Pathfinder 1E Pathbreaker - musings of an amateur game designer

[Lord Mhoram]

This is a thread I'm starting and will be posting in sporadically. The title "Amateur game designer" is sort of self aggrandizing. shrug. I've sold some gaming articles, but nothing huge. But I love to tinker and adjust rules - I know others do. So the purpose of this, even if no one reads it, is for me to talk about my current project, why I make the decisions I do, and some of my thought processes behind everything. Now I tend to get super enthusiastic and sort of trail off, and that is another reason for me doing this - to try and keep me focused by making a public statement about what I am doing.

First the name - I call it Pathbreaker as it my version of pathfinder 1st ed, but changed to my personal tastes (i.e. a portmanteau of Pathfinder and Fantasy Heartbreaker).. I've really only played this game solo, so I am sure some of this will be unbalanced, but if anyone gets a little spark of an idea from it, all the better. I never plan on publishing, just doing this for my own use; especially as I am copy and pasting wholesale from the many books I own. This is more a process for fun and practice than for actually publishing intent.

Now as I said I own a lot of books. And I am one of those that like lots of concurrent subsystems in a game - because mechanic (i.e. games) matter, and different mechanics lead to different play experiences. PF1st is "mostly dead" so I don't have a flood of new mechanical material coming out (aside from Stalwarts like Legendary), which makes it a good game to tinker with - and it is one of my 2 favorite PRG games system in the world- the other being HERO. I will be using things from Dreamscarred, Legendary, Rogue Genius games, the Spheres of magic/might series and a lot of other things all commingled with the original PF stuff.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Some base assumptions for the game - this is set up for solo play, with published modules in mind. So that means that the PC must be tougher and much more broad based in ability than a regular character. The reason for this, mostly, is that the wife GMs, and I play. And (until covid) ran a group HERO game so that took most of her GM energy and focus. So if she was going to GM me, it had to be something she could just pull out, plop down read and run with few adjustments. So the adjusting for solo play has to come from the player side, rather than the GMs.

To that end we had a method of abilty score generation that usually meant mostly 16-18, gestalt and Mythic - and extra feats and ability score increased (and Mythic choices). In comparison to a regular character super overpowered, but as a solo guy, it works well enough.

More HP to take all the attacks, higher AC and hit bonus to adjust for being the only target, and some house rules to make it easier to cast in combat (no meat shield but myself) and some other things.

So that is one of the first assumptions leading to a lot of changes I am making.

 

[Alzrius]

For a single PC game, I'd recommend making use of some (or even all) of the options that Owen K. C. Stephens listed in his power fantasy for PF1E blog entry.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

For a single PC game, I'd recommend making use of some (or even all) of the options that Owen K. C. Stephens listed in his power fantasy for PF1E blog entry.

Thanks for the link, I've read it; huge fan of just about everything Owen has done. And while I am "writing" my heartbreaker right now, I've been playing this way since about a year and a half into playing 3.0. I just decided to write it up as a formal game now rather than just notes of houserules and class changes scattered hither and yon.

Edit to add - this may have come off as dismissive, and that wasn't my intent. It is funny that what he came up with in his advice is very very similar to the techniques I used. When I read his list I was think.. check, done that, yep, uh-huh.

At this point, I am laying ground work for assumptions that I have in putting together my version of the system, as those assumptions inform my design choices.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I've always like the D&D fantasy - the genre it emulates being D&D (through editions) but until 3rd came out, I was not really into system design, or seeing how things behind it went for D&D. However in 1985 I was introduced to HERO system which became my primary system for 30+ years. I loved how the power system worked, how you could use advantages and limitations and whatnot. Then I started trying to reverse engineer how they come up with some of the powers (like the fact armor was just normal defense with a +1/2 advantage to it). I had build classes and tinkered some in first edition, but finding HERO really pushed me into that direction.
However it did something else too - the freedom of point based design. Here was a game that I could build to just about any concept I wanted... sure some were too expensive, but that was just a quirk of the system, not a hard stop. I was reading the 3.0 PH because, having skipped 2nd edition due to playing HERO exclusively at that time, and had a hankering for some "good ol D&D" but didn't want to go back to 1st ed. So while I was reading it (and noticing some stuff that reminded me of rolemaster in a good way), I got to how levels classes and multiclassing worked, and that sold me.
I had never leaned into "class fantasy" and never really like niche protection, so here is this idea that a character could take levels in lots of different classes to tell his character story, and the system supported it. I realized fairly early on that this system had major issues with spellcasters, but that was later.
So with that in mind, and the fact that I looked at a class level as nothing more than a package of special abilities and numbers (saves, BAB ect), I dived in.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

So with what I have, it's pretty obvious I wasn't a huge fan of super tight focused classes, except in relation to broader ones. I like open classes that you can define you character the way you want... but having more focused and specifically flavored classes are fine too, but only after the open ones are set in place. One of my problems (that I did something about) in both the Path of War and Akashic books by Dreamscarred, is there wasn't a "generic class". You had the 4 in the core game (Fighter, Rogue, Wizard and Cleric). Psionics had one (Psion), but neither of those two systems did (more on fixing that later).
I loved a lot of flavor that came out over the years of 3.PF, and incorporated a lot of it. And I'm going to mention a class that I finally got fined tuned just recently. I call the class the Shaper.
The shaper merges pieces from 3 classes, so it is broad (probably too broad for most games) but I tried not to make it as extra powered and some stuff I came up with and discarded. Those three classes were Aegis, Soulblade and using Akashic Veils. I love the Aegis, and most of it's archetypes. I love the Soulblade if a little less. So I took the base bits of those classes I liked and jettisoned most of the rest - I kept the Suit from the Aegis, and some customization for it. I kept the blade and some blade tricks. Now as I am using the Automatic bonus progression, I could toss out base AC improvements and soulblade enhancement bonus - I kept some in, and only for effects for coolness factor and utility. The thing that was the biggest change was decoupling those effects from psionics, and psi points. I wanted the ability to shape veils (which just seems to go along with being able to shape armor and weapons) so I removed any Hand slot veils, and any chest slot veils - and that chakra was now connected to essence. I had some extra abilities able to be used with essence points (for instant changes), and at 11th the suit side came online with each essence allowing that many points of a customization, but that could be moved in and out of like normal veils.

So I had what I had envisioned, a front line fighter that created his own armor, blade and extra effects, with inherent bonuses to kill the Christmas tree effect. A class I really enjoy, and who's fiction is fun. I noted a friendly rivalry between shapers, aegis and soulblade about where it came from first; fun bit of flavor, and if someone takes it way to seriously (NPC Villain) could be an interesting plot hook.

As this goes on you will find I love classes that can just walk in with no equipment and kick butt. I ran a Vow of Poverty Monk in 3.5 that was fun. So that will come up in my designs (including the fact I use inherent bonuses).

Next class I'll talk about is a generalist spellcaster, modfied from Roge Genius Games Magister.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

The Magister a class by Rogue Genius Games by Owen K.C. Stephens*. (Note the link, if you might be interested from my description it is well worth the money, and it is NOT an affiliate link, just a link because I love the class so much.

This is an early attempt to make a combined arcane/divine casting class. I loved it from the moment I read it... and because class siloing is something I tended to ignore it fit my approach perfectly. Originally this class was called Magus, as it predated the official Magus class in PF, so after that was released he changed the name.

The basic mechanics for spellcaster are as sorcerer, and spells known were a little complicated. You picked one class that was your "primary" spellcaster list, generally a full spellcaster, with level 0 to 9 spells. Half of your spells known had to be off this list. You could pick any other spellcaster's list of the same "realm" (Arcane, Divine) at normal spell level, but had to be on the non primary spell list - i.e. someone who chose wizard/sorc spell list could choose witch spells as normal. If it were something else, the spells were +1 level - so cure light wounds would be a second level spell for the example above. There were some other balancing stuff for 6 level caster lists, and for 4 and such. Each Magister picked a "Mystic Bond" which gave them some non spell abilities - things like a divine domain, school for spellcaster, limited version of sorcerer bloodline.

That is the base magister.

In my case, as I disliked the strict limit between divine and arcane magic, and later psychic magic - so I added some choices. A Mystic talent that allowed a second base spell list (and a mystic ability allowing a third) so it was much easier to get spells out of each silo. Part of this is because I love the old Rolemaster Essence/Divine/Mentalist schools and something that combined them in the Arcane spells. So with that feel, I made adjustments to the Magister.

This supported both solo play and gestalt approach by allowing everything about the class to be nothing but spells, allowing a second class to cover the non spell stuff (as opposed to a regular class that needed some stuff to do outside of spellcasting), and with a class that gave access pretty easily to healing spells and damage spells, it lets the solo character have the variety needed to run a published module solo.

For variety my version of this class probably steps on the toes of 5 or 6 other classes, but for me, it ended up being the exact solution to what I needed.


* Note you will see Owen's name pop up here quite a bit, his approach to class design is something that resonated with me, so I used (and abused) much of his work in making a Pathfinder that worked for my needs.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

After the last post, it got me thinking - from here on out, if I am discussing a specific piece of work that I am modifying I'll post a link, assuming the item is available for sale. Seems only fair, that if I got use of something to give back in what little way I can.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

The talented classes were also a huge thing for me... again by Owen K.C. Stephens originally with later books being other writers but still RGG.

I bring these up as they are a big part of how I approach game design, but specifically two books of stuff that were published by Dreamscarred Press (those will be up soon).

The talented classes, if I recall correctly, started with Talented Fighter. Each ability a fighter had (from base fighter and all the various official archetypes) were list as a "Talent"... and there was a talent that was "Fighter combat feat". The Talents were split into normal talents, advanced talents and grand talents. Advanced came online at 10th level, and the grand talents were basically capstone and you got one at 20th. So the class table listed things like BAB and Saves, then all the class ablities were just "Fighter Talent". This approach really opened up the class to make it exactly the kind of fighter you want to be. Don't like Bravery, toss it. It also let some interesting synergies which could give a power boost to fighters, and in 1st ed PF, that was something that was to be valued.

The idea that hit me was the simple way a class could represent so much, by using talents. In some ways Pathfinder 2nd ed uses something like this each level getting a type of feat from a limited choice of them to fine tune the character, but the Talented classes were much more open. As I have mentioned, I spent a lot of time playing HERO, so that freedom was something that really appealed to me.

A number of other talented classes followed, Rogue, Monk, Barbarian, Cavalier... then later Bard, Cleric and Witch. But I was mostly focused on the non or very limited casting classes for a couple of reasons: First, they needed the wider options available this way, spell-casters had a lot more flexibility, just by spells. Second I didn't especially like the way spell-casting was handled. Not that it was bad by any means, it just didn't sing to me the way the other stuff did. One other difference the later classes had were "edges" these were like super-talents, and each class access to a few of them... usually foundational concepts to the class; looking at monk edges were things like AC from Wis and raising by level, Chi pools, Evasion that sort of thing. Much fewer edges coming in with the classes.

As Rogue and Monk came out, there was an appendix that talked about merging them and/or what talents could (or should) be shared between them, with talks of balance issues with those options.

Well I was doing a solo game, so balance was not as much an issue, the more the merrier, the stronger the better. I reconfigured the Talented Monk, and then again when the Unchained Monk came out. I also got a large number of third party monk options and collected all the Paizo produced monk support stuff, and pulled that all together as options for the Talented Monk.. as well as access to Monk, Rogue and other talents.

I played a couple of monk types with that and had a blast. One of the Ionia was basically a gestalt "Talented Monk/Magister" with all the magic being flavored as "super Ch'i (fireball hadoken, CLW was healing touch as mystic ability).

I worked on a number of other talented martial classes, but as monk was always my favorite martial type class, it got the most work. Going forward in created the "final" Pathbreaker a lot of my work incorporated the "Talented" idea for class structure.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I was working on a strange class today, and had a couple of epiphanies.

The initial idea for this came to me years ago - as we use "triple gestalt" to make sure solo characters cover all the necessary roles in the party, I had a couple of character ideas that only needed 2 classes to cover for concept, but would be weaker without a third class. But I didn't want to make the class have any kind of identity in and of itself, so I have just been calling it "generic gestalt class" - it had some skill stuff, some magic, some fighting, and the ability to gain some other class abilities (those not necessary class identity type). So you have 3 people out, 2 are really into each other and the other is a friend (and sorta gets left out). So he class is now called "Third Wheel", and used somewhat humorous language in writings it's abilities. Then for the "pick an ability off this list" choices - like Rogue Talents, Magus Arcana and the like - I called them Spokes - for the third wheel.

Class is 90% done and written, and is exactly what I was looking for; and is by no means balanced for normal play.