Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Issues with Pathfinder/3.x

Greater/Improved/Better/More/Lesser/Superior You Name It
I really hate how everything in Pathfinder/3.x scales by adding various words to the title. For criminies sake just name the ability Weapon Focus 1, Weapon Focus 2, Invisibilty 1, Invisibility 2, etc.

Combat Feats/General Feats
I wish there were just "Feats".

Saving Throws
3 Saving Throws is too few. I really like how Castles & Crusades does saving throws.

The Development Method
  1. I may be completely wrong, but my perspective says that Pathfinder was basically completely developed by Jason with a bit of input from a few people. I would have preferred a much, much, more team-based development phase.
  2. The "Open" Playtest - While I applaud the idea my general opinion is that it was a cluster-bleep. X-thousands of people randomly playing with no focus or direction and then randomly posting their half-ass opinions on dozens of forum threads that the developers (ie Jason) had to keep track of somehow. What a mess. That should have been MUCH more organized with some much more "directed" or "organized" testing groups.
  3. Going through X amount of playtesting in Beta and then randomly coming up with stuff for final that had never even been quasi-tested. Who adds new features between the last test phase and the final production phase that get no testing at all?
  4. Errata and Editing... This is just a side-effect of the "industry" but there were X-thousands of people beta testing the product. Why not identify a couple hundred specialty groups who sign NDA's and help find typos or errors? Artifice domain does not grant Arcane Mark yet multiple things in the domain depend on Arcane Mark? WTF?
  5. The Fans... OMG. Now considering I started and am the primary driving force behind perhaps the largest non-Paizo rules source site, and considering that I am actually a fan, I have to say that there are some real psychos out there sucking down the kool-aid like crazy.  To these people Pathfinder is a literary artifact on the level of the United States Constitution or a work of art on the level of a Michelangelo. People need to relax a little.
Ok that may all sound harsh, but consider it comes from someone who plays in a Pathfinder campaign every other weekend and can't wait for the next session. Not to mention, I ran a Pathfinder Beta campaign with characters in the low-teens levels so I have some experience with it and do like many (most) of the changes.

No comments:

Post a Comment