Why does Pathfinder suck? Why can't the developers design their way out of a paper bag?

The head is ok compared to his height, but one must also consider its relation to the shoulder width.

This is what a male character is supposed to look like.

>this is a social game not an MMO
yeah and as such i'd rather not have to spend all day feeling useless compared to some neckbeard who spent all day on the wiki finding out that the secret 'sneaking sneaker' prestige class from some out of print splatbook is objectively better than my standard rogue in every way. i get different people enjoy different things about RPGs but if you want to spend all day obsessively optimising character builds i literally don't understand why you wouldn't just play WoW instead.

>gurps
Build-a-Bear the game system. Never meshes together well and requires a massive amount of work on the part of the GM to effectively build the game system long before play.
>OWoD
but what if I don't want to play as a wizard/vampire/werewolf in [earth derivative]?
>Fantasycraft
strictly a refinement of 3.x, bulking out the rules in some places, and abandoning the Toolbox Ruleset benefits. Decent enough, grossly limiting. also would probably be one of those "shitty derivatives" you worry about
>Star Wars RPG
Oh shit, here we go with the shitty 3.5 derivatives again, better abandon that as well
>*** World/Monsterhearts etc
enjoyable rules light, but some people actually enjoy crunch, so it's not even targeting the same market
>WFRP
Mages still rule in utility and sheer killing potential, system breaks down at many points, anyone who complains about rocket tag in 3.5 will not be happy here
>Dark Heresy/Only War et all
Good systems but don't work for the sort of game you want to run if you're picking up D&D, also all the problems of WFRP
Shall we go on?
because most people don't do that. stop gaming at your FLGS and actually put in the effort to build a lasting group with good friends. I've DM'ed for the same group of people for almost a decade now. They quit giving a shit about optimizing after about 6 months, and now just make fun characters - because they know i'll build a game for them, not the other way around, and they know they don't have to worry about some retard coming in with a rage-lance-pounce-shocktrooper-leapattack-1000DPR monster with an INT of 4.

Wow, user didn't even list any of those. Someone's feeling particularly defensive today. I knew 5e had it's army of loyal DnDrone defenders, but I figured the Pathfinder ones had all died out by now.

The devs are designing an experience, not a game. Which is their way of saying that fluff takes priority over mechanics. Which in itself is an ok thing. Different priorities for different folks and all that. But when they go far enough to outright ban any mentioning of numbers in a gameplay mechanics test, it's pretty clear they really don't care about the game part.

New artwork is hideous. Wathever happened to the laughing elf artist?

LAZIEST BAIT THREAD THAT HAS EVER BEEN SEEN. ANYONE THAT *LEGITIMATELY* BITES THIS BAIT SHOULD KILL THEMSELVES.

Dat gimp hand

Because it isn't Iron Kingdoms. Only spergs play 3.5 or its derivatives. There are much more efficient ways to play the game. It doesn't play gamey enough to be a great game, but the amount of gameyness to it oftentimes ruins the experience for roleplayers. It's primary advantage is having D&D/Fantasy tropes to pillage and catering to old people who don't want to learn new ways of doing things.

ok but why pathfinder and not an actually good D&D edition/derivative such as 5th for a more modern game or a B/X clone or something like DCC for something a bit more challenging?
pathfinder just seems like an unwieldy mess and i just dont get why anyone would play it.

>Look up Iron Kingdoms
>"It is a land like no other, a place where steam power and gunpowder meet sword and sorcery."
>Steampunk
>Guns

Fucking end me. I just wana do basic fantasy stuff in a system that doesn't spend all it's time sucking off caster dick.

>missing the point this fucking hard

Top tier wew-juice, boyo. I actually did a facepalm in dedication to your naivete.

>Implying 5e actually fixed any of 3.5's huge problems instead of just hiding them in obscene levels of dumb-down.

Sorry, caster supremacy is still there. HP Bloat is still there, martial uselessness is still there, the skill system somehow got WORSE from 3.5, and the game overall is still a kitchen sink setting full of bullshit like Dragonborn and Tabaxi that people will scream "IT'S PART OF THE GAME!" when you try to ban or not include in your sessions.

whats 'the point' then

None. "Missing the point" and "moving the goalposts" have become the new zero-effort fallbacks for faggots who have been proven to be wrong.

5e is significantly better than 3.x for the advantage system alone, generally cutting down on the vast amounts of unnecessary options, and somewhat reducing the power levels of characters, including casters. but yes, it didn't go far enough on any of these fronts, which is why i play DCC instead

Well, I suggested Iron Kingdoms more for the gameplay than anything. You could completely do a game without magic users and you wouldn't be missing much. It's probably considered a medium-magic fantasy setting if you take the more grounded paths. Not much you can do about guns, except that they generally suck and there are lots of ways to beat them out in melee just due to the game mechanics.

I guess the trouble is that I am not really sure what basic fantasy stuff is meant to be. I consider something like the LOTR setting pretty basic fantasy, but I remember playing that RPG as being a completely forgettable experience.

Nope. I'm just intelligent and wise enough realize that no matter how much evidence and hard fact I throw at you idiots, or how many of your baseless non-arguments I shoot down with plain logic--you will NEVER be enlightened or see any opinion as valid except your own. Also, this is clearly a bait thread. I came here solely to make you all feel bad about yourselfs for being this easy to fool. Fucking LOLE. You must be newfags.

runequest/mythras? old school D&D and retroclones and similar is also a lot better than new school because casters are incredibly fragile and hard to get to higher levels.

>Nope. I'm just intelligent and wise enough realize that no matter how much evidence and hard fact I throw at you idiots, or how many of your baseless non-arguments I shoot down with plain logic--you will NEVER be enlightened or see any opinion as valid except your own. Also, this is clearly a bait thread. I came here solely to make you all feel bad about yourselfs for being this easy to fool. Fucking LOLE. You must be newfags.

>the game overall is still a kitchen sink setting full of bullshit like Dragonborn and Tabaxi that people will scream "IT'S PART OF THE GAME!" when you try to ban or not include in your sessions.

I know it will never happen, but I truly would be interested to see D&D putting out a set of "setting cores" or something that just were altering the game rules partially in some places and massively in others including lists of restricted content and the like, just so each setting that is supposed to feel different, plays different as well.

Fragility never has and never will be a good balance to casters having more options than every other class. Especially when it can mitigated by simply playing smart/careful.

it boggles the mind that 5e only releases glossy 200 page hardback books and hasn't done a single campaign setting yet.

Fantasy age

It intentionally includes trap options. In other word, the design is intentionally retarded.

>”a rules mechanic for the character idea they had. ”
”Fights with two whips” is not a character idea any more than ”wears blue clothes” is.

First you say there’s no need for balance, then you finish by talking about the need to design balanced and challenging encounters. Absolute dumbfuckery.

Fragility isn't good because by the nature of something being a glass cannon, it isn't fun to get hit or lose. The fun is in avoiding that and doing lots of damage. It isn't like playing a fighter or something where you get an eye torn out and keep fighting and its fun because you are tough as nails.

Also magic has way too much utility in D&D/Pathfinder. That's probably the most persistent issue across the games in terms of magic/magic item bloat. You have to keep in mind that for most of the time these peoples business strategy is make and sell books. They have a direct financial incentive to spam more spellbooks and supplementals.

Pathfinder devs coast on nostalgia. They need to keep making excuses why they don't change/improve the game in any significant way to keep doing that.

Because Pathfinder is a 3.5 homebrew that's based off of the creator's personal bias on what went wrong, rather than being a homebrew that actually fixes the problems that plagued 3.5.

Just like every other hack who decides to draw up homebrew for D&D, which is why me and my group generally veto any and all homebrew we come across unless it's actually balanced and improves the issues with the game (like Epic 6 and using the tier system).

this has to be a troll

No, I'm saying that caster supremacy is largely a result of DMs focusing only on challenging the martials.

>DMs focusing only on challenging the martials.
In other words... not providing encounter balance?

No. Encounter balance implies that each encounter should challenge everyone equally, or that there should be encounters which challenge individually, but a balanced spread of them. Challenging martials is mostly about HP and attacks, physical terrain etc, challenging casters is mostly about what has been done previously. Is the area under a Forbiddance, a Halaster's Teleport Cage, a Dimmension Lock. Are the enemies blind, are they deathward, etc. if you look at a setting like the Tippyverse, this is taken into account; rings of protection from evil are common, etc. making a mage's job hard depends more on the background setting than anything else, and is easily dealt with by any DM that cares to do so

tl;dr

But fucking kys for defending the PF mindset you goblingfucker

>Why can't the developers design their way out of a paper bag?
Because it's too late now. It's the core book that needs sweeping changes.

Because Wayne Reynolds is sadly a prolific fantasy artist. The latter books where he doesn't bring much artwork are actually decent.

>this is a social game not an MMO
Aren't MMOs social games, too? It's about having a lot of people work together. Especially when 4e came around WoW hadn't gone full casual yet

>350 replies and 240 images later

>4rrys still crying over long-dead system whilst Pathfinder is still going strong

3e spawned quite a lot of retroclones, of which Pathfinder is only the biggest. 4e has what, nothing?

4rries should get rekt.

>People shit on 3.PF
>B-B-But 4e!
Every time, there's a reason 3.PF is dying now that 5e is out user.

Because making any improvements risks driving away their core consumer base. I remember a screenshot of people going absolutely apeshit about the possibly of a New edition of PF.

Barbarians of Lemuria?

Strike! and Valor exist, and there's a few other projects in the works.

The thing is, it actually takes a lot of work to design interesting, balanced mechanics, so it's a lot harder to rework 4e than it is to just shit out another 3.PF rehash.

does he only have two fingers?

It's a massive toolbox in which I have to dig through a dozen crappy and barely-functional tools to find one that works well and isn't a pain in the ass to use, and I have to find 3 such tools just to take a shit.

that's funny, but 4e fans claimed it would be more popular than 3e ever was and that the new licensing of 4e would in no way scare away 3rd-party developers who had been attracted by Open Game License.
And thus that pathfinder was a last gasp of dying grognards to remain relevant.

So, which system is still being sold again?

This is why. That's the scrollbar for the page on d20PFSRD, which is essentially a compilation of all the character creation on one site, for the feats one can get in the game - and ONLY their names, it doesn't actually tell you what any of them do.

PF sucks because, being based on DnD, the only thing it really has going for it mechanically is combat, and the combat is such a clusterfuck both before and during that there are better systems for it.
There are definitely better systems for a social game. There are definitely better systems for combat games (or at least more streamlined ones). Pathfinder ends up just not excelling in anything, so unless you're REALLY interested in the fluff of the world, it's not got much going for it - and a lot of GM's and players like using the system and elements of fluff to build and customise a world themselves for things like "generic fantasy", which is what Pathfinder is.

TL;DR: Pathfinder, being based on DnD, is only really good for mechanical combat and the sheer amount of bloat renders it not fun in even that regard. There are better systems to do anything you want to do in Pathfinder.

The one that's still being printed?

4e outsold PF when it was still selling books.

>So, which system is still being sold again?
All of them? I mean, I still see 4e books being sold next to 3.PF and 5e books at both the B&N stores in my area and there's enough of a presence of roll20 that a non-insignificant amount of people still play 4e over lesser known tabletop RPG's.

It's simple
3.5e was flawed therefor ripoffs like Pathfinders will inherit the same flaws.

Buying and funding it was a knejerk reaction to a community that didn't want 3e to die. It wasn't a wholehearted attempt at making a good system by competent designers.

The irony is that pathfinder is the final nail in 3e's coffin. The only thing that made 3e good was the material for it, and pathfinder is "3e, but we only kept the worst books."

There was a time when the buyers of RPGs could have made a decision to be less superficial and not support products like these, but that time has passed and the damage is done.

A not small part of it comes down to a few issues.

1. People play with more then a 15 point build. That fucks any balance in the game, hard.
2. Traits are a optional system that near everyone uses even though they should not.
3. A not small amount of love for the wizard class on part of the designers that they act on.
4. They copy pasted "When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, he can repeat the preparation process as often as he likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. He cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because he has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of his spells."
5. Weapon and armor enchantments are a touch over costed. At low levels that does not matter much but over time they became more over costed.
6. Many key wondrous items are under costed for what they do.
7. They did take a hard look at high level monster sat blocks to the amount they needed to. Dragons I am looking at you. They did not function at CR in 3.5 and do not function at CR in pathfinder. Later high CR monsters do work well at CR but the damage has been done in bestiary I & II.
8. They really needed to do more with a few CC and buff spells. Haste would be balanced as a level 4 or 5 spell but it a level 3 spell as a great example. When taken with issues 3 4 5 and 6 this makes caster supremacy a thing.

I would like to make the point caster supremacy is not one of the key issues of pathfinder, it is merely a symptom. It is the same way with 3.5.

>Because Pathfinder is a 3.5 homebrew that's based off of the creator's personal bias on what went wrong, rather than being a homebrew that actually fixes the problems that plagued 3.5.
I mean I think Pathfinder sucks but you do understand that the "problems" with an RPG are always going to be subjective, right?

Because the entire game spawned from the fact that they got their knickers in a twist over 4e and rushed it out as quickly as possible. They didn't fix the actual problems with the system, such as bloat

How's 4e like an MMO? You have fuck-all abilities and there's no aggro mechanic.

Don't bother. The point of saying 4e is an MMO is NOT to make any kind of an honest assessment. It's to get you to respond to points that only make sense if you don't have very much knowledge of the system.

You could do the same thing against 3e or pathfinder by repeating some random thickheaded lie in every single 3/p thread. As an experiment, let's say "3e doesn't have rules for magic items."

This is completely ridiculous. magic items are mentioned multiple times in the PHB and somebody who has sat down and read all the 3e books and has experience in the system will tell you that the system definitely does have rules for magic items. However, that isn't going to stop somebody who dislikes the system from spouting off some nonsense. Even if somebody points out everywhere in the PHB and DMG that proves that there are rules for magic items, for better or worse, I can still just repeat the same lie the next thread. But I won't, because I feel no need to rationalize my preferences.

Independent of my gripes on the system itself, of which I have many, Pathfinder has reached a critical level of system bloat and unless your GM comes down hard with book limits your game is going to be a mess.

>I mean I think Pathfinder sucks but you do understand that the "problems" with an RPG are always going to be subjective, right?
Maybe if you're a fool who knows nothing about game design or someone who has never actually played the game before with someone who knows how to play an effective Wizard at the cost of everyone else's enjoyment.

3/p is my least favorite flavor of D&D but...
There isn't really any system that can protect a campaign from a player that wants to ruin the game.

It's important when criticizing a game to be clear that the problem isn't dickass players wanting their friends to feel useless in a tabletop game. The problem is actually when a person plays their archetypal wizard and wants to play their character to the fullest, but cannot do so without stepping on other character's toes. At some point, the wizard player is robbed of any sense of accomplishment because playing their character becomes a dick move.

This is a shitty experience for the wizard and the fighter. The wizard feels like a deity that cannot participate without invalidating everything his friends do. The fighter feels like everything they do is pointless because if there was ever a REAL conflict that needed to be solved, the wizard would get off of his ass.

This has happened to me playing a Witch in Pathfinder, I stumbled into being really rather strong and it was really awkward being the keystone around which my GM had to plan.

Does /pfg/ play Pathfinder better than regular people with all the 3pp?

I know the Veeky Forums hive mind is going ape but this is like 95% correct

>5e
>good
I'll never get this meme

I recently read on Veeky Forums the best explanation: it's a copy-paste with the typos.

They're trying, but when your foundation is shit, it's hard to make anything that isn't shit.

/pfg/ only cares about playing underage fox girl maids.

But user Monte is right, we should design tabletop role-playing games like collectable card games.
>Proceeds to jack off to the words system mastery.

>They're trying
they really aren't

>There isn't really any system that can protect a campaign from a player that wants to ruin the game.
False, in most cases based on the systems I've played, either characters have an innate flaw that allows them to be hard-countered by someone/something else within the game's world or everyone is at a similarly high power-level that prevents one player from being able to manhandle other players without them being able to retaliate or initiate Mutually Assured Destruction.

It's only in D&D, specifically 3.PF, where the resident casters have such a superiority over most other things within the game that playing one to peak effectiveness warps the narrative and the stakes around whether or not you feel like sidestepping whole swathes of the game in favor of spending one spell slot, a scroll, a charge from a wand, etc. It's also the only system I've seen to have so many revisions that did nothing to fix the divide, only serving to make it worse with each new sub-edition.

>It's also the only system I've seen to have so many revisions that did nothing to fix the divide, only serving to make it worse with each new sub-edition.

It's because casters have been so superior for so long that when the designers try to close the divide without removing the identity of casters, the either sub-consciously or deliberately believe that usefulness is a unique trait of spellcasters.

That's the true source of the "4e martials are casters!" meme. martials in 4e are useful, so logic follows they must be casters.

stay mad ancient grognard 4e losers

Pathfinder was published almost a decade ago at this point
why do you still make these threads

The other reason why there's no 4e retroclones is that 4e doesn't have an OGL.

You can't just copy everything from the 4e PHB, change some details and call it your own game that you can sell shit for.

At least it results in books with a coherent artstyle.
I still get shivers from Ironclaw.

I liked the wide variety of art in the Ironclaw books though...