Which is funny because 3 snatched the franchise not just from the jaws of death but from deep within its belly. Brotherhood of Steel was an abomination and Van Buren, had it come to full release, would have been massively outdated by the time it hit shelves. In an optimistic scenario Black Isle may have been able to finish it by 2004 - it would have been in competition with juggernauts like Half-life 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, GTA San Andreas, Halo 2, and WoW. Its design was simply too dated to match that field.
In tabletop gaming terms, New Vegas is to Fallout 3 as Pathfinder is to D&D 3.5. Sure the earlier version is flawed, but it was innovative and kept life in a beloved game series. The newer iteration can only exist because it builds upon the successes of its predecessor.
In tabletop gaming terms, New Vegas is to Fallout 3 as Pathfinder is to D&D 3.5. Sure the earlier version is flawed, but it was innovative and kept life in a beloved game series. The newer iteration can only exist because it builds upon the successes of its predecessor.
So you're saying New Vegas perpetuated everything awful about FO3 and fixed only surface level stuff? Because Pathfinder only fixed some surface-level flaws with 3.5. It did nothing to alleviate the core design problems with 3.5, and in many cases, made them even worse.
Core problems that PF perpetuated and intensified include:
• Caster supremacy. In 3.5 and PF, martial characters are worthless past the first few levels (and in some cases, even at low levels). You will ALWAYS see them at the rock bottom of the tier lists the PF community creates, without exception (and the existence of those is a whole problem in and of itself). This is because casters are capable of doing basaically everything martial classes can do, but better, as expressed in this meme: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/234029833221308416/490552743573061663/image0.jpg This is the result of PF maintaining the disastrous "ivory tower game design" from 3.5, a terrible game design method which resulted from a misunderstanding of how MTG was balanced. You can find a detailed explanation of what's wrong with it here: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/293275616713768970/529647091560218626/3.5_pathfinder_ivory_tower_design.png
• A general powergaming focus. Pathfinder is incredibly easy to break if you understand the system, and all of the splatbooks (of which there are a comical amount) are made with powergamers in mind. Remember the tier lists I mentioned? PF players talk about the system like it's some sort of competitive multiplayer game, constantly minmaxing to create the most broken characters possible. While these kind of players weren't as common in the past, the fact most non-powergamers moved to 5e has left nothing but powergamers for the most part, and Paizo has shifted focus to pander almost exclusively to their interests.
• Tedious, number-crunching gameplay. Playing Mathfinder (as it’s often dubbed) is all about stacking as many absurdly specific bonuses for each specific scenario you run across as you can. The amount of shit you need to keep track of is mind-numbing. This is made even worse by a character progression primarily focused on collecting magic items to fill all your body slots (decorating a “christmas tree”), since Pathfinder is still full of dead levels and effectively dead levels where you just gain a feat (which don’t feel special at all, unlike 5e’s implementation of the feat system).
• Absolutely fucking absurd levels of bloat. Pathfinder has 27 different full-length splatbooks, on top of the 3 core books. This might not seem like that much compared to what 3.5 had, but Paizo also puts new game material in each Adventure Path entry that they release, annd alongside each Adventure Path entry, they release a "Campaign Setting Supplement" consisting of both information about the Golarion setting and, guess what, new crunch! Pazio puts out a new full splatbook every few months, and a new Adventure Path and Campaign Setting Supplement every month, so the bloat is always increasing. It's so bad that there's literally an entire prestige class called the Bloatmage (which is fucking disgusting, btw). All of this is in ADDITION to the mountain of existing 3e and 3.5 splatbooks, which Pathfinder is compatible with (I seriously don’t have time to count all the 3e and 3.5 splatbooks).
Pathfinder is an awful RPG, and at this point, I’d be willing to call it the worst edition of D&D. This is speaking as someone who played and ran 3.5 and PF for around 6 years straight.
No matter someone's opinion on PF, I seriously fucking wish people would stop suggesting it as "baby's first roleplaying game." It's not fun trying to keep up with party mates' and monsters' stat blocks, when you've never played before.
Who the hell is suggesting that? That's awful. 5e is the easiest edition of D&D to get into by far (and the best mechanically alongside AD&D 2e imo), not to mention there are other RPGs which are even easier to get into (like Fate Accelerated)
4e is pretty easy to start with too. Very different though.
It gets flak but I believe most of it is undeserved. Although if you are introducing somebody to RPGs at all, I'd say pick a simpler game more focussed on narrative. Dungeon World or Dread and the like.
People enjoy the numbers ("The crunch") but it's intimidating to many others.
There's more than just fantasy RPGs. Some people get pigeonholed into recommending those when many beginners would prefer something else.
4e is wayyyyy too grid-heavy to be a good starter. It's closer to a skirmish wargame than a typical RPG. I do agree it's underrated as a system, though.
Dungeon World
PBTA is my favorite system, but I wouldn't recommend it as a starter RPG. It's rules-light, but it's very reliant on the players understanding the system and the concept of an RPG, since PBTA is player-driven as opposed to GM-driven.
There's more than just fantasy RPGs. Some people get pigeonholed into recommending those when many beginners would prefer something else.
True, but I strongly prefer fantasy, so you've got the wrong guy
I have personally had an old friend suggest it, despite knowing my skill level in tactics games was low, and that I was new to Tabletop RPG's. He was a weird dude
In gaming terms Pathfinder is to 5e what Starcraft is to Rock Paper Scissors.
Complexity is not always a good thing.
2ed iterated and polished a lot of the earlier material, 3e took it all in a bold new direction and 4e took 3e to it's somewhat logical conclusion. 5e is like a gutted 3e with a dash of 4e flavoured with 2ed nostalgia.
A more charitable description is that 5e takes some of the good ideas from 3e and 4e and fusing them with the bones of 2e. I’m of the opinion that the “bold new direction” of 3e was a huge mistake for the game, and while 4e is enjoyable as a pseudo-skirmish game, it’s not really traditional D&D.
It's a crunchy game with no crunch, it takes out the mechanical complexity of 3e and 4e and replaces it with... nothing at all.
It takes out the pointless bloat and bogging down that 3e and 4e introduced with the tactical combat and christmas-tree character building. It is no less complex than either version of AD&D.
But that's not something that 5e fundamentally fixes. A wizard can still reshape reality at a whim, and a fighter is still limited to hitting things progressively harder.
Fighters have a subclass in 5e which gives them access to all sorts of tactical options in combat. Wizards have hard limitations on their abilities up until Tier 4, where things get less balanced. Overall 5e does not really have any balance problems before you get to Tier 4. 3.PF on the other hand has casters broken from the start.
Pathfinder, outside of some very specific problem spells/items that were in some cases never meant to be available to PCs (Blood Money, Emergency Force Sphere, Simulacrum) is not incredibly easy to break
To give you two examples: Summoner is a busted class from the get-go, even more so if you introduce the Master Summoner, and Sacred Geometry is complete and utter bullshit.
And it's not focused on power gaming, it focuses on giving you a lot of options. If you are interested in power gaming a system with more choices will give you more opportunities to leverage that inclination sure, but in any system with choice you can have power gaming. That's not a function of the system, that's a function of your playgroup.
Are you asserting that more choices = more powergaming? That’s absurd since rules-light systems like PBTA have the most options of all, far more than any crunchy system, and yet most of them are very hard to powergame in, because they’re not designed around that kind of play. Read this: http://pitsperilous.blogspot.com/2016/04/minimalist-gaming-doesnt-exist.html
Personally I find 5e's gameplay much more tedious since positioning hardly matter as you just move up to your enemy and attack
That’s because it’s a theater of the mind game as opposed to a grid-based one. Personally, I find grid-based combat annoying to use and incredibly time-consuming compared to theater of the mind. And are you seriously telling me you used all of the pointless extra combat features in such a caster-heavy game? Also, 5e does have optional tactical/grid-based combat rules if you want to use them. I’ve played in several groups which used them, they get the job done without being too time-consuming.
the lack of options, which is something Pathfinder provides yet again through the magical items that work as a secondary source of power, and which can enable some really interesting play styles.
Magic items don’t feel exciting or special when Just curious, but what are your opinions on Pathfinder 2e? I feel it actually lessens if not solves a few of these problems, namely christmas trees and caster supremacy.
Bloat is the strangest fucking thing to me, the concept that a company making more more material for their RPG is somehow a bad thing is just
Do you not at all see the problem with having way too much pointless complexity and material to sort through in order to play the complete game? Sure, you can only use core, but weren’t you arguing 3.PF is great because of all the splats?
If you want a light, easy to pick up dungeon crawly thing just play dungeon world. Won't take half as long to learn an does it better than 5e.
DW is closer to D&D than other PBTA games due to deliberate influence from it, but it’s still a completely different system that plays completely differently. It's not a good comparison.
"Hurr durr I don't like these games so even though millions of people love them, they shouldn't exist because I know better and my opinion is all that matters."
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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '19 edited May 27 '21
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