I apologize beforehand for this thread, but what is wrong with these Anti-3.5/PF trolls?

Well, to be fair, the value of the Actor and Observant feats change depending on who your GM is.

Also Moon Druids do control the meta for the first five levels, but definitely taper off, which may or may not be an issue. They do get silly by 18th level though, but by that time Everyone is prett6 damn strong.

Well, the sheer breadth of content is worth noting. Even restricting classes to tier 3/4 and thoroughly vetting character options like feats and items, you still end up with a quantity of usable content far in excess of any printed system.

This applies to settings and adventure modules too, in terms of support for running the game in terms of pure content 3.PF is unsurpassed.

It also has some excellently written books with truly great ideas. The Tome of Battle/Path of War books in particular are fucking fantastic, managing to fix some key issues in the system and make Martial characters actually interesting and fun to play.

Its class system does a good job of making mechanically distinct characters with their own identity in how they function within the system?

Actually, that keys into a larger point, that the huge number of available subsystems make character distinction very significant, letting different people interact with the system in very different ways, even if you do filter out the top and bottom ends of the power curve.

That might not be ten, but that's six or seven strengths of 3.PF, even if more don't immediately spring to mind. And my previous post still applies.

>If people attacking it triggers you enough

But son, you are the triggersed.

It's not politics. It's just a game. A popular game, but that's it.

To say "3.PF is okay" isn't something inflammatory to anyone except for these trolls. For most people, they recognize that while it's got flaws and they might prefer other games, there's a lot of good material in the system. Some advice might be needed to navigate it, but the same can be said about any large system. Calling it okay should hardly be the equivalent of trying to push politics here.

To treat a popular traditional game as an inflammatory topic just because of a few trolls is simply giving the trolls what they want.

Maybe stop getting triggered by other people's fucking opinions. Of course people are going to be more likely to bring up the percieved flaws of a well known system over Ars Magica or whatever.

>why do people only seem to criticize Islam and Christianity on the innernet????
Learn to think in more than one step you dipshit.

That's not ten, but it's at least an effort.

>And my previous post still applies.
But, your assertion that it is a "bad game" is diminished, and you seem to be able to recognize that one-sided criticism of the system isn't the whole picture of it, the central thesis of the argument and one of the many criticisms against these trolls.

You are free to dislike a system as much as you want. But, to be trying to stop people from discussing the system beyond its flaws is another matter entirely, and what these trolls seem to be quite insistent upon.

>2017
>playing Pathfinder

>To say "3.PF is okay" isn't something inflammatory to anyone except for these trolls.

How about "the people who talk shit about 3.PF are a small cabal of trolls who's complaints are exaggerated or imagined, how dare they come onto a forum about discussing traditional games and discuss the most popular traditional game of all?" Would that be inflammatory?

Ok, you want to know the real reason? Veeky Forums needs Scapegoats. It's something that 5e and GURPS players can come to and say "While I hate you, your system, and everything you stand for, I can at least congratulate you on not playing Pathfinder."

The Kitsune poster on /pfg/ is one of the trolls. He hates the system enough to hijack the OP, post his shitty waifu, and give The thread the current rep it has.

You'll note that none of the strengths I cited rely on the core systems of the game. This is because those systems are bad.

That good things were done with them doesn't stop them being bad.

I like 3.5, 4e, and 5e.
I don't know where to sit at the edition warroom

But user, those stats show that pathfinder is growing, just not nearly as quickly as 5e. Why would you post that, unless you're trying to push some sort of agenda like a faggot.

You're not a faggot, are you?

Oh man, how do I get a slice of this victim complex?

It's not as bad as you make it out to be, and every system gets trolls.

>This applies to settings and adventure modules too, in terms of support for running the game in terms of pure content 3.PF is unsurpassed.
I'd say the OSR blogosphere is very much competition in terms of amount of content. There's an insane amount of material for free, so many different hacks and homebrews, but all vaguely compatible.
>The Tome of Battle/Path of War books in particular are fucking fantastic, managing to fix some key issues in the system
Shouldn't have needed to be fixed, though.

Oh, absolutely. None of those strengths stop 3.PF sucking, I was just countering the statement that 3.PF 'trolls' can't say anything good about the system.

5e is fine.(boring at times, but fine) 4e is the red-haired middle child who did nothing wrong(or anything right), and 3.5 is at least not Pathfinder.

Nobody hates on TSR D&D because none of us would rather admit we're part of the younger generation, and getting reprimanded by our seniors.

The overall count is up because the sample size is larger. The total player and game share of 3.PF is down overall, by an amount of about 2% share each quarter about Q1 2015. Note the percentages.

It's like saying "We asked 500 people and only 20 play our game. But then later we asked 1000 people and 25 play our game. That means our game is growing!"

>"Use Rope"

Kek.

Pathfinder is okay, but given an equal choice between 3.5 and Pf its 3.5 every day. I also played in a Brown Box one shot and had a great time, so I guess the only thing I haven't experienced in the DnD extended family is 2e.

Among all choices of system I'd pick 5e as my favorite, but I'll enjoy any of them.

Alright, name ten good things about the core systems if you want to be taken seriously then. Sheesh. If you really just want to be called out for being a troll, don't do a song and dance to pretend you aren't one.

>Nobody hates on TSR D&D because none of us would rather admit we're part of the younger generation, and getting reprimanded by our seniors.

I've been known to hate on it. It grew on me, but it was a slow process. There's a bunch of shit present in it that I still think is bloody retarded.

That I can't do. The core systems just aren't very good.

I mean, I guess HP based combat works okay if you focus exclusively on it, but the huge number of things which completely ignore and obviate it make it kinda irrelevant.

AC is... A decent simplification? But again, in so many cases it becomes irrelevant to the actual combat system you can't really call it strong.

Skills are... Okay? If you're not in a situation where magic is making most of them irrelevant or some characters are completely screwed through having nowhere near enough skill points.

What else... I guess positioning is okay? Not that it matters for most magic, but if you're playing the combat dumb it matters and the AoO rules do a decent job of rewarding clever positioning, more with feat support. Again still irrelevant compared to most things people who aren't restricted to hitting people in the face can do, but worth mentioning.

There's a good amount of variety in combat actions? Even if most of them are worthless without feat investment and even with feat investment are worse than spells.

The CR system is a good idea? Even if it's incredibly broken and the CR of an encounter has no actual relation to its actual difficulty, the concept was sound and I guess that it paved the way for better versions in future games is a plus?

I'm kinda struggling here, as might be obvious.

>you can't criticize the system unless you like it

Fucking hell, what kind of a bubble do you live in? People like you are the reason Paizo can't design their way out of a wet paper bag.

Basically, what you've got here is simple. You've spent too long doing nothing but collecting criticisms, that you can't even produce a simple list of ten good things about the cores system.

It sounds like rather than trying to educate other people on the system, you're better off being educated yourself first.

As an expert, could you provide ten good things about D&D's core systems? Maybe it would help?

Of course, you haven't considered the alternative: you're wrong, and the core system just isn't that good.

That is absolutely insane reasoning.
NAME 10 REASONS THIS PILE OF DOG POO TASTES NICE. YOU CAN'T? GUESS YOU ARE JUST UNEDUCATED

I apologize beforehand for this post, but what is wrong with these Anti-dog poo trolls?

They're like rabid dogs. You can't even mention the poo without them flocking to it to try and shut down any discussion about it. Rather than discussing the actual turd, all they want to do is drop their copypasta lists of exaggerated flaws they've gathered over the years, to pretend that dog poo has no merits and the only thing worth talking about are its problems.

It's not a healthy mindset, because it's clearly board politics at play, and that's something we should not be encouraging. I understand that dog poo is an old type of poo, but trying to scare everyone away from talking about it with rampant shitposting, no matter how much you personally think it's justified or how cleverly you think you are hiding your intentions, is neither fair to the people who want to discuss the poo nor productive towards any end goal.

There's this idea that if people can scare people away from dog poo that they will fall in love with other types of poo, and while it's nice to encourage people to try other poos, it shouldn't be done at the expense of honest discussion and evaluation of a poo. This demonizing of dog turds for being popular or for having dedicated fans has become a rather unfunny joke, with some of these trolls willfully deluding themselves into believing that the only people who still like dog poo are all somehow mentally deranged.

It's a shame that these trolls have a toehold on Veeky Forums, likely because we are one of the few sites that allow enough freedom for people to shitpost in the manner that they do, but it's really gotten out of hand, with people actually hesitating to discuss the poo because they know they're going to be triggering a small group of very angry, very dedicated trolls that can't tolerate people enjoying a game they aren't fond of.

And thus a copypasta is born.

eegh, talk about moving the goalpost

Are you telling me that you honestly, 100%, cannot think of ten things that aren't back-handed compliments?

Honestly?
If so, what else can be said about you other than that you are a troll?

But we're not talking about dog poo, you troll.

You're talking about 3.x so you yeah, you're talking about dog poo.

In response to someone moving the goal post?
It's perfectly appropriate.

Watch how "It's a bad system" switched to "It's a bad core system." The question simply followed because the essential point remained unchanged.

>the troll gives up pretending

Thank you for helping prove a point.

But we are talking about picking completely arbitrary criteria that don't make sense to anyone except you

Nope. The point remains unchanged. 3.PF is a bad system. This affects both the core system and the available content. If you'll note, even the post pointing out positives of the content acknowledges the implicit problem, that a significant amount of the content built upon the flawed core is garbage.

Also, it's interesting that you're not actually able to provide ten strengths of the core system yourself, despite it being requested. Surely you're able to do it, if you're going to discredit someone elses argument due to their inability to do so.

>Are you telling me that you honestly, 100%, cannot think of ten things that aren't back-handed compliments?

I'm not him, and no, not really. Nothing that's unique to Pathfinder and not done better by other D&D derivatives.

In my view, literally the only thing Pathfinder has going for it is the fact that Paizo squats out reams of crap for it. Otherwise, play an OSR game, play Trailblazer (if you just have to be running 3.5), play Fantasycraft, play 5th edition, hell just run 3.5, but don't fucking accept that garbage as a finished product.

Pathfinder is popular because it's popular (there's a feedback loop that has sustained it thus far, and is now failing), it's popular because 3.5 was popular, and 3.5 was popular because it entered the market at the right time and had a permissive enough license that fucking everyone and their dog made stuff for it. It is however, not popular due to its merits as a system.

Name ten good things about your shit system, faggot

I'm surprised this yo-yo hasn't rolled out the old DeviantArt chestnut of "Let's see you make something better."

I'm sorry, but communication has broken down. I'm quoting your post even though I will not bother to read it solely because I want you to understand that no, I do not care to read more of your bizarre attempts to justify your silly trolling, when it's clear that's all you're here to do. I know you don't understand the points I presented to you, or that you will pretend that you don't, but I'm not here to indulge you any further.

You want people to play your game and take you seriously? I'm sorry, but if you're just a troll, I'm done with you.

I leave this post open to all your upset rants and attempts to ridicule me, in hopes of salvaging your ego as well as a hope to get a response out of me.

The OP has left the building because he knows he's lost and the cognitive dissonance is too much for his lizard brain

So you can't provide ten strengths about the core system of the game you claim to champion? Despite demanding it from others, and declaring it as a basis for dismissing their argument?

That's not what he said at all. Everything good about 3.PF is immaterial because it's built upon a broken foundation. Pathfinder's greatest virtue is the staggering amount of content available for it, but that content is hobbled by it's reliance on the poorly balanced conflict resolution mechanics, and is better used by hacking it into other systems. That I regularly rob the PFSRD for content for my other games is not something I'd consider a virtue of Pathfinder.

I'm also waiting to hear those ten strengths.

Aren't you trying to create bait, yourself?

How is he shitposting when he actually put forward completely valid points?
What the actual fuck?

I apologize beforehand for this thread, but what is wrong with these Anti-X trolls?

They're like rabid dogs. You can't even mention the system without them flocking to it to try and shut down any discussion about it. Rather than discussing the actual game, all they want to do is drop their copypasta lists of exaggerated flaws they've gathered over the years, to pretend that the system has no merits and the only thing worth talking about are its problems.

It's not a healthy mindset, because it's clearly board politics at play, and that's something we should not be encouraging. I understand that X is an old system, but trying to scare everyone away from talking about it with rampant shitposting, no matter how much you personally think it's justified or how cleverly you think you are hiding your intentions, is neither fair to the people who want to discuss the game nor productive towards any end goal.

There's this idea that if people can scare people away from X that they will fall in love with other systems, and while it's nice to encourage people to try other games, it shouldn't be done at the expense of honest discussion and evaluation of a system. This demonizing of X for being popular or for having dedicated fans has become a rather unfunny joke, with some of these trolls willfully deluding themselves into believing that the only people who still play that system are all somehow mentally deranged.

It's a shame that these trolls have a toehold on Veeky Forums, likely because we are one of the few sites that allow enough freedom for people to shitpost in the manner that they do, but it's really gotten out of hand, with people actually hesitating to discuss the game because they know they're going to be triggering a small group of very angry, very dedicated trolls that can't tolerate people enjoying a game they aren't fond of.

Because when you're so invested in something you see all criticism of it as a form of personal attack, it becomes impossible for critique to be anything other than shitposting. This isn't exclusive to 3.PF. It's just more common.

Then you should take your head out of your arse, step back and try to look at it objectively. Otherwise, you just sound like another shitposter with no idea of what you're blathering about and the point you're trying to make becomes irrelevant.

>White knighting twenty year old gaming systems
>Can't even stay in his own general thread that never suffers from people barging in and saying it's a bad system

>Thief have nothing to contribute to the party as a whole.

Sneak Attack gives the Rogue in a party a very solid role that even Clerics can have difficulties using. Just get some flasks of Acid or Alchemist Fire, Two-Weapon Fighting and use the many, many ways to deny Dex to AC. Boom. You're doing a steady stream of damage and you just need grave and golem strike wands to keep you solid during encounters with those types of enemies.

3.5 is a decent game to play. Better than any other DnD edition to be honest.

Except HP damage is irrelevant in D&D 3.PF

>doesn't know what "irrelevant
means

That's like a second grade vocabulary word. You have no excuse for misusing it.

It's not irrelevant whenever you could just straight up one shot a motherfucker with damn near guaranteed accuracy.

Rogue are the sole martial class that stays competitive with the the caster characters. Due to their ability to disarm traps, stealth capabilities and high levels of damage. Sometimes you just need to do HP damage to a motherfucker.

>Rogue are the sole martial class that stays competitive with the the caster characters.
Are you making things up again, user?

Any fucker could make an ubercharger that one shots things with a barbarian. However, those tend to be useless outside of combat, while a rogue can use their skills like UMB and Hide and Move Silently to contribute to the party.

3.PF is fine (not great IMO, but enjoyable) if you have a competent GM.
Most GMs at least kind of suck though, so most 3.PF games suck. And because the nature of how spell effects are expressed and delineated, they suffer much less for a GM's incompetence than attack-based or skill-based abilities. There are ultimately less ways a spellcaster can fail over the course of a campaign's execution.
If those crappy GMs tried more games, they'd probably have a much broader understanding of how and when to use certain rules or mechanics, and the quality of the average 3.5/PF campaigns would improve.

The single biggest problem most GMs have with d20-based systems: calling for too many skill checks. That's gambling against the character's competency, especially if it's an important or challenging check, and that can often be be bypassed by a spell that has an inconsequential cost. Too many checks will effectively erode the skillful expert's competency floor.
In fact, this is part of why 4e went to static defenses instead of saving throws: if you've got a good static value, you've got a good static value. Stuff like that ultimately 'feels' like your character is more assured in their positive qualities.

TL;DR: Bad GMs assume characters have no competency floor, and that's where a hefty chunk of caster primacy comes from.

im still not seeing 10 reasons pathfinder isnt shit, OP.

You do it, then. Name 10 good things. Educate us.

what a stupid thread

All it proves is they're being a dick. Doesn't prove jack about the merits of the system.

Needing 10 reasons is arbitrary, but if you want to defend it you should probably offer a defense instead of just *implying* that their attacks are invalid.

The best thing to come out of this thread.

I don't rollplay enough or know enough to actually participate in the discussion, but that guy's post is full of valid arguments.

If anything your post is just confirming his points about the fanbase being insecure to an outsider like me.

>3.5 is a decent game to play. Better than any other DnD edition to be honest.
>alternative facts

and do no damage at all to anything immune to sneak attacks, which is most things at higher levels

Because it caused the entire game to be dumbed down to the point where any deviance from the autism gets you nothing but scorn. All imagination and independent thought was banned, and exploiting loopholes in the rules was encouraged.

Go onto a site and make a base class with five levels, and watch people have massive fucking meltdowns because it doesn't have 20 levels in it.

Or say that you ruled that no matter how many feats someone has, that they cannot avoid a room-wide crushing-ceiling trap when they are unable to leave the room and watch the meltdown.

Or say that you punished a player for taking flaws or traits that had literally no consequences for his character, mechanically or narratively, and watch the rule lawyers crawl out of the woodwork and scream about how what they did was legal.

Or mention a certain CR2 quasit witch who is invisible and has a returning dagger and watch the price of salt drop like the quality of the entire internet as people with no ability to think straight shit their pants over how it's literally impossible without having to think.

Or tell people that you reward players for roleplaying and watch the rawscum throw feces at you while claiming that you are punishing people because they're in "a shell".

d20 dumbed down and destroyed the game to where its effects are being felt a decade after the source went out of print. Because of its extensive damage, it has to be shouted down and discouraged. This isn't a case of "nurutu is bad" upset, this is a case of "This caused measurable damage to the quality of traditional gaming".

I fail to see how "exploiting loopholes in the rules was encouraged" is a bad thing

It fosters critical thought and insight, and makes the optimization game all the more interesting

Don't get me wrong here, I am by no means saying that 3.PF is a good game, but you're trying to say that it's greatest strength is a weakness. Then complaining about people who play 3.PF the way it was meant to be played, as a character building exercise, as if they're doing something horribly wrong

That's actually easy to get around.

But then, so is getting UMD and the ability to deal with traps on basically anyone (yes, even uber chargers if they give up some damage).

Anyone knows why we got D&D4E and 5E ever since PF came out, but we haven't gotten a PF2?

Because 4e was built around the idea of not being 3.5, and PF was built around being 3.5

Then Mike Mearls came in and tried to turn 4e into 3.5, failed, and made 5e instead, so he too could make 3.5. But PF has been 3.5 all along, so they saw no reason to change

So if I join your game it would be okay to make a billion quarterstaffs as a free action and carry about a trillion candles without weight encumbrance? Or to play a frenzied berserker, wind up with negative HP in the triple digits, and have someone stick my head underwater to bring me up to zero hitpoints? Or to utterly annihilate the game balance by using a few low-level spells to wind up with infinite amounts of money from selling daggers? Or to cause three people to take infinite damage by using a psionic power that causes damage to also be inflicted on another person, one of which is the aforementioned frenzied berserker who is now at negative infinity hitpoints and still alive long enough for me to drown him back to zero hitpoints?

Well, no

I'm not stupid enough to RUN games of 3.5 or PF. I just build characters for it with friends

Because brainstorming up stupid shit the rules let you do in 3.5 is much, much more fun than playing the game ever can be

Don't forget selling a party member a 10gp diamond for thousands of gp and using it to raise the dead.

They aren't wrong, you're just unwilling to actually consider that they might be right and instead try to turn everything into a dumbass popularity contest as if that changes a game's mechanics.

After the debacle that was 4e this is WotC's last chance with D&D. Hasbro does not fuck around about properties that are no delivering on the money.

They want to murder 3.5/PF support because 5e dies in another year or so if it's not meeting Hasbro targets.

5e is safe. The game has a fraction of a budget 4e had, but in exchange, the expected numbers are also smaller; instead, it is a vehicle for complimentary materials, such as games, movies, comics, toys, etc. Risk minimized, gains maximized.

Because it's a shit game

It's based on almost 20 years old core that wasn't even good when new
Then it overcomplicated it with bloating pointless shit over it through the years
Then it turned it up to eleven
It's got shit art seriously fuck you wayne reynolds
It's got shitheaded devs another fuck you to another reynolds
It's got shittiest community
It appeals mostly to fucktards whose main interest is worship of pointless numbercrunching and competing in knowledge of shitty, contrived jargon, because it's got very little more to offer.

Seriously, I don't even like D&D at all, but I'm so happy that 5E, which at least is decent system for this niche (even if it's not my niche) is around and slowly wrecks this steaming pile of toxic, cancerous crap.

Funny, that's how 4e alienated an entire fanbase.

And this makes 5e good? If anything 4e and 5e is even more guilty of these supposed crimes than PF could ever be.

You can't do any of this shit in PF

Because unlike WotC they're slowly rebuilding the system from the inside to make Tier 3 the sweet spot to play with by making tier 3 classes more common and more fun to play than tier 1 and tier 4. Which is how it should have been done in the first place, but WotC couldn't handle the time it takes to do such a thing.

t. Paizo employee

I think it was aimed not at PF, but 3.5

>4e with 10% the numbers of the other editions.

lol @ the fucking state of 4e and balancefags in general.

Not even remotely comparable.

Mate, as a fan of 4e, I'm just happy people are playing it at all

Can you prove OP's point any harder?
Or are you OP falseflagging?

In that case, I have no fucking idea why 5e fans on Veeky Forums are so fucking terrible. They are though. The fucking worst.

I came over to Veeky Forums tonight to specifically because I was wondering about the state of 5e and knew there would be a thread or two. And there were. I'm now committed to writing a new game system for the project I'm working on because I don't think PF is a good fit and 5e apparently causes some form of cancer that makes assholes grow tumors which are even bigger assholes and then they all shitpost about 5e everywhere.

Well, he could try saying things that aren't actually true.

Shitposting on the level that goes on related to 5e doesn't even register with me.

Also, I find picking a system for your game based on fans shitposting on a site dedicated to Manchurian cavepaintings weird, but homebrewing is good, so good luck!

>opinions

I don't think you understand what "actually true" actually means.

>hurr relativism