Pathfinder RPG Beta

[Magister Lajciak]

Pathfinder RPG Beta has been released. You can download it here for free: http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGa...r/pathfinderRPG

 

Alternatively, it is possible to order a hardcopy of it, which is apparently being distributed at cost.

[Killian Kalthorne]

I don't PnP as much as I like to but this looks very nice. A much better follow up to Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e than 4e.

[ramza]

Paizo has some really nice ideas but I won't be using their new RPG for my p&p sessions. Instead, I will just borrow some of the new concepts they have created for the 3.5 E d&d rules.

[J.E. Sawyer]

I'm kind of disappointed with what I'm seeing in the beta. I really think they could have changed a lot more and still kept the core 3.5 mechanics. Rangers still have their nonsensical combat styles, the weapon list is effectively unchanged (read: totally without any apparent design goal), etc.

 

Armor does look like it's balanced a bit better, but the fundamental system is still terrible/heavy armor feats are still worthless unless your Dex is in the toilet. Light armor still rules supreme if your Dex is high. Power attack continues its reign as the most no-thought "take this if you want to do a lot of melee damage" feat.

 

Some of the ideas are cool, but the execution still needs some work. Barbarians have Renewed Vigor as a Rage Power option. It heals 8 + Con modifier in hit points as a standard action and has 6th level as a prereq. What 6th+ level barbarian is going to spend a standard action to heal 8 + Con points of damage? Then there's the Overhand Chop chain, which attends to the neglected, under-represented melee characters in D&D games that use two-handed weapons and try, in vain, to do high amounts of damage.

[Magister Lajciak]

I have to agree that the extent of the changes in the Beta is too small for my taste. According to the designers, however, the purpose of the Beta was to get the complete rules into the hands of the players, not necessarily to make the biggest changes (there are hardly any between the Alphas and the Beta). The main changes will apparently happen now that the complete ruleset is up and running and the updates to the Beta will be made available as PDF files. This is, of course, different from the Alpha/Beta nomenclature used in software development and Paizo should have realized that using the terminology but with changed meanings could lead to confusion and it should have taken this into account. Oh well, as long as the final product does not disappoint, I will be happy.

[ramza]

I'm kind of disappointed with what I'm seeing in the beta. I really think they could have changed a lot more and still kept the core 3.5 mechanics. Rangers still have their nonsensical combat styles, the weapon list is effectively unchanged (read: totally without any apparent design goal), etc.

 

Armor does look like it's balanced a bit better, but the fundamental system is still terrible/heavy armor feats are still worthless unless your Dex is in the toilet. Light armor still rules supreme if your Dex is high. Power attack continues its reign as the most no-thought "take this if you want to do a lot of melee damage" feat.

 

Some of the ideas are cool, but the execution still needs some work. Barbarians have Renewed Vigor as a Rage Power option. It heals 8 + Con modifier in hit points as a standard action and has 6th level as a prereq. What 6th+ level barbarian is going to spend a standard action to heal 8 + Con points of damage? Then there's the Overhand Chop chain, which attends to the neglected, under-represented melee characters in D&D games that use two-handed weapons and try, in vain, to do high amounts of damage.

 

I have to agree with you as well. My main complaints against paizo is that they have either overdid it (I don't like the way they have "over-overpowered" everything - look at how races are handled for example) or that they have implemented good but incomplete ideas. Renewed Vigor, as you state, needed some more thought. I also don't plan on using their new rules about polymorphing. There are just too many stat bonuses for me to keep track of.

 

I could list dozens of such examples and that is why I am just borrowing ideas from this ruleset.

 

Concerning armor, I have created a variant table for armor and shields. I mostly try to implement the idea of damage reduction from Unearthed arcana without hampering the AC bonuses for wearing armor. I would appreciate if you could give me your thoughts.

 

Cheers.

New_tables_for_armor_and_shields.doc

[Stephen Amber]

Universal damage reduction(not +1/, slashing/) is extremely powerful and the 5/ you put there for full plate might be a bit much.

[ramza]

Ok, I have thought of another variant then:

 

Light armor provides damage resistance against slashing attacks

Medium armor provides damage resistance against slashing and piercing attacks

Heavy armor provides damage resistance against slashing, piercing and bludgeoning attacks

 

My only problem now is how to allocate the numbers. How much damage should a chain mail or a chain short absorb? I have to think a bit over this.

 

All types of armor could start at 1 point of damage resistance and gain an additional point for every point of magical enhancement they have. For example, a chain shirt +4 should grant 5 (1+4) points of slashing resistance.

Edited August 17, 2008 by ramza

[Stephen Amber]

To make the heavy armors a bit better, in comparison with medium/light, I'd simply give half plate 1/ and full plate 2/ reduction and leave the rest alone. There are so many good dex based skills and feats that that's the real reason that medium and light armors are superior. Item hit points are another possibility... the heavy armors will prove to be much more durable in the long run, though this requires some bookkeeping of course.

[J.E. Sawyer]

To be honest, I think low-value DR is really overrated. Especially on the characters likely to wear those armors, shaving off a point or two here and there is a drop in the bucket. I do really like the idea of armor that has variable DR based on damage type. So, within a tier (light/medium/heavy), the different armor types protect against the different damage types at different levels. If one value is always "weak", it means there's a tactical option for negating the armor's major advantage (i.e., equipping a weapon of a different damage type). It's something I am experimenting with in the NWN2 engine for The Black Hound and it works pretty well.

 

In a tabletop game in college, I had an armor-as-DR system that required bookkeeping. Armor had an "Armor Rating" that was like armor hit points, but it also correlated to a "Protective Value", which was a number of dice that were rolled to subtract from inflicted damage. Higher ARs tended to correlate not only to higher die faces (d4 to d6 to d8) but also to an increased number of dice. More dice = better normalization = generally superior. Damage that was absorbed came straight out of the Armor Rating, which would eventually lower the Protective Value, making the armor worse at protecting. So, the better armor was at protecting, it degenerated at a proportionally faster rate.

 

There were two other wild cards in that system: armor bludgeoning and armor piercing weapons. AB weapons did worse damage than standard weapons, but did double damage to the armor. So if armor absorbed 5 points of damage, it actually would take 10. This made weapons like maces and flails very dangerous in protracted battles. AP weapons treated the AR of a target as though it were half its current value. This lowered the PV dramatically. However, any damage absorbed by the armor was similarly cut in half and rounded down. Crossbows and military hammers were excellent weapons against plate armor, but if the armor was too good, the AP weapons would barely make any headway over the course of a battle.

 

Because of the nature of the system, the heavily armored characters had a regular money sink and were strongly encouraged to head back to civilization at more-or-less regular intervals. And it produced interesting combat scenarios as well. Lightly armored characters occasionally had the advantage, but when it came time to slug things out, the heavily armored characters typically emerged victorious.

 

By the way, the popular Iron Heroes rules has armor as DR and uses the following die ranges:

 

Padded, 1/magic

Leather, 1d2/magic

Studded, 1d3/magic

Scale, 1d4/magic

Chainmail, 1d5/magic

Banded Mail, 1d6/magic

Full Plate, 1d8/magic

[Stephen Amber]

In 3.5, as written, the DR is very conservative with the barbarian getting 1/ at level 7 and not maxing out at 5/ til level 19. So you rain on his parade by introducing DR armor anyone can wear. But I do like the idea of armor attrition and occasional repairs, so long as it is simple mechanically and gradual... if you're chopped naked out your full plate mid way through a dungeon delve then that's not good. The sunder feat with it's item hardness and hit point numbers opens a small can of worms...

[Stephen Amber]

My idea was to use armor DR and hit points only on critical hits. A critical being the most vicious of blows, perhaps some of the damage would be blocked, and absorbed by, one's armor. After all, with rules in place, why should items and armor take damage only under sunder attempts? The mechanics being damage blocked according to the armor bonus (8 for full plate, 5 for chain, etc) and subtracted from the armor hit point total ( and the damage you take of course). Material would factor into the HP total... x2 for mithril or something. With this, it's not something you have to keep track of all the time and gives some extra value to the heavier armors.

[Musopticon?]

Hohhoh, I get to play this next Friday-Saturday. It's supposedly a pre-fab campaign, but that's ok - keeps the instances short, my last bachelor year is a bit full as it is.

 

Now I have to dig up a 3.5 Phb and start imagining a char. I'm giddy, to be honest.

[Killian Kalthorne]

I have decided to do some of my own tweaking to Pathfinder, incorporating bits and pieces from 4e, Arcana Evolved, and d20 Modern that I liked. So far I like the result, but I haven't gotten it in gameplay as of yet.

 

Save mods are like 4e, the Skill listing has been tweaked, I am using the Massive Damage Threshold, with a little tweak, from d20 Modern, and the Disabled, Death, and Dying rules from AE. Also, a 1st level character has the Max hit die for the class and their Constitution score for starting hit points, maximum plus Constitution modifier for second and third, then half hit die plus Constitution mod 4th level and on. I am also using the Bloodied mechanic as well.

[Magister Lajciak]

I have also made some significant changes to Pathfinder for my games, though I mostly made up my own rather than using established mechanics from other sources. It is a work in progress, as I plan on introducing further changes to other areas of the game, but so far I am rather satisfied with what I have right now.

[Magister Lajciak]

Prestige Class web enhancement has been released for Pathfinder RPG classes today. Those inderested can download from here: http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizo...AreNowAvailable

[H]

Prestige Class web enhancement has been released for Pathfinder RPG classes today. Those inderested can download from here: http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizo...AreNowAvailable

Wow, art direction got a lot better.

[Magister Lajciak]

[quote name='H

[Musopticon?]

Played through the Society scenario titled "Black Waters" with a good group. Had great fun and have to laud the writers for their quest and encounter design.

 

And I didn't get my Taldorian Ranger killed even though the average monster had 30+ hp and enough ac to survive being pincushioned. Well done guys!

[Magister Lajciak]

Is this a published adventure or part of the Pathfinder adventur paths or a download?

[Musopticon?]

This one!

[Magister Lajciak]

Thanks for the link!

[Magister Lajciak]

The main playtest of classes has now finished, but playtesting continues for other areas. I think there will be substantial changes to the classes based on the playtest feedback. There certainly were strong hints in this regard. I have also been an incessant advocate of bringing down the power level a notch, so we will see what happens with that.

[Musopticon?]

Mists of Mwangi is next then perhaps some non-Society PF.

[Musopticon?]

Mists of Mwangi is next then perhaps some non-Society PF.

Well, MoM was pretty awesome. Plenty of problem-solving, situations, that asked for the group to act strategically and together, and lastly an atmosphere that balanced itself precariously on a precipice between horrific and hilarious. Suffice it to say, the first 1,5 hours contained for instance a situation which involved a wad of bananas and a crazed half-orc druid enraged by a monkey curse, an attack by clerks(yes, pen-pushers, not clerics) dropping from the ceiling and an instance with a wall of screaming masks.

 

I want more, J. Logue is an awesome scenariowright.