Pathfinder 1E a real pathfinder fix thread... PF2e

[GMforPowergamers]

ok, imagine that you could sit down with the Piazo guys and gals and help them brain storm a new Pathfinder. One that will still allow them to have adventure paths and adventure, but be more user friendly.

So what are the problems and how can we fix them?


lets start with a mission statement, and I suggest "D&D feel with new Mechanics and Balance that doesn't alter the idea of 3e D&D"

I will put together some idea's, but if you think there is nothing wrong with pathfinder as is, please don't argue about it in here...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I would start with 4e basics and 3e basics and mash them together. We have the idea of ‘good’ and ‘medium’ and ‘bad’ for saving throws already so lets take that to everything and start from there.

Good progression 2+ Half level
Medium progression 1+ third level
Bad progression fourth level

So over 20 levels
1 2 1 0
2 3 1 0
3 3 2 0
4 4 2 1
5 4 2 1
6 5 3 1
7 5 3 1
8 6 3 2
9 6 4 2
10 7 4 2
11 7 4 2
12 8 5 3
13 8 5 3
14 9 5 3
15 9 6 3
16 10 6 4
17 10 6 4
18 11 7 4
19 11 7 4
20 12 7 5

Melee combat
Ranged combat
Mental combat
Trained skill
Untrained skill
Saves
Defenses
All follow these charts, and classes mix and match them.

I would also mix saves and defenses. 3 defenses 2 save

Mental Defense
Reflex Defense
Toughness Defense
Will power save
Fortitude save

Example:
A fighter could have a good Melee combat, medium Ranged combat , bad Mental combat
Good Trained skill, bad Untrained skill
Medium Mental Defense, medium Reflex Defense, Good Toughness Defense
Medium Will power save Good Fortitude save

That’s 4 good and 2 bad with 4 mediums

A rogue could have medium Melee combat, medium Ranged combat , bad Mental combat
Good Trained skill, medium Untrained skill
Bad Mental Defense, Good Reflex Defense, Medium Toughness Defense
Medium Will power save Medium Fortitude save

That’s 6 medium 2 good and 2 bad


So a level 5 rogue with a trained skill has 4+stat and in an untrained skill 2+stat but a fighter has 4+ stat in the trained one but 1+ stat in an untrained one…
I would give everyone Con score hp

 

[billd91]

The bad saves in PF already plumb too low a depth at 1/3 level most of the time. Adding a 1/4 level would be a real kick in the jimmies. I'd push all saves to 1/2 level with good saves getting a class bonus of +2.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I would focus on the Pathfinder core audience, and figure out what they don't like. Incorporating elements from 4E would seem to be targeting the wrong audience.

So that pretty much means:

1) Make it faster to run, with less fiddly little bits.
2) Don't tweak the formula too badly. Instead of overhauling spellcasters (or fighter-types) to bring them in line with each other, address it on the detail level. Change the effects of spells at the numbers level (reduced damage, reduced duration, etc).

Of course, most of that would be resolved with a simple reboot. Just introduce a core 2.0, and even if they say it's back-compatible, people will still refuse to use the old books. Less stuff means less fiddly bits, because of less rules volume.

 

[casterblaster]

I agree, I think I would leave 4e out of the mix considering the nature and fan base of PF. I'm just one person but this seems to be common with others, I converted over to PF because I didn't like 4e. I'm not sure what Iwould change about PF though probably try to streamline it more while keeping the same mechanics if that's possible.

 

[EnglishLanguage]

First suggestion-Kill feat chains. Tie them up, lock them in a safe, throw them down to the bottom of the Marianna Trench, and never speak of them again. There is no reason my grapple-based Fighter needs about 8-9 levels worth of feats to finally reach being passable at grappling something.

Second suggestion-Equalize level power between classes. A level 10 Wizard should be about as powerful as a Level 10 Fighter should be about as powerful as a Level 10 Cleric. I don't want them all to be exactly good at the exact same things, but there should never be a tim when one class is made completely redundant simply because a fully better class exists.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

I would like to see them increase the number of possible skills, and even out the number of skills characters get, regardless of class. Not all skills are intelligence- based in the real world (or many fictional worlds), and there are many types of intelligence beyond the kind that is most suited to academic study.

I would like to see more options for playing different species, particularly some of the non-humanoid ones. There are a lot of "intelligent/sentient" species in Pathfinder that would work just fine as player characters without unbalancing things.

In a perfect gaming world (for me), I would like to see them do away with classes altogether, but that isn't likely to happen. Too many people seem to like them.

I rarely hear anyone talk about this, but I think that most fantasy rpgs have poor rules when it comes to the damage meted out by weapons. The assumption tends to be that the bigger and heavier the weapon is, the more damage it does. Though that's true to a certain degree, the reality is that a skilled knife fighter is just as likely to be able to kill an NPC as one with a sword in a close-up fight. Skill with a weapon needs to play a bigger role in damage than it currently does.

 

[delericho]

I would be surprised if PF 2e has any huge systematic changes from the current edition. People clearly like it as it is (broadly speaking), so why change and cause chaos?

What I'd expect to see:

- A reorganisation of material, bringing the most used supplementary material into the Core Rulebook, at the expense of less-used material. (I would expect, for example, that the Monk and perhaps the Bard could be deferred until a supplement.)

- A re-evaluation of the various spells, feats, etc, with a view to gently rebalancing them. As I understand it, this was the major focus of effort moving from 3.5e to PF (where lots of spells were found to be over-powered for their level, so instead of removing the spell or changing the level, they instead changed the effect to remove as many abuses as possible); I would expect the same again.

The problem is that the underlying d20 system is at once a very robust, flexible system, and also one that has some big systematic flaws. This means that anything they do by tweaking the system can improve a lot of things but will always leave those systematic flaws. Or they can perform a complete redesign... and probably split their market.

 

[delericho]

First suggestion-Kill feat chains. Tie them up, lock them in a safe, throw them down to the bottom of the Marianna Trench, and never speak of them again. There is no reason my grapple-based Fighter needs about 8-9 levels worth of feats to finally reach being passable at grappling something.

Second suggestion-Equalize level power between classes. A level 10 Wizard should be about as powerful as a Level 10 Fighter should be about as powerful as a Level 10 Cleric. I don't want them all to be exactly good at the exact same things, but there should never be a tim when one class is made completely redundant simply because a fully better class exists.

Funnily enough, back when 3.0e was developed, the intended purpose of those feat chains was precisely to equalise the power level between classes - what the Wizard got through additional spell levels, the Fighter would get through his feats. Of course, that didn't quite work out, partly because the feats (especially high-level feats) never went far enough, and partly because there is no good way to balance wish with "I can swing a sword really, really well."

 

[Starfox]

I'd unify mechanics more.

Combat maneuvers were a huge step in the right direction, but with ACG they diversified them in a bad way, making it too big an investment in feats to stay good at them. And there are subsystems, like feint, that could be part of the combat maneuver rules.

For some reason, saving throws have half the spread of most other things in Pathfinder. BAB ranges from 1-20, skills from +0 to +23, saving throws have a spread of 2-12 for no real apparent reason (attribute modifiers taken out of the calculation).

The skill rules could use 2-3 times the page count they got in Pathfinder. I don't want more skills, I want more rules for how the existing skills work, especially at higher levels. A lot of the perceived superiority of casters in Pathfinder is becasue of the skill rules are weak, IMO. Pathfinder skills feel lacking next to 3.5, and things like Stealth and finding traps are almost back in 1E land - the rules are so lacking that you HAVE to have house rules/interpretations.

Then there are a some small niggling bugs that crop up - like the rule that human rogues cannot sneak attack when in dim light. Rogues, stay out of the dark alleys and in the bright light of high street!

Otherwise, I don't see a lot of revision room in Pathfinder - it runns fairly smoothly and has about as many options as a class system can have. Adding more options through archetypes is nice, but ultimately runns into a grey wall of lost class distinctions.

1) Make it faster to run, with less fiddly little bits.
2) Don't tweak the formula too badly. Instead of overhauling spellcasters (or fighter-types) to bring them in line with each other, address it on the detail level. Change the effects of spells at the numbers level (reduced damage, reduced duration, etc).[...]

I feel this is pretty much what Pathfinder already did - you are describing the evolution from 3.5 to Pathfinder. It could do with another iteration, but the end result would only be a little different. Many times when people criticize Pathfinder for being too little, too late, I feel they have not really realized all the little spell changes they did from 3.5, the many spells who had reduced durations.

First suggestion-Kill feat chains. Tie them up, lock them in a safe, throw them down to the bottom of the Marianna Trench, and never speak of them again. There is no reason my grapple-based Fighter needs about 8-9 levels worth of feats to finally reach being passable at grappling something.

I support this.