I'm well aware of the benefits of having a shared setting and a paid designer doing the legwork instead of an individual DM going wiki-diving to set up an adventure. My point was that, given that a company is going to go ahead and set up a bunch of nations based on real-world cultures, it's a much better use of their time and effort and a much better resource for DMs to come up with something novel that's more than just a straight-up fantasy port of an existing nation. If a DM wants to make fantasy!Revolutionary France or fantasy!Imperial Rome, it's going to take a bunch of investment and research, but said DM can do a bunch of that research and then swap names and add magic, whereas you can't do that for a more novel nation and would have to do all the work yourself.

Not to mention that fantasy counterparts are a fertile ground for forums and third-party publishers. There have been dozens of sourcebooks for fantastic versions of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Norway, China, Mesoamerica, and all the other standbys across many games and editions that can be mined for ideas, and if you're trying to do something a little more unusual it's easy to find resources on the internet about how to do, say, fantasy Revolutionary France (https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/h54k8/im_basing_a_game_on_a_fantasy_version_of_the/) or fantasy Venice (https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/7dhvhr/the_veniceinspired_city_of_sietro_for_my_dd/) or the like.

Don't get me wrong, Golarion isn't a bad setting--the amount of detail they've put into it over the years is great and there are a good number of non-counterpart nations in it as well--and PF is known for its adventure paths for a reason. I just think that the setting has succeeded despite being fairly generic and derivative at its base, rather than that being a good thing that other settings should try to emulate.

[Pex]

I don't know if it intended to balance anything, but whatever problems 3E had players complained about WOTC misjudged the anger. Players wanted 3E fixed, not thrown out altogether. 4E game mechanics was nothing like 3E game mechanics. Pathfinder continued the 3E game mechanics and took the opportunity to make changes to fix it. Some players liked the changes. Some players didn't. Some players liked some and hated others. Griping or not, players overall liked the game mechanics and Pathfinder succeeded.

[Kurald Galain]

I just think that the setting has succeeded despite being fairly generic and derivative at its base
It strikes me that most popular movies and video games are also fairly generic and derivate. The audience doesn't want a product that's original, it wants a product that is well written. Golarion is not aimed at winning a Pulitzer, after all.

[Psyren]

I'm well aware of the benefits of having a shared setting and a paid designer doing the legwork instead of an individual DM going wiki-diving to set up an adventure. My point was that, given that a company is going to go ahead and set up a bunch of nations based on real-world cultures, it's a much better use of their time and effort and a much better resource for DMs to come up with something novel that's more than just a straight-up fantasy port of an existing nation. If a DM wants to make fantasy!Revolutionary France or fantasy!Imperial Rome, it's going to take a bunch of investment and research, but said DM can do a bunch of that research and then swap names and add magic, whereas you can't do that for a more novel nation and would have to do all the work yourself.

Not to mention that fantasy counterparts are a fertile ground for forums and third-party publishers. There have been dozens of sourcebooks for fantastic versions of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Norway, China, Mesoamerica, and all the other standbys across many games and editions that can be mined for ideas, and if you're trying to do something a little more unusual it's easy to find resources on the internet about how to do, say, fantasy Revolutionary France (https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/h54k8/im_basing_a_game_on_a_fantasy_version_of_the/) or fantasy Venice (https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/7dhvhr/the_veniceinspired_city_of_sietro_for_my_dd/) or the like.

Don't get me wrong, Golarion isn't a bad setting--the amount of detail they've put into it over the years is great and there are a good number of non-counterpart nations in it as well--and PF is known for its adventure paths for a reason. I just think that the setting has succeeded despite being fairly generic and derivative at its base, rather than that being a good thing that other settings should try to emulate.

There is room in a market for both novelty, and a familiar thing that focuses on polish and execution. Golarion is the latter.

[Ssalarn]

There is room in a market for both novelty, and a familiar thing that focuses on polish and execution. Golarion is the latter.

Polishing a broad, diverse setting is also a better investment. TSR drove themselves to the brink of bankruptcy by over-saturating a market where they were virtually the sole content provider with competing books. Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Al-Qadim, Ravenloft, Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape, and Greyhawk were all individually great ideas, but they fractured TSR's market by creating a bunch of subgenres that told purchasers what not to buy. Golarion being a kitchen sink setting means that pretty much every book Paizo produces is appropriate to the game being played. You can set a horror adventure in Ustalav without it being weird that one of the players is a freedom fighter from Andoran. You can do a pyramid/tomb crawl in Osirion and the person who really wants to play a viking probably just took a ship down from the Lands of the Linnorm Kings. Since the default is that all of the different elements in the Pathfinder rules are contained within one overarching setting, they don't bump into the TSR issue of competing with themselves and undermining their own market.

5E's working a different angle since they're more focused on a relatively small number of unique production cycles with large print runs and high licensability, so their "slow burn, high acquisition, retention based on accessibility" model is a very different kind of thing than Paizo, who is more of a traditional publishing company reliant on regular releases.

So from a business perspective, PF1 did the things it set out to do brilliantly. It rallied and then grew enough of a fractured market to sustain the company creating it for a decade off a single persistent rule-set, which is almost unheard of in RPGs. A standard life cycle for an RPG is about 5 years, and Pathfinder managed to double that on a rule framework that was already past the end of its natural cycle before Paizo ever picked it up. The fact that it took nearly twice a system's normal lifespan before sales and acquisitions dropped to unsustainable levels is kind of a singular feat; 5E will likely follow suit or come very close to it, but that was a system specifically designed to have a longer lifespan with fewer entries and slow, measured 1pp support (as well as Hasbro-level integrated licensing and a cardboard currency printer in the form of Mt:G to keep the lights on as WotC transitioned to the new model).

[Peat]

It strikes me that most popular movies and video games are also fairly generic and derivate. The audience doesn't want a product that's original, it wants a product that is well written. Golarion is not aimed at winning a Pulitzer, after all.

Same But Different as they say.

Golarion is the same - but using stuff like revolutionary France and post-revolution America as inspirations rather than just vikings and egyptians is different.

[vasilidor]

the thing i do not like is that without some serious system mastery, tripping and grappling and etc. are not viable beyond around level 12. not as bad as in 3.5, but still. by the time you get to level 20 you need around a +50 to be reliable in disarming someone. I know a way to do it, not with core pf material, but i can do it. Note: in any game in pathfinder that does not allow 3rd party material and i want to play a fighter, i would probably just pick a falchion an see how big i could make my + after the 2d4. and then figure out a way to fly.

[Kurald Galain]

the thing i do not like is that without some serious system mastery, tripping and grappling and etc. are not viable beyond around level 12. not as bad as in 3.5, but still. by the time you get to level 20 you need around a +50 to be reliable in disarming someone.

Sure, at level 20 CMD is silly high. But people very rarely play at level 20.

At level 16 though? It's as easy as "play a fighter".
(16 BAB +6 strength +3 belt +4 magic weapon +3 class features +2 greater weapon focus +2 flank = 60% hit rate before using any buffs)

Some people overlook that any and all bonuses to attack rolls also apply to combat maneuvers.

[vasilidor]

Just beating a target to death is far easier, average ac for creatures in the pfsrd is around 36, the average cmd is 55. in those instances where you would try to disarm (really want to disarm some one) it gets up to the 60s.

[Kurald Galain]

Just beating a target to death is far easier, average ac for creatures in the pfsrd is around 36, the average cmd is 55. in those instances where you would try to disarm (really want to disarm some one) it gets up to the 60s.

Psssst, don't use level 20 as your only example; people rarely play at level 20.

Realistically, CMD is about 4 - 8 points higher than AC. But getting +8 to maneuver rolls is not hard (+14 is doable if you optimize). Without any investment, a martial character will have his maneuvers connect about 60% of the time, on average; so with investment, hitting 90% is very feasible. Except at level 20.

[Aotrs Commander]

When I was doing a hard look at whether to adopt PF's CMB/CMD, I went through converting the numbers and decided that was an issue. I "fixed" it by simply removing the size component from CMD and making it simply Touch AC plus BAB plus Str. This removed the double-dip for larger creatures (i.e. both the bonus from their size AND the fact they have a size bonus to Str (nevermind the fact they often have higher HD and thus BAB as well)) and likewise stopped asymmetically punishing smaller creatures as well, flattening CMDs across the board outside of Medium creatures. It still means that whacking great creatures have high CMDs - but the fact that combat maneuvres are hard-capped by size ANYWAY (outside of specialists with special abilities) means that just because the numbers are now more plausible you could bull rush an elephant, you still can't, and stuff like dragons still have CMDs in the high 30/low 40s; but even those few poiints just makes it a little more feasible.

That's the sort of fix, though, that PF couldn't itself have easily implemented even IF they wanted to, because of system inertia.

I have never met a set of rules that doesn't warrent at least some level of tuning; 3.5/PF gets a lot of it from me, because at the end of the day, I find the base chassis to be one of the best around and therefore worth spending eight months as in the current run faffng with. 3.0's multiclassing system was probably among the top reasons, essentially selling me right away on the system (it was to me like a bolt of lightning, and idea so simple I was like "why did no-one think of this before?" and as soon as I dropped the silly restrictions which we fundementally did the first time we brushed up against them (multiclassing penalties, alignment restrictions (sans paladin) and favoured classes) I never looked back. (Prior to 3.0's releasem my system of choice was Rolemaster, and when I did run AD&D, it was already with a boatload of house rules, immediately eliminating multiclass and dual-class restrictions (and very especially demihuman level restrictions) so that any race could mutliclass with what they liked or dual-class. I have since not touched AD&D in anger in the past twenty years.)

[vasilidor]

Psssst, don't use level 20 as your only example; people rarely play at level 20.

Realistically, CMD is about 4 - 8 points higher than AC. But getting +8 to maneuver rolls is not hard (+14 is doable if you optimize). Without any investment, a martial character will have his maneuvers connect about 60% of the time, on average; so with investment, hitting 90% is very feasible. Except at level 20.

my group occasionally likes to do high level play. at around level 14 cmd gets to be around 10 or more higher than ac, at 17-18 that gap has increased to 15, and continues to climb. https://rpgbot.net/pathfinder/tools/monster_analysis/
this is a thing i use to determine if a build is viable. it is also why i know that monks are seriously lagging (base monks any way). i do not like the fact that it does not list actual attack bonuses for monsters, just base attack bonuses. but yes I know it is possible to do (trip builds & etc), just difficult.

[Alcore]

I think it actually raised fighter up one tier from its 3.5 compatriot (at level 1 they are the same but just a few levels and one outperforms by a wide margin). And... then handed sorcerers and wizards new stuff anyways. :smallannoyed:


Pathfinder 1e was more accessible. 3.5 was locked up tight by the Wizards who wanted their buck (nothing at all wrong about that). But you can't get official legal stuff of 3.5 anymore only 4e and they expect all their fans to follow obediently like lemmings to 4e (I tried it, didn't like it) which, to my knowledge, had nothing not locked. Also not bad (people worked hard on it, they need to feed families) but it isn't worth the price they wanted for it. Pathfinder is. 3.5 is. 5e is. If your going to force others to pay to play give us something worth the money you are asking for...

Even now pathfinder can continue to grow. 1e may be done but it is still there and PDFs can still be bought. Corpse Tree Format may become a novelty, and then a collectible, but 1e can continue to earn its company revenue.



it did vary well and continues to perform.

[Kurald Galain]

my group occasionally likes to do high level play.
So when you say a build is not "viable", you're really talking about levels 14 and up. Since statistics from both Paizo and WOTC show that most people rarely play above level 10, I'm more interested in knowing how builds perform at those levels.


it is also why i know that monks are seriously lagging (base monks any way).
While I agree that the (non-unchained) monk isn't great, let's see how well it does at maneuvers...

Level 16 base monk: +16 bab (for maneuvers), +6 str/dex, +3 belt, +4 aomf, +1 weapon focus, +2 bonus feat, +2 flank = 50% success rate, before any buffs or maneuver-specific items. And as noted earlier, getting +8 of more to maneuvers is not hard.

So it's lagging only 10% behind the fighter (and that's at a level WAY above where most campaigns end). Looks pretty viable to me. Also, a monk could flurry, start with stunning fist, then do a couple maneuvers on the stunned enemy (at a substantially higher success rate).

[Psyren]

the thing i do not like is that without some serious system mastery, tripping and grappling and etc. are not viable beyond around level 12. not as bad as in 3.5, but still. by the time you get to level 20 you need around a +50 to be reliable in disarming someone. I know a way to do it, not with core pf material, but i can do it. Note: in any game in pathfinder that does not allow 3rd party material and i want to play a fighter, i would probably just pick a falchion an see how big i could make my + after the 2d4. and then figure out a way to fly.

Disarm is trivial to optimize because it uses your weapon - it thus gets to triple-dip from buffs to disarm, buffs to combat maneuvers more generally, and buffs (any buffs) to attack rolls. The same goes for trip and sunder.

Monks are even better off - True Strike is a 1-point ki power, and can be Quickened 3/day at 10th level, for those times you really need to land such a maneuver.

[vasilidor]

in a game in which i am a player, we are going to hit level 13 soon (like as soon as we survive the next fight we are in). I am not worried about people in that game getting maneuvers off (not that I expect anyone to try them) because it has been very much monty haul (the only reason we have lived so far because our spellcasters do not know what they are doing). the guy playing the cleric just figured out he does not need to be just a healbot, the mystic theurge does not understand that being surrounded is a bad thing.

[Alcore]

Even for a fighter being actually surrounded is a bad thing; caster or not.

[vasilidor]

now please explain that to my mystic theurge. please.

[lightningcat]

One thing that Pathfinder did, and 5e has replicated, is the Adventure Paths. Long running series of adventures that take character from 1st to high level. These are also used to further flesh out parts of the world, as well as try out new mechanics.

[Endarire]

Interesting how Pathfinder borrowed the notion of old-school D&D module sequences and called 'em adventure paths.

[Alexvrahr]

Writing adventures is Paizo's core business, not writing rules. PF1 supported their adventures just fine. You'd have to award it an A for that. For a long time it was the world's most popular roleplaying game, as D&D 5e likes to describe itself now.

[Aotrs Commander]

Interesting how Pathfinder borrowed the notion of old-school D&D module sequences and called 'em adventure paths.

Well, techically the first few adventure paths were 3.5, not Pathfinder (though they were Paizo, who were at the time doing the Dragon and/or Dungeon magazines, but it was stil WotC ultimately behind the driving wheel). I think the major difference between the twain is that in general most (though not all) of the AD&D modules weren't written specifically as being part of one contiguous run from 1st to nearly top level. E.g Deserts of Desolation (which I bought on PDF years ago and very much still intend to somehow squeeze into a ludicrously big Osirion adventure path along with Mummy's Mask and as many of the Osirion modules I can fit in...) starts at 5th-7th level.

I mean, I patched together a run using Vecna Lives, Vecna Reborn and Die Vecna Die! as on of my earlier 3.5 runs (and capped it off with a later conversion of Dragon Mountain from 16th to low epic), but I had to do some bending over backwards (as the first module in that sequence wa for much higher level characters, but occurs earlier in the story) and I was starting from a 6th-8th ish level party.

APs are also, I think distinct from something like Night Below (which I ran as 3.5) or Paizo's own Emerald Spire megadungeon which both run from 1st to mid-high level as being delivered in compartmentalised sequences, rather than all at once, allowing a much broader amount of material. In the same way that Telltale Games (in their heyday) did episodic graphic adventures likes Tales of Monkey Island as opposed to stand-along games like the previous four TMI games.

It's more of a popularisation and appendment of terminology, broadly, though (I mean, I have always been technically running adventure paths before the terminology existed).

[Elves]

As a business move it was a big success. In terms of "fixing 3.5", it maybe made some steps but couldn't really achieve that, in part because to capture the 3.5 crowd it had to be extremely compatible with 3.5.

I think PF2 was a missed opportunity. Instead of trying to make it like 5e, they could have done a true "fixed 3e", drawing on 10 years of experience with Pathfinder.

[darkdragoon]

Sure, at level 20 CMD is silly high. But people very rarely play at level 20.

At level 16 though? It's as easy as "play a fighter".
(16 BAB +6 strength +3 belt +4 magic weapon +3 class features +2 greater weapon focus +2 flank = 60% hit rate before using any buffs)

Some people overlook that any and all bonuses to attack rolls also apply to combat maneuvers.


Only about 4 of which is coming from being a fighter, and partly because of the insistence that Greater Focus requiring fighter levels. And of course if you are using a different weapon even a chunk of that falls off.

Similarly I'm not sure "nobody really even uses all this stuff we threw in" is a positive talking point.


And yes, even with the traitor legions the well regarded archetypes (at least from the "tier" spectrum) are basically "ignore all this and take the buffs of another class instead!"

[Kurald Galain]

And yes, even with the traitor legions the well regarded archetypes (at least from the "tier" spectrum) are basically "ignore all this and take the buffs of another class instead!"
To be clear, my point isn't that fighters are so great (they're not, albeit clearly better than in 3E). My point is that PF maneuvers are so viable that even a fighter can reliably pull them off.

[Psyren]

Only about 4 of which is coming from being a fighter, and partly because of the insistence that Greater Focus requiring fighter levels. And of course if you are using a different weapon even a chunk of that falls off.

It's on par with a Barbarian, who's getting +3 from Greater Rage at that level. And with all the feats the PF fighter gets, they can afford to blow some on crafting all their gear, giving them more WBL to play with and letting them pick up utility items like Rod of Cancellation or Ring of Freedom.

[Gnaeus]

And of course if you are using a different weapon even a chunk of that falls off.

On the one hand, yes. All low tiers depend on having their gear to do their job (although as Psyren points out, they can craft better in PF than in 3.5).

On the other hand, unless your scenario is “fighter just got abducted and stripped of all gear” or “we just fought a monster that destroyed his weapon” (neither of which has anything to do with combat maneuvers) I think it’s reasonable to assume that the fighter will be swinging the weapon he has invested feats and money in pretty close to all the time. The others are like saying “Ha! The wizard can’t function after I burn his spellbook and steal his components”.

[darkdragoon]

No I mean that's literally how weapon training works (presuming it isn't replaced by an archetype). And yes, one of the better regarded ones is "lose this, get Rage"

[Kurald Galain]

No I mean that's literally how weapon training works (presuming it isn't replaced by an archetype). And yes, one of the better regarded ones is "lose this, get Rage"

Your assessment is outdated by about five years (https://paizo.com/products/btpy9hdy).

[upho]

I think especially Kurald's and Psyren's posts have pretty much summarized my own views. I'd only like to add that I think PF also brought enough good or great non-caster options to allow for martial characters more mechanically interesting, varied and effective than any edition of D&D has managed so far (with the possible exception of combat stuff in 4e, but that edition is in many ways also the most radically different one).

While I don't think this was much of an explicit design goal for PF, especially not during the first years, and I seriously doubt many of the combos these non-caster options allow for were intended by their designers, personally I greatly appreciate them. I would've preferred more of them - especially ones not focused on combat - and that they required less system mastery to make good use of (it's still far easier to build interesting and effective adventurers based on caster classes). But still, I definitely think PF did give some truly nice things to martials (unfortunately - and interestingly - this also included a few things which can make high-op martial builds capable of reliably beating opposition which equally high-op full casters typically don't stand a chance against).

And speaking of martial options:

No I mean that's literally how weapon training works (presuming it isn't replaced by an archetype). And yes, one of the better regarded ones is "lose this, get Rage"Your assessment is outdated by about five years (https://paizo.com/products/btpy9hdy).This.

A straight vanilla fighter 20 typically gains a bare minimum of +4 from weapon training to a very large majority of CMB checks they make, and most commonly that bonus is increased to +7 thanks to the two related standard fighter items (gloves of dueling and sash of the war champion). So a Lore Warden ends up with at the very least a +12 bonus from class features alone (+15 including mentioned items), typically applying to virtually all CMB checks they make.

And with a bit of optimization, that bonus from class features may very well be +26 or higher: +9 from weapon training (with veteran of endless war (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/Fighter/#Veteran_of_Endless_War_Ex) alternate capstone and mentioned items), +8 from Lore Warden maneuver mastery, +3 from greater rage (VMC barbarian), and +6 or more from warrior spirit AWT (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/Fighter/#Advanced_Weapon_Training) (for a +5 furious weapon). Even if excluding the +5 enabled by VMC barbarian (greater rage and furious weapon), this practically always active +21 bonus is still greater than the +18 to CMB a comparable barbarian 20 with strength surge might gain from class features only once per round and at the cost of an immediate action and a more expensive +1 magic weapon ability (that is: +4 mighty rage, +2 furious weapon, +12 strength surge with a headband of havoc).


It's on par with a Barbarian, who's getting +3 from Greater Rage at that level. And with all the feats the PF fighter gets, they can afford to blow some on crafting all their gear, giving them more WBL to play with and letting them pick up utility items like Rod of Cancellation or Ring of Freedom.And this. Not to mention the many bonus feats also means most fighters can easily afford to VMC, for example to also gain most of the bonuses to CMB from barbarian class features.


Just beating a target to death is far easier, average ac for creatures in the pfsrd is around 36, the average cmd is 55. in those instances where you would try to disarm (really want to disarm some one) it gets up to the 60s.CMD 55 is frankly trivial to beat at 20th with little investment, especially for a fighter. As an example, here are some of the typical CMB values and closely related abilities of a more optimized human fighter (Mutation Warrior, VMC barbarian) 20 melee control build, primarily focusing on demoralization and dirty tricks in combat (note that practically all CMB checks for these maneuvers would be made using his main weapon in a real game):


Bull Rush +71 best of 2 rolls, affects up to Colossal size, free action on any hit during any 20 rounds/day, success provokes from the fighter.
Dirty Trick +76 free action on any AoO hit and can replace normal attack in charge or AoO, two successes dazes for at least 2d4 rounds.
Disarm +72.
Drag +65 affects up to Gargantuan size.
Reposition +93 affects up to Gargantuan size.
Spell Sunder +69 can be made in place of any melee attack, just as normal sunder checks.
Trip +93 affects up to Colossal size.

Combat Stamina also allows this fighter to add up to +5 to any the above, spending 1 stamina (from a pool of 25 stamina per combat) for each +1 bonus when making a CMB check. (And had he been a Lore Warden instead of a Mutation Warrior, the above values would've increased with +4.)

The average (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E2-s8weiulPoBQjdI05LBzOUToyoZIdSsLKxHAvf8F8/edit#gid=3) CMD of published CR 30 creatures is less than 69 (74 vs Spell Sunder).


my group occasionally likes to do high level play. at around level 14 cmd gets to be around 10 or more higher than ac, at 17-18 that gap has increased to 15, and continues to climb. https://rpgbot.net/pathfinder/tools/monster_analysis/
this is a thing i use to determine if a build is viable. it is also why i know that monks are seriously lagging (base monks any way). i do not like the fact that it does not list actual attack bonuses for monsters, just base attack bonuses. but yes I know it is possible to do (trip builds & etc), just difficult.It can be a bit tricky to gain sufficiently high CMB values and action-efficient safe use for more than say 2 different combat maneuvers before higher levels, but it's rarely much of a problem at higher levels in most games, especially not for builds based on fighter levels. Besides, focusing on a couple of manuevers is usually enough to gain enormously from the related investments, vastly increasing DPR or even completely replacing the need for dealing any damage. In short, highly effective melee builds (and a few ranged ones) rely on making successful CMB checks, often multiple times per round, and in a vast majority of real game combats and practically regardless of the opposition, such builds will typically be far more competent than melee builds not using maneuvers.


Even for a fighter being actually surrounded is a bad thing; caster or not.This is definitely not always the case. For example, the fighter build with the CMB values mentioned above can also make at least 8 AoOs per round and reach all spaces in a radius of at least 35' with his main weapon, making him capable of using bull rushes and dirty tricks to reliably take out several enemies of CR 25+ within that radius each round. Not to mention he can usually also make all enemies within 60' not immune to fear (and many of those within 10' normally immune to fear) panicked or cowering during each of his turns in every combat. IOW, he'd usually be thankful to face enemies stupid enough to surround him. The same is true for most melee control "tanks" IME as they're typically built for close combat multi-target offense and active defense via AoOs, their combat effectiveness consequently often being highly correlated to their melee reach.

[Endarire]

@upho
What is this about high op martials outdoing high op casters? On behalf of the audience, I want examples!

(I'm excited!)

[darkdragoon]

Your assessment is outdated by about five years (https://paizo.com/products/btpy9hdy).


Weapon Mastery doubles down on focusing on one group. It basically does nothing for anybody that wants to use anything like a sword and an axe, or bow and sword.

Even the mastery that sounds like it would encompass using two different weapons is "have a deed."

And of course given that it is level 9+ we can't assume most players ever get to see it.

Which should have been low hanging fruit given Complete Warrior's lack of a two sword weapon style to go with Samurai, or the 4e monk having a flurry bonus for seemingly everything EXCEPT unarmed strike.

[Psyren]

Weapon Mastery doubles down on focusing on one group. It basically does nothing for anybody that wants to use anything like a sword and an axe, or bow and sword.

I'm pretty sure he's directing you to Advanced Weapon Training.

And you can use a "bow and a sword," it's a whopping -1 difference before any items or feats.

[Kurald Galain]

Weapon Mastery doubles down on focusing on one group.
To be clear, my point isn't that fighters are so great (they're not, albeit clearly better than in 3E). My point is that PF maneuvers are so viable that even a fighter can reliably pull them off.

[upho]

@upho
What is this about high op martials outdoing high op casters?Just as a reminder before we go into any specifics regarding "outdoing high-op casters": I'm only talking about mechanical effectiveness in combat (and primarily against foes of a CR far above level), not about any other PC capabilities or any other kinds of challenges.


(I'm excited!):smallbiggrin:I honestly don't think you should be if we're talking about martials actually outdoing casters, as that's not any better than the more common other way around. But I also thankfully don't see how the "reversed C/MD" I'm aware of is likely to cause problems, not outside of those more rare games in which the "average" combat is considerably more challenging than according to guidelines and frequently includes opponents with a CR greater than APL +5 or so. Because generally speaking, the more high-op the typical PC is in a game, the more challenging the typical foe likely is, and the greater combat superiority a martial PC may gain from the fact that they can typically stack their key combat values higher than casters can relative the respective opposing enemy values.

And of course, AFAIK the martial builds most likely to be problematically OP combine some of the most powerful martial combos in the game with enough boosts to the associated combat values they end up having a near certain success chance against practically any published creature. Which typically allows such a build to make a very large number of very accurate attacks (including outside of own turns) to impose multiple different highly disabling effects, and consequently to very reliably remove multiple enemies of a CR far above level from combat in a very large majority of combat rounds.


On behalf of the audience, I want examples!Well, my "Featfinder Fighter" Dirty Percy Performance (the fighter 20 build from whom I got the CMB numbers I mentioned above) should be able serve as a decent example. And he sure doesn't seem to mind baring it all in a spoiler in this thread... :smallbiggrin:

All of the other more complete and detailed such high level build's I've made unfortunately include DSP material (especially from PoW), but I think I've got a few older lower level builds using only Paizo stuff laying around somewhere, and I should be able to give plenty of examples of other 1PP combos which can be built around for similar overkill combat prowess... So let me know if Percy isn't exciting enough and I'll try to add a few additional builds.

Finally, note that the reason I put together Percy in the first place was basically because I was curious to see just how good a melee control/debuff tank the most popular race and class in PF allow for using only 1PP options allowed in most games. Though I got a headache from trying to fit a seemingly endless number of fiddly details and considerations into a build progression feasible also in a real game, the general idea was very simple; piling as effective melee control/debuff combos and as high related number boosts on top of a fighter 20 chassis, not ignoring general utility and out-of-combat functionality.


Human fighter (Mutation Warrior, VMC barbarian) 20
N Large male humanoid (human)

Initiative +23; Senses darkvision 60’, continuous arcane sight and see invisibility; Perception +44


DEFENSE
AC 50, touch 21, flat-footed 41 (14 armor, 8 natural, 7 dex, 7 shield, 5 deflection, 2 dodge, -2 rage, -1 size)
Hp 315 (10+19d10 fighter levels, 200 con)
Fort +28; Ref +20; Will +27; +8 morale vs spells, (Sp) and (Su); +6 vs fear
DR 3/-; Immune exhausted, fatigued, flat-footed, nauseated, sickened; Resist cold 5, fire 5;
demoralization DC 39; Endurance; freedom of movement 10 min/day; uncanny dodge
Weakness damned (DC 30 CL check to bring back to life, unaffected by breath of life and raise dead)


OFFENSE
Speed 60 ft., fly 90 ft.; +20 ft. to base speed during charge
Melee Cornugon’s Tail (+7 flindbar, see gear) +54/+49/+44/+39 (3d6+38 bludgeoning and piercing, plus phase locking)
Reach 15 ft., 30 ft. with Cornugon’s Tail (threatens all in 35 ft. radius), +5 ft. for 1 round as swift 3/day (longarm bracers)
Attacks of Opportunity 8/round, may make dirty trick attempt instead of normal attack


Weapon Training and Advanced Weapon Training
Weapon Training +7 attack and damage rolls using weapons in the monk weapon group.

Armed Bravery Bravery bonus (+6) to Will saves.
Dazzling Intimidation Weapon training bonus (+7) to Intimidate, can use Dazzling Display as standard instead of full round action.
Trained Initiative Weapon training bonus (+7) to initiative.
Versatile Training (close weapon group) Sense Motive and Stealth as class skills, using base attack bonus in place of ranks.
Warrior Spirit 8 uses/day, 7 points for 1 minute per use: +1 weapon enhancement (max +4) and/or special ability added per point.

Combat Stamina and Notable Combat Tricks
Stamina Pool 25, 1 stamina regained per minute outside of combat

Accuracy Up to 5 stamina as part of attack for +1 competence to attack per stamina spent
Combat Style Master 2 stamina to switch style feat stances as free action outside of own turn
Combat Reflexes 5 stamina on AoO miss to immediately make another AoO at -5
Disheartening Display 5 stamina to affect a creature a second time within 24 hours
Hero’s Display Up to 6 stamina to increase effect radius by +5 feet per stamina spent (for max 60 ft. radius)
Improved Bull Rush/Dirty Trick/Sunder Up to 18 stamina for +1 CMD per stamina vs bull rush, dirty trick or sunder attempt
Intimidating Prowess 2 stamina per size category smaller than target of Intimidate check to ignore -4 penalty

Mutagen and Discoveries
Grand Mutagen 1 hour prep, standard action use, +6 NA, +8/+6/+4 alchemical to physical and -2 to mental ability scores, 200 minutes duration
Discoveries grand mutagen, greater mutagen, vestigial arm, wings

Vestigial Arm Third arm as functional as normal arms, but can't increase number of attacks otherwise possible in full attack
Wings Discovery standard action 60' (Ex) fly speed and +14 to Fly checks, 1-20 minutes/use and max 20 minutes/day

Rage and Rage Powers
Greater Rage 25 rounds/day; +6 morale to Str and Con, +3 morale to Will, -2 AC. Can stop rage and start new rage as free action, and as immediate 1/day when attacked or making a save.

Internal Fortitude Immune to sickened and nauseated (plus fatigued and exhausted due to flawed scarlet and green cabochon)
Spell Sunder 1/rage sunder vs CMD +5 (no miss chance from spells) to suppress spell 1 round, 2 rounds if CMD beat by 5-9, dispelled if beat by 10+
Superstition +8 morale vs spells, spell-like abilities and supernatural abilities, must save also vs harmless or beneficial such abilities
Unexpected Strike AoO once per rage vs foe leaving threatened square for any reason or by any means (incl. 5-foot step, forced movement, teleportation, etc)
Witch Hunter Attacks deal +6 damage to creatures able to cast spells or use spell-like or supernatural abilities (included in melee damage above)


STATISTICS
Str 46, Dex 24, Con 30, Int 14, Wis 18, Cha 12 (20 point-buy); Base Atk +20
CMB +43, bull rush* +71 best of 2 rolls, dirty trick +76, disarm +74, drag +65, overrun +45, reposition, trip* +93, spell sunder +69
CMD 62, can’t be disarmed, bull rush 73, dirty trick 78, drag 69, overrun 64, reposition, trip 83, sunder 66
*Can be made against creature of up to Gargantuan size (up to Colossal size while growing is active).

Feats Advanced Weapon Training (armed bravery)F, Advanced Weapon Training (dazzling intimidation)I, Amateur Swashbuckler (Dodging Panache)I, Ascetic StyleI, Awe-Inspiring SmashI, Cloak and Dagger StyleF, Cloak and Dagger SubterfugeI, Combat ReflexesF, Combat StaminaI, Combat Style MasterI, Dazzling DisplayF, Dirty FightingF, Dirty Trick MasterI, Disheartening DisplayB, EnduranceI, Extra Rage Power (internal fortitude), Extra Rage Power (spell sunder), Extra Rage Power (superstition), Extra Rage Power (witch hunter), Fiendskin, Greater Dirty TrickF, Hero’s DisplayB, Improved Bull RushI, Improved Dirty TrickF, Improved SunderI, Intimidating ProwessB, Kitsune StyleF, Kitsune TricksF, Kitsune VengeanceI, Master Combat PerformerI, Performing CombatantB, Power AttackF, Soulless GazeB, Vital StrikeF, Weapon Focus (light flail)I, Weapon Style MasteryI
F Fighter bonus. B Human or old dog, new tricks bonus. I Granted by training weapon or ioun stone.

Trained Skills Disable Device +43, Fly +25, Intimidate +56 (+61A), KnowledgeB (arcana, local, nature, nobility, religion) +3, (dungeoneering) +30, (engineering) +6, (planes) +28, Perception +44C (+54A, +34D), Sense Motive +33 (+43A), Stealth +47 (+55E), Swim +22, Use Magic Device +25 (+29F, +35G).
A With focused scrutiny vs chosen target. B +30 total bonus to any 3 checks/day with trained Knowledge skill (lore needle). C +5 to find invisible, incorporeal and/or on Ethereal Plane.
D Excluding bonus from pattern recognition. E With impenetrable veil. F Activating item attuned to nine-eaves key. G Activating scrolls of impenetrable veil.

Traits Dangerously Curious, Snowstride, Trapfinder; Drawback Warded Against Nature

Gear—Continuous/Recharging Cornugon’s Tail (+1 dueling (PSFG) furious growing leveraging transformative (flindbar) spine flail of monk versatile design with effortless lace), +5 greater shadow locksmith mithral celestial plate with mwk demoralizing helmet, +5 mithral +1 dueling training x31 heavy shield, +5 pauldrons of the bull resistance, +5 ring of protection, +6 victor’s belt of physical perfection, +1 training x32 (2) and +1 training x23 spiked gauntlets, Azlant x24 training x25 amulet of mighty fists and +2 natural armor, belled catsuit, boots of the earth speed, cracked dusty rose prism, cracked pale green prism (2), eyes of the eagle, flawed scarlet and green cabochon, dueling giant fist gauntlets of skilled maneuver, goggles of minute seeing, griffon's mane sash of the war champion, headband of havoc and twisted mental might (+6 Int & Wis, +4 Cha) with cracked opalescent white pyramid and cracked scarlet and blue sphere, longarm bracers, lore needle, mwk thieves' tools with extenders, nine-eaves key (2), shadow head piercings (minor), serpentine tattoo (3), swordmaster’s blue scarf (2), unfettered shirt, wand key ring.
1 Awe-Inspiring Smash, Kitsune Vengeance, Weapon Style Mastery. 2 Amateur Swashbuckler, Ascetic Style, AWT (dazzling Intimidation), Dirty Trick Master, Improved Sunder, Master Combat Performer.
3 Combat Stamina, Combat Style Master. 4 Knowledge (dungeoneering, planes). 5 Cloak and Dagger Subterfuge, Improved Bull Rush.

Gear—Limited Use scrolls of impenetrable veil CL 16 (x4) and true seeing CL 9 (x4); wands of extended contingent action CL 10, draconic malice CL 10, focused scrutiny, heightened awareness CL 10, linebreaker CL 10, long arm CL 10, pattern recognition CL 20 and see beyond; used manuals of +1 gainful exercise and +2 quickness of action; used scrolls of darkvision CL 20, arcane sight CL 20, enlarge person CL 20, permanency CL 9, 10 and 11; approximately 2,900 gp*
*Remainder of 880,000 gp standard WBL, increased by 25% as per guidelines for item creation feats, minus retraining costs.



Unfortunately RL calls and I have to stop here for now, but I'll explain how Percy's key combos actually work in practice and clarify some details in the build summary later today.