PF vs. 3.5e: its improvements, its fuck-ups

After several years of D&D 3.5e - and having quite a lot of fun, thanks for asking - our group moved on to Pathfinder, and for the most part we've found it to compare itself favorably to its predecessor. It appears to have many improvements to be easily seen: martial classes get to have a bunch of new class abilities and improvements, consolidated skills and vastly superior trained skill system, easier combat maneuvers, and such. It's hard to see how it could be worse than its predecessor in any way, but following the related Veeky Forums discussions, that does seem to be the case.

Could you sum up the things 3.5e managed better than PF does, and perhaps how you would have improved them instead or how you would still maintain them in your PF game?

Disclaimer: We're all fully aware of the numerous faults of both systems and occasionally play other things. We have, in fact, tried to not play D&D, before anyone asks.

It's not that 3.5 did anything distinctly better, it's that for all its improvements PF didn't really fix any of the core problems with the system. It's a coat of paint and a weak set of houserules, nothing more.

Cool shit classes can do. 3.5 only actually had a few years of innovation, they spent 2000-2005 being idiots and refusing to learn, then eventually wised up and started bringing out stuff like the binder, book of nine swords, dragonfire adept - even the shit they did badly like incarnum had huge potential.

The only advantage I can think of for 3.5 is the absolutely huge amount of books so there's tons of content to find exactly what you want. On the other hand that's a DM's nightmare because it means telling players they can't use every splatbook.

And 3.5 is compatible with PF anyway so even if you have a favorite class or spell or whatever you can always port it over.

PF is basically 3.5 with an extra dash of pandering to trannies and faggots. The mechanical differences are negligible, and PF's entire identity is based on said pandering to trannies and faggots.

But the best thing about PF is its Goblins.

>A tiny amount of content aimed at diversity and representation makes me unreasonably angry

But user they're recognizing people who aren't exactly like me in every way! Baawwwww

>Wasting ink on people who amount to at best 5% of the population in some cases and 1% in others.
>This, when less than 1% of a population in a standard D&D setting ever has the potential or insanity to become adventurers in the first place, let alone survive long enough

It's just pandering for the sake of pandering.

Because pandering to straight white males is so much better, amirite?

I'm a straight white male, and I don't mind sharing. Why should you?

And I'm a faggot who hates being pandered to with special snowflake "Look how diverse we are!" characters whose sexuality becomes their defining characteristic.
I just want to crawl dungeons and slay monsters, not play identity politics.

I'm not a straight white male and I find it to be condescending, honestly. It smacks of fetishism. The fact you had to identify yourself as such just puts a finer point on this: you think of minorities as cute little pets or small, stupid creatures that need to be constantly catered to and reminded of how special and fragile they are. It's the soft bigotry of lower expectations.

>we shouldn't pander to minorities who stand out
>in a game I'm explicitly saying is about being a minority and standing out

maybe you want to rethink your argument there...

Combat maneuvers, for one. While consolidated, PF's CMB vs CMD math is skewed, and you'll be able to at best be passable in one combat maneuver type, and most of which have heavy limitations of when they can be used. Dirty Trick is basically the best one because it's the one that doesn't have actual restrictions or target-specific penalties on useability.

This too. OTOH, you can find 3pp stuff for pathfinder that adapts most of the unique splat classes. Psionics got ported and got a bunch more content, Path of War adapts BoNS, Avowed is basically DFA+Warlock, Akasha ported in and mostly fixed Incarnum, etc etc.

Is this 2008?

If so what about this edition?

Alternatively, it's pure egalitarianism. RPG's have been pandering to me for decades. If they're pandering to you too, I don't see what there is to bitch about it.

But that's not about the content, that's just about bad characters. If the most important thing about a character is their race/gender/sexuality, they're a shitty fucking character. That isn't an argument against representation.

To be honest, if I were out there in a fantasy land and my entire job description was going out there in dungeons and putting my life in danger every day, for the sake of gold and glory and saving the world, the issue of whether I'm a man or a woman inside would be something that would never occur to me at all, as I'd have way bigger problems to worry about.

It's a pretty first world problem, in that only first-worldlers are well enough off to start thinking of such things. Your average D&D setting, and its heroes, are pretty damn far off from first world.

Um, dude different cultures have had ideas about gender long before "muh first wolrd problems"

And if you were adventuring what do you think you're doing most of the time? Mostly you're wandering to the next town/dungeon/etc, not fighting. Sure in games we abstract that but when you're spending days or weeks on the road you have some time to think about shit

I just recently decided to start running this on a lark and I find I actually enjoy it more than PF, 3.5 or 5th Edition.

I'm more of an OSR grognard, but there's a lot of stuff in 4th Edition that makes sense:

>every class gains a set amount of hitpoints, making it so that no tank will be squishier than the wizard they're supposed to meatshield for
>high level monsters can perform different attacks on different initiative counts, making them into actual threats to parties
>minions exist, allowing for a threat that doesn't tilt the balance in favor of the enemy

4th had some great ideas. It's just a shame that attack/skill bonuses still outstrip the d20 roll and that magic items/treasure are assumed at set levels.

The Inherent Bonuses rule helps with that last one, but you're right in that it's an annoying trait of the system. There are so many weird and interesting magic items that the necessary progression treadmill is kind of a pain to keep up with.

4th edition has a lot of stuff to love, in hindsight.

What is Automatic Bonus Progression and Innate Item Bonuses.

And despite what 4urries say, quite a bit to hate too.

Yeah, I'm using the Inherent Bonuses rule since I'm running the Dark Sun campaign and the idea of magic items just lying around everywhere is immersion breaking in comparison to the setting

>And despite what 4urries say, quite a bit to hate too.
True. But it did try something different than 3.PF and 5e did, and probably manages its mission statement (a tactical fantasy combat simulator) better than those games do theirs (an all-around fantasy RPG).

Despite liking 4e, my biggest issues are rituals and non-combat utility powers.

There should be a whole, dedicated slot for non-combat powers to prevent you choosing between combat potential and fluff stuff, and Rituals should only cost gold for permanent effects. I'd make all non-permanent rituals cost surges instead, giving them a real cost without making it a potential waste of resources.

For rituals I just handed out allotments of "Ritual Materials" that weren't residuum to allow ritual use at a level I found appropriate. When my players realized what was happening they started using rituals quite often and were often still in a position of wanting to use them more, but having to weigh the value of the resources. In a sense it was like a drug dealer giving the first hit for free, after that they were always on the look out for ritual materials.

Pathfinder has kitsune.

3.5 doesn't.

How can 3.5 compete?

Pathfinder doesn't have kitsune. It has weird furries it calls kitsune for some reason. That most people reflavour them doesn't stop the default PF version being shitty and dumb.

>Wasting ink
It's a fucking fantasy role-playing game.

It's just pandering in general, Pathfinder comes out with tons of stuff that just panders to everyone. Furries, weeaboos, gay people, trans people, and whatever lowest common denominator that will get people to play the game. Just look at the main setting, Golarion, which is just "Let's put every single trope and archetype into one setting with little cohesion"

If I want to play a gay character, I don't want to be pandered to. I just want to play him as a normal dude who just happens to also be gay. Same with trans characters, same with furry characters, etc etc...

Gays, trans, furries etc are not normal people. Trans people for example are so defined by their sexuality it causes severe emotional distress, motivates them into costly reassignment surgeries and increases suicude rates

None of that even matters though, I've played D&D with tons of different people. Most of the time someone who's trans will just play a girl character, a furry will play a catfolk or gnoll, a gay dude will play a barbarian or bard (if you catch my drift), and it's totally fine cause it still sticks to the theme of the game, everyone can come together to raid dungeons and drink ale.

Pathfinder annoys me because they think they have to pander to all these demographics, they think they HAVE to include stuff for trans characters, for furries, for weeaboos, etc. Which just takes away any focus the book wants to have.

It's not
>"Trans people exist"
It's
>"Trans people exist and even through there's no advantage or disadvantage when choosing a gender, we're going to list out how your special character can be trans too!"

Like how the iconic characters (the characters that appear all over the books) are described in the comic line as "All being bi unless otherwise specified" because they just want to pander to every demographic they can. They can't write a character who happens to also be bi, they have to make all characters bi so they can hit every demographic they can with how "progressive" they are.

>And despite what 4urries say, quite a bit to hate too.

I've found that, ironically, 4e fans tend to bring up the most actual complaints about the system, like non-hybrid multiclassing being mostly garbage, monster math being wonky until MM3, and some classes being very anemic when it comes to support like Runepriests.

Which is always weird that the people who hate it just bring up meme complaints and blatant lies when there's legitimate complaints about it.

I'm curious and admittedly underinformed, what does Pathfinder do that panders to trans people?

>Like how the iconic characters (the characters that appear all over the books) are described in the comic line as "All being bi unless otherwise specified"

That's a pretty blatant misrepresentation of their statement about the iconics, user. That bit you're citing came from a question about their adventure paths, where a GM asked what to do if one of his players was interested in romancing a character whose sexuality wouldn't normally allow it--to which they responded "It's your game, you're not obligated to stick to the sexualities we give the characters. If it helps, assume they're all bi."

> it causes severe emotional distress,

That couldn't have anything to do with hordes of cunts constantly verbally berating them, in this case over a one line of a text in a book that dates I mention they might exist and in other cases literally violently attacking and murdering them.

Not him and not sure how exactly they pander, but mostly what I know is that magical gender switching isn't just easy, but practically commonplace enough for it to be nothing special, yet everyone still treats it like a big deal.

Though it might be balanced out by a lot of them seeming to have brain damage, like the one Paladin in the FUCK DEMONS world that sold a Holy Avenger to buy a potion of gender change that would cost pocket change at the level you can get a fucking Holy Avenger.

PF
All in one page
3.5e
Lmao start download all the splats!


Guess which one is better buddy.

That's not how gender dysphoria works.

I think several of their iconics have lgbtbbq backgrounds. I know at the very least there's a transdwarf

T. Paizo shill

Debatable when coupled with the desire for self mutilation