Quote from: Hobo;255030Lots of rules doesn't mean difficult to use.

Agreed!

Quote from: Jackalope;255039Because I'm not converting anything.  That's how I'm contributing to the playtest.  I'm running a massive 3.5 adventure with zero conversions, except those forced by the game, to find out if it really is backwards compatible -- I'm seeking an answer for those who ask "Can I run the massive backlog of 3.5 adventures I have under Pathfinder without converting?"

Huh.  That's an interesting experiment.  Come across any problems yet?

Quote from: Jackalope;255039C'mon dude, you're not seriously going to make that argument, are you?  Really?  Do you think the rest of us just fell off the turnip truck?

The rest of you?

Quote from: Jackalope;255039You don't have to convert AC, Hit Points, THAC0, Damage, etc.

But you do have to convert the rest. Moreover, even if they use the same mechanics, they're not necessarily on the same scale.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;255156But you do have to convert the rest. Moreover, even if they use the same mechanics, they're not necessarily on the same scale.

Seanchai

But you don't know that because by your own admission upthread, you have not been paying attention to the Pathfinder playtest.

This is like Hobo's inquiry about when will Paizo convert fully to the Pathfinder RPG for its product line. The answer is in the Introduction of the Pathfinder Beta playtest and would be known if the material had been read.

You have to get the information before you have an informed opinion.

Quote from: jeff37923;255184But you don't know that because by your own admission upthread, you have not been paying attention to the Pathfinder playtest.

The power scale is so obvious you don't need to actually have played a crocked class to have an informed opinion.  You just need to have read the classes side by side to see that they're crocked on one side of the rules divide.

I'm talking asking about other problems that may or may not have surfaced.

Quote from: Seanchai;255156The rest of you?

Yeah, as in the other people reading this thread.

QuoteBut you do have to convert the rest.

No, actually, you don't have to convert the rest.  You don't need to change a 3.5 Barbarian's class abilities at all.  An NPC Barbarian doesn't need the range of options a Pathfinder Bararian gets, and the 3.5 Rage still works under Pathfinder.

Other than bland assertion, you got anything to back that claim up?  How many sessions of Pathfinder Beta have you run?  I've got ten sessions under my belt so far.

Isn't this a clear case of the ignorant arguing with the informed?  I think it is.  I mean really, all you're doing is saying things, you've got no argument to back it up, no experience to base your opinion on, and frankly, you have no idea what you're talking about.

QuoteMoreover, even if they use the same mechanics, they're not necessarily on the same scale.

That's generally true, but it hasn't been an issue in actual play.  I'll explain more in my response to Hobo.

Quote from: Hobo;255128Huh.  That's an interesting experiment.  Come across any problems yet?

The single largest problem I've encounter so far involves the monster special ability Improved Grab.  Pathfinder's change to the grapple system means there are two different ways to determine if an attack with Improved Grab results in a grapple.

1) On a successful hit, make a free grapple attack.
2) If a successful hit would also be a successful grapple, the attack is a grab.

I've been using method one, but method 2 would also work.  There's no statement in the rules about how to handle it.

There have been several points where we've encountered problems because 3.5 rules have somewhat more depth than Pathfinder.  Not a real problem, since we just assume the 3.5 default if Pathfinder doesn't make it clear.

The power level issue is not noticeable to me.  I've been playing D&D with all the splatbooks active for some time and regularly run Dungeon Crawl Classics (which are pure Core), and I haven't found Pathfinder to be excessively more powerful than WOTC + Splats.  If the WOTC Splatbooks created characters that were +1 ECL compared to WOTC Core, then Pathfinder creates characters that are ECL +2 compared to WOTC Core:  Very noticeable at the lowest levels, with diminishing returns as the party levels.

To give an example from my most recent session:

Three players:  A Human Fighter 5, a Human Cleric 4 and a Hexblade/Rogue  3/1 (the Wizard/Warblade couldn't make it).

The players are on level 4 of Castle Whiterock, which is the lair of a tribe of Troglodytes lead by a Half-Red Dragon Troglodyte.  The first major battle of the level is against 3 groups of 3 Trog Warriors (1st level).

The Trogs did 1 point of damage to the party, and were entirely wiped out.  Their BAB of +1 was simply too pathetic, and I rolled for crap.  The Fighter has Cleave as well.  So it was a pretty short, brutal fight.  Nothing about Pathfinder in particular made the fight go this way.  The +1 AC the Fighter gained from Armor Training wasn't enough to make a difference, nor was the +1/+1 hit/damage from Weapon Training.  The Hexblade is a WOTC Standard character for all intents and purposes.  The Cleric got Pushed Back into an open pit on the first round of combat, and spent most of the battle trying to climb out.

The next major encounter was to be a battle with a Trog Fighter 4, followed by a battle with 4 Trog Warrior 2s.  Given the poor performance of the earlier Trogs, I suspect neither fight would be challenging -- solo fighters are rarely effective, and the 4 warriors had nothing to support them -- and the session was coming to a close.  The players were questioning a female Trog they had cornered, and she sent them off into a trap with bad information.

So while they were off realizing they were hoodwinked, she ran to alert the fighter and the four warriors, and they ambushed the party as they retreated from a maze of Cave Moray nests.

Now, according to Core 3.5 rules, a partly with a ECL of 3.5 versus 4 Warrior 3 and a Fighter 5 (adjusting for the Trog's ECL) should be a VERY challenging fight, and indeed it was.  The cleric burned through all of his Channel Energies keeping the Fighter from falling over, and even the Rogue -- who rarely actually gets into it -- was taken within a few HP of collapse.

Essentially, the only major differences I've encountered between 3.5 and Pathfinder is a healthy power boost at first level that makes it far easier to survive to 2nd level -- I really enjoyed that my players were able to clear the entire first level of Whiterock in two sessions with no rest stops, and they've been maintaining a clip of a about 2 sessions and 1 rest per level, and the rests they have been taking have been sensible, rather than forced by the 5 minute adventuring day.

Quote from: jeff37923;255184But you don't know that because by your own admission upthread, you have not been paying attention to the Pathfinder playtest.

The playtest. I haven't been paying attention to the car wreck of a playtest. But, obviously, I know something about the product. I have skimmed it and read commentary here, at EnWorld, and at TBP.

But I noticed you didn't outright say there wasn't a power bump. You selected what you thought you could argue with and discarded the core truth of the matter. Pretty telling, wouldn't you say?

Seanchai

Quote from: Jackalope;255212Yeah, as in the other people reading this thread.

If you've been reading this thread, you'll notice that some of us think you're full of shit.

Quote from: Jackalope;255212No, actually, you don't have to convert the rest.

And I don't have to convert nWoD mechanics to use them in a D&D game either.  

Quote from: Jackalope;255212An NPC Barbarian doesn't need the range of options a Pathfinder Bararian gets, and the 3.5 Rage still works under Pathfinder.

In which case you're not playing Pathfinder.

You're saying, in effect, that if you have a Mac, a PC emulator, and a PC-only program running under that emulator, that the program is actually a Mac program. Or that the PC program is now magically able to run on a Mac. It's not. It's a PC program running under an emulator. It may run on a Mac with the help of an emulator, but that don't make it a Mac program.

Quote from: Jackalope;255212I mean really, all you're doing is saying things, you've got no argument to back it up, no experience to base your opinion on, and frankly, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Actually, I do have plenty of experience to back it up with. Decades, in fact. Just not with Pathfinder. But you don't need to have played Pathfinder to understand how it's not backwards compatible. General experience and general experience with RPG mechanics will show you that.

Quote from: Jackalope;255212That's generally true, but it hasn't been an issue in actual play.  I'll explain more in my response to Hobo.

Then, again, it ain't exactly backwards compatible.

Seanchai

Jackalope; I'm not sure I'm following.  You're characters are a mix of multiclassed wizards splatbook classes and Pathfinder core classes?

Quote from: Seanchai;255219But I noticed you didn't outright say there wasn't a power bump. You selected what you thought you could argue with and discarded the core truth of the matter. Pretty telling, wouldn't you say?

Seanchai

That's because I don't see an issue there. So far, during actual play, there hasn't been any problems with power levels at all. Thus, no problem during play and therefore not an issue.

Quote from: Hobo;255194The power scale is so obvious you don't need to actually have played a crocked class to have an informed opinion.  You just need to have read the classes side by side to see that they're crocked on one side of the rules divide.

And the comment you quoted was directed at Seanchi.


See, Hobo, my perception of you is that you have barely skimmed the Pathfinder books or else you would not have made such sophomoric statements like the psionics classes have been nerfed (when the psionics rules haven't been published yet) or that you didn't know when Paizo was converting all of its material to Pathfinder (which is in the Introduction to the Pathfinder Beta).

So until you and Seanchi actually read the rules, I think that the two of you have uninformed opinions on them.

Some guys from our gaming group ran a session last night (I didn't get to go) with some folks who hadn't been following its development like the rest of us (but did have decent d20/3.5 experience).  I'm really curious to see how it went.

Hi everyone. I've tried to communicate my stance on a key issue raised in this thread on Paizo's own boards. I'm sure my proposal got its flaws and loopholes, but it communicates my sentiments pretty exactly. It's a reaction to my players refusing to switch to (what they call) the munchkinism that is Pathfinder RPG.

My posting

Quote from: jeff37923;255305And the comment you quoted was directed at Seanchi.

So?  This isn't a public internet now?

Quote from: jeffSee, Hobo, my perception of you is that you have barely skimmed the Pathfinder books or else you would not have made such sophomoric statements like the psionics classes have been nerfed (when the psionics rules haven't been published yet) or that you didn't know when Paizo was converting all of its material to Pathfinder (which is in the Introduction to the Pathfinder Beta).

See, my perception of you is that you don't actually even know what I said when you keep going on and on about the Pathfinder psionics rules that I never once mentioned.  I was talking about the 3.5 psionic rules, you dumbass.  And how they don't mesh well with the Pathfinder classes because of the power disparity.

So, until you can actually acknowledge stuff that's in print right here in the thread right in front of your face in the portions of the posts that you're purportedly quoting and responding to, I'm forced to the conclusion that your ability to talk intelligently about the Pathfinder RPG (or anything else, for that matter) is about equivalent to that of a brain damaged goat.

And now I'm a bit suspicious of how useful this Jackalope playtest is, since most of the characters he lists have classes that aren't in Pathfinder.  What exactly is being playtested?  The more I hear about it, the more it sounds like a 3.5 game with a few house rules borrowed from Pathfinder.  But maybe I'm not getting a very good picture of exactly what the parameters of this playtest run actually are.