How to follow-up Pathfinder? Improve the game, don’t radically change its character

Months of playtesting <em>Pathfinder</em>: Somehow, tweaking everything makes it feel more familiar.

Read the whole story

 

[steelcobra]

No, this was 5-ish years ago? And it was an "Introduction to Pathfinder" type event ran by PFS and going through the first part of one of the core PF modules.

Long before PF2 was dreamed up.

And, yeah, Gunslinger probably does suck but I like steampunk and I loved the art for the class in the book, so I went with it. The "grit" stuff was just dumb.

It doesn't help that the default tech level of firearms is terrible, and your free gun is in shoddy condition.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

Oh, yeah, the gun basically never worked.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

I also don't get the difficulty of combining D&D with firearms.

Different system, but it works just fine in HERO. Firearms all get some level of Armor Piercing applied to them, but beyond that they don't do much more damage than melee weapons or bows or crossbows. (Edit: The only exception is on bigger, fully auto guns where you can't "realistically" imagine a bow firing so fast, but there it is really, really hard to get more than 1 or 2 bullets to hit a given target, they mostly let you turn it into an AOE attack vs. multiple targets, or allow for suppression fire where anyone entering the cone gets an attack against them.) I can pretty much mix-and-match melee, ranged of any sort, and casters and all of them are doing about the same overall damage, with each shining in different situations.

But in D&D, if you want firearms, they have to both suck and be OP at the same time.

Just make them do more damage, but require a full action to reload. Maybe jam on a crit fail.

 

[Balderstrom]

I miss the way Fantasy Hero (based on the Hero system, AKA Champions) did things back in the 3rd/4th edition of things.
Proper Bell curves of difficulty with 3d6 always seemed more logical to me than the randomness of a single d20

IMHO 2d10 gives one of the best curves.

Roll/ Chance
  2,20: 1    
  3,19: 2
  4,18: 3
  5,17: 4
  6,16: 5
  7,15: 6
  8,14: 7
  9,13: 8
 10,12: 9
   11 : 10

1% for 1 or 20, and the curve goes like:
1,3,6,10,15,21,28,36,45,55,64,72,79,85,90,94,97,99,100

Although the Hero System had many excellent mechanics, I found the bonus calculations of 1/5th stats left much to be desired.


As far as Pathfinder is concerned, it's success lies with it effectively cloning D&D 3rd+ Edition -- including all the reasons I can't stand it, chief among them the plethora of absolutely ludicrous "Feats." c.f. "Throw Dirt" | "Gouge Eye"

Can't say I even remotely agree with the mechanic of adding a critters level to die rolls. Maybe some fraction of a level, and the higher level of the two in a contested roll might get an additional +1.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

3d6 isn't as broad a curve, but does better center the curve. IE. you have something like a 75% chance of rolling 6-12, and about 2% for 3 or 18.

 

[papadage]

Oh, yeah, the gun basically never worked.

The key to playing a Gunslinger is knowing which feats to take and knowing how to conserve grit. That, and knowing that after 5th level, you are better off advancing a different class, like Inquisitor. A gunslinger advances like an archer, and needs to take the ranged feats, as well as Quick Clear to manage misfires.

BTW, the beginning gun is fine for the player. It's only considered broken by the rules is another PC uses it. You only use it for a few levels before switching to a double barrel or paddle foot (four barrel) pistol, and the on to a revolver if allowed by the DM.

 

[steelcobra]

I miss the way Fantasy Hero (based on the Hero system, AKA Champions) did things back in the 3rd/4th edition of things.
Proper Bell curves of difficulty with 3d6 always seemed more logical to me than the randomness of a single d20

IMHO 2d10 gives one of the best curves.

Roll/ Chance
  2,20: 1    
  3,19: 2
  4,18: 3
  5,17: 4
  6,16: 5
  7,15: 6
  8,14: 7
  9,13: 8
 10,12: 9
   11 : 10

1% for 1 or 20, and the curve goes like:
1,3,6,10,15,21,28,36,45,55,64,72,79,85,90,94,97,99,100

Although the Hero System had many excellent mechanics, I found the bonus calculations of 1/5th stats left much to be desired.


As far as Pathfinder is concerned, it's success lies with it effectively cloning D&D 3rd+ Edition -- including all the reasons I can't stand it, chief among them the plethora of absolutely ludicrous "Feats." c.f. "Throw Dirt" | "Gouge Eye"

Can't say I even remotely agree with the mechanic of adding a critters level to die rolls. Maybe some fraction of a level, and the higher level of the two in a contested roll might get an additional +1.

In general, less dice means wilder results, more means more consistent but averaged results.

You should see the die pools on some of the high level weapons in Starfinder.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

Oh, yeah, the gun basically never worked.

The key to playing a Gunslinger is knowing which feats to take and knowing how to conserve grit. That, and knowing that after 5th level, you are better off advancing a different class, like Inquisitor. A gunslinger advances like an archer, and needs to take the ranged feats, as well as Quick Clear to manage misfires.

BTW, the beginning gun is fine for the player. It's only considered broken by the rules is another PC uses it. You only use it for a few levels before switching to a double barrel or paddle foot (four barrel) pistol, and the on to a revolver if allowed by the DM.

I seem to recall it jamming just about every time I tried to use it, and me using a short sword or something, instead. And the only grit ability I gave a single fuck about was the one that let you resolve attack as ranged touch attack, IIRC.

That said, we never got to Level 2 with that con event, and I never played PF again thereafter.

 

[Balderstrom]

I am very excited to try PF2, but I am a bit surprised to learn that Perception is now regularly being used on initiative rolls. It was easily the most over-used skill in PF1, and I had hoped they would try to downplay it's roll, not increase it!

On top of "Perception" being more suited as an Ability score (that could be linked with Intelligence and Wisdom) as opposed to some vague 'skill.'

 

[Deleted member 4603]

I am very excited to try PF2, but I am a bit surprised to learn that Perception is now regularly being used on initiative rolls. It was easily the most over-used skill in PF1, and I had hoped they would try to downplay it's roll, not increase it!

On top of "Perception" being more suited as an Ability score (that could be linked with Intelligence and Wisdom) as opposed to some vague 'skill.'

Eh, it is a trainable thing in real life. Having sharp senses and good vision is a plus, for sure, and that is at least one part genetics.

Perception / Spot check is the most common thing rolled in ANY system I run. It literally tells you if a character notices something, and in some systems it tells you how much info they glean from noticing that something.

 

[Balderstrom]

I miss the way Fantasy Hero (based on the Hero system, AKA Champions) did things back in the 3rd/4th edition of things.
Proper Bell curves of difficulty with 3d6 always seemed more logical to me than the randomness of a single d20

My friends and I played the hell out of Fantasy Hero and Danger International. Probably more than AD&D. Loved that system. The only one we liked better was The Call of Cthulhu (before they ventured into D20 territory that is)

Call of Cthulhu has wandered back out of D20 territory. The newest edition is slightly different (it multiplies most stats by 5 instead of having easy skill checks be stat x5 as one example), but it's still close enough that I've run 7th edition adventures with the 5th edition core.

Something like Chill then...
If memory serves, something like a percentage skill range, that could go above 100, and fractions of your skill served to indicate where various degress of success wound up.
Something like rolling <=~10% of your skill would be a critical success.

 

[steelcobra]

I am very excited to try PF2, but I am a bit surprised to learn that Perception is now regularly being used on initiative rolls. It was easily the most over-used skill in PF1, and I had hoped they would try to downplay it's roll, not increase it!

On top of "Perception" being more suited as an Ability score (that could be linked with Intelligence and Wisdom) as opposed to some vague 'skill.'

It's just set off on its own on the character sheet under health array, right above the Skills box.

Basically the same "Total=Ability mod(Wis)+Proficiency(TEML)+Item" formula as skills, but also has a box to list Senses, so stuff like Darkvision.

But the idea is that if you are doing a skill during exploration and can justify how it sets you up in the encounter, you'd use that instead for your initiative roll.

 

[sghoul]

DC 15 at level 1 is garbage...and oddly common. For even a min/max character a +3-+5 would be a high modifier at level 1. So a DC 15 dex check is at best 50/50. If Dex isn't your main stat you are looking at a 75% failure rate.

So, yeah, badly designed scenario.

 

[Reso1]

The whole idea of rolling dice with various modifiers against arbitrary difficulty numbers to perform a task is kind of antiquated, isn't it? This leads to the constant situation where you roll a die and still have no idea if you succeeded on the action. You have to have a discussion with the GM to find out the mechanics and what the DC # is. Systems where you can mostly tell if you succeeded based immediately on the die result seem superior for table excitement. I like Savage Worlds.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

The whole idea of rolling dice with various modifiers against arbitrary difficulty numbers to perform a task is kind of antiquated, isn't it? This leads to the constant situation where you roll a die and still have no idea if you succeeded on the action. You have to have a discussion with the GM to find out the mechanics and what the DC # is. Systems where you can mostly tell if you succeeded based immediately on the die result seem superior for table excitement. I like Savage Worlds.

I like Savage Worlds, too, but a LOT of their stuff is... poorly written / worded, and we have had MASSIVE issues trying to sort out the right way to do stuff.

I tried to run a SciFi game with it, loosely based on the Miles Vorkosigan universe (Lois McMaster Bujold), and never could figure out the "right" rules for entirely too many situations that came up.

 

[Thunderforge8]

The whole idea of rolling dice with various modifiers against arbitrary difficulty numbers to perform a task is kind of antiquated, isn't it? This leads to the constant situation where you roll a die and still have no idea if you succeeded on the action. You have to have a discussion with the GM to find out the mechanics and what the DC # is. Systems where you can mostly tell if you succeeded based immediately on the die result seem superior for table excitement. I like Savage Worlds.

Technically, Savage Worlds still has a DC in the form of modifiers, which are given up front. So you are almost always trying to reach Target Number 4, but you GM tells you that it's (for instance) a difficult task, so you are rolling at a -4 modifier. By knowing the difficulty up front, the player knows whether they have succeeded or failed immediately after rerolling the dice, without GM confirmation. I guess to compare to D&D, it's more similar to the THAC0 system.

On the other hand, Savage Worlds still requires GM confirmation for an enemy's Parry and Toughness, since the GM typically doesn't reveal that.

 

[Kressilac]

Is there any mechanical rule for what happens on a critical failure? Or is it just "the GM punishes you somehow"? Because that's basically never been fun or balanced, outside of comedy games.

Your GM sucks then. As much as criticals are fun in both directions, the GM is free to save your ass as much as he/she is free to punish you for a bad roll. The GM should consider the ebb and flow of the combat with every roll and then on-the-fly adapt the results to the situation (without negating the result's spirit) so that the story and adventure lives on.

Letting the dice have tyranny over the play session is asking for the dice to ruin a great night for someone or to trivialize the challenge of a module right sized for the party. In the end, if you're not having fun, it's your GM, not the rules or the dice.

 

[Kressilac]

As a GenCon attendee for the past 8 years, I can say that a simpler Pathfinder will make the sessions much more enjoyable. The Pathfinder sessions are generally hit or miss from a GM standpoint at which point the sessions can easily get bogged down in mechanics. Same goes for Shadowrun but Catalyst GMs are generally pretty competent and make the system work within a session window.

Maybe Pathfinder will be closer to Call of Cthulhu during GenCon with a simpler rule set. The latter being dead simple to get into so as to maximize fun in a 4 hour window.

 

[panton41]

I'm surprised that the prices for the PDF versions are sane. US$15 each for the core book and bestiary is within the realm of sanity while not devaluing the material.

Edit: There's so many traditional publishers, tabletop RPG companies included, who price their ebooks at nearly the same price as paper and then announce ebook sales are terrible. For a lot of people if they can get paper for $50, or a PDF for $40 with no discount even if you buy both at once from their store, they'll buy paper. But $15 for the PDF? That's an easy buy for me.

 

[jdw]

One of the wisest things I ever heard about critical failures (where they're used at all) is not to let them detract from a character's heroic nature. (Since most of us aren't playing in those comedy games.) It's the attempt that failed badly, not the character or the player.

That character is one of the few high-level archers in the world. Olympic-level, or higher. Their chances of accidentally shooting themselves in the nuts are a lot lower than 1 in 20.

One good way to handle this is excessive success. For example:

Player: "Gorlok, you're going to tell us where the key to the dungeon is, or I'm going to start at your feet and shave off a quarter inch at a time." My fighter starts running his sharpening stone along his sword, making sparks and as loud of a grinding noise as he can.

GM: Awesome! Roll to intimidate.

Player: You bet. I... uh... crud, it's a 1.

GM: Oh, too bad. Gorlok's beady eyes go wide with terror at your threat, and just when it looks like he's about to wet himself, he starts to wail and squeal, curling into a tight ball on the floor and sobbing incoherently. Looks like you scared him so badly it'll be quite awhile before anyone gets anything sensible out of him. What now?

Player: I guess we're searching the sewers!

In such a scenario, the attempt still fails, but it does so with painting the character as a dufus or a screwup or inflicting a spitefully improbable rookie mistake on them.

 

[kenada]

One thing I like in Chronicles of Darkness is it lets you gain a beat for voluntarily turning a regular failure into a critical failure. I probably drove our Storyteller crazy doing that almost every scene. Sure, I got into some bad situations, but the game was much more entertaining that if I’d just tried to play it as safe as possible.

The whole idea of rolling dice with various modifiers against arbitrary difficulty numbers to perform a task is kind of antiquated, isn't it? This leads to the constant situation where you roll a die and still have no idea if you succeeded on the action. You have to have a discussion with the GM to find out the mechanics and what the DC # is. Systems where you can mostly tell if you succeeded based immediately on the die result seem superior for table excitement. I like Savage Worlds.

I can understand why people do it: it ensures that players react based on the same knowledge their PCs have. I used to hide mine (though more to hide the time it took to add up all the modifiers in PF1), but I stopped doing it after reading this article by the Angry GM. It’s definitely had a small effect at my table, which is nice. I think it’ll work even better in PF2 where PCs should crit much more often (PF2 has secret checks, but the GM can choose to have the player roll them anyway, which is what I plan to do).

I'm surprised that the prices for the PDF versions are sane. US$15 each for the core book and bestiary is within the realm of sanity while not devaluing the material.

Edit: There's so many traditional publishers, tabletop RPG companies included, who price their ebooks at nearly the same price as paper and then announce ebook sales are terrible. For a lot of people if they can get paper for $50, or a PDF for $40 with no discount even if you buy both at once from their store, they'll buy paper. But $15 for the PDF? That's an easy buy for me.

Paizo heavily discounts PDFs in the rule book line, and probably for that reason. Their other lines are also discounted but not quite as heavily (only ~30% off the price of a physical copy).

 

[steelcobra]

One thing I like in Chronicles of Darkness is it lets you gain a beat for voluntarily turning a regular failure into a critical failure. I probably drove our Storyteller crazy doing that almost every scene. Sure, I got into some bad situations, but the game was much more entertaining that if I’d just tried to play it as safe as possible.

The whole idea of rolling dice with various modifiers against arbitrary difficulty numbers to perform a task is kind of antiquated, isn't it? This leads to the constant situation where you roll a die and still have no idea if you succeeded on the action. You have to have a discussion with the GM to find out the mechanics and what the DC # is. Systems where you can mostly tell if you succeeded based immediately on the die result seem superior for table excitement. I like Savage Worlds.

I can understand why people do it: it ensures that players react based on the same knowledge their PCs have. I used to hide mine (though more to hide the time it took to add up all the modifiers in PF1), but I stopped doing it after reading this article by the Angry GM. It’s definitely had a small effect at my table, which is nice. I think it’ll work even better in PF2 where PCs should crit much more often (PF2 has secret checks, but the GM can choose to have the player roll them anyway, which is what I plan to do).

I'm surprised that the prices for the PDF versions are sane. US$15 each for the core book and bestiary is within the realm of sanity while not devaluing the material.

Edit: There's so many traditional publishers, tabletop RPG companies included, who price their ebooks at nearly the same price as paper and then announce ebook sales are terrible. For a lot of people if they can get paper for $50, or a PDF for $40 with no discount even if you buy both at once from their store, they'll buy paper. But $15 for the PDF? That's an easy buy for me.

Paizo heavily discounts PDFs in the rule book line, and probably for that reason. Their other lines are also discounted but not quite as heavily (only ~30% off the price of a physical copy).

Though one of the key parts of CoD is that's you're never really the superpowerful legend, either. As a mortal character, there's monsters out there that'll literally eat you for breakfast, and as a monster you're probably just a tiny shark keeping the Great Whites happy.

 

[Evan E]

How to follow-up Pathfinder?

Not so much at the risk of being a Grammar Nazi as being unashamed of knowing how words work: a hyphen in the middle of "follow-up" is only correct if it's being used as noun: "Pathfinder Second Edition is a follow-up to the original Pathfinder", for example. Since "follow" in the title is a verb, putting a hyphen there is just wrong - it's like writing "I went-up the stairs".

And, no, recognizing the difference between verbs and nouns is not a hair-splittingly fine point of distinction, even if you're not talking about a professional publication.

 

[Carewolf]

I miss the way Fantasy Hero (based on the Hero system, AKA Champions) did things back in the 3rd/4th edition of things.
Proper Bell curves of difficulty with 3d6 always seemed more logical to me than the randomness of a single d20

I once customized Rolemaster so all rolls first went through a normal-distribution translation. Gave very realistic outcomes, took time and fun out of the game though.

In the end we went with a the straight D100 with all the critical failure and successes, but added player controlled Fate Points they could use to fudge the dices on rare occation. Not realistic, but much better thematically.

 

[Dooderoo]

What systems will this run on?

SCNR

 

[andygates]

I miss the way Fantasy Hero (based on the Hero system, AKA Champions) did things back in the 3rd/4th edition of things.
Proper Bell curves of difficulty with 3d6 always seemed more logical to me than the randomness of a single d20

I once customized Rolemaster so all rolls first went through a normal-distribution translation. Gave very realistic outcomes, took time and fun out of the game though.

In the end we went with a the straight D100 with all the critical failure and successes, but added player controlled Fate Points they could use to fudge the dices on rare occation. Not realistic, but much better thematically.

Having a table to modify _every roll_ before looking up that result on the tables... that's truly Peak Rolemaster.

 

[steelcobra]

What systems will this run on?

SCNR

Hominid Greyware Mk.12.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

Having a table to modify _every roll_ before looking up that result on the tables... that's truly Peak Rolemaster.

I loved and hated Rolemaster; those charts were amazing, and having every result spelled out in that detail made for some very interesting fights, but, yeah. Good luck surviving character generation

Friend had made his own modified version, which mostly just beefed up character gen so you were more likely to come out of it as a competent person, but it was still brutal. I think we ended up getting frostbite while camping and that set up a cascade failure for the party.

 

[The Dark]

Having a table to modify _every roll_ before looking up that result on the tables... that's truly Peak Rolemaster.

I loved and hated Rolemaster; those charts were amazing, and having every result spelled out in that detail made for some very interesting fights, but, yeah. Good luck surviving character generation

Friend had made his own modified version, which mostly just beefed up character gen so you were more likely to come out of it as a competent person, but it was still brutal. I think we ended up getting frostbite while camping and that set up a cascade failure for the party.

I only ever had MERP, which was Rolemaster-lite. For a game that was supposed to take place in Tolkien's world, it was high on magic and absolutely vicious in combat.

 

[firsttimecaller]

So they removed the fun of instantly knowing you got a crit success or the dread of instantly knowing you got a crit fail to a delayed, “let’s calculate to see if this is a crit success or crit fail”-system? That to me is a critical failure.

Also rolling a natural 20 or 1 being a low probability compared to making it a range and increasing the odds of crit success (or crit failure) takes away again the fun of the occasional burst of damage. Making these events more common will make them boring.

Maybe I’m wrong, but my gut tells me these changes are bad for the game.

They wanted to make the game more simple... but this change just makes things a bit more complicated.

will be gone next edition i bet.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

I think his "JASONMASTER" deal borrowed from MERP and from a few other Rolemaster off-shoots like Harn.

 

[Marcus Downing]

I'm only a novice at Pathfinder so I'm kind of indifferent about the whole thing. But I would fully agree that it's gotten so complicated that just about everyone has to use an app to manage the character sheet. I do think it's a bit BS that if you really want to take advantage of the system you need something like HeroLab (which is extremely expensive to get all the books enabled). Cheaper options like RPGScribe are okay but they aren't as complete.

Tried this one?

 

[Jordan83]

Is there any mechanical rule for what happens on a critical failure? Or is it just "the GM punishes you somehow"? Because that's basically never been fun or balanced, outside of comedy games.

Your GM sucks then. As much as criticals are fun in both directions, the GM is free to save your ass as much as he/she is free to punish you for a bad roll. The GM should consider the ebb and flow of the combat with every roll and then on-the-fly adapt the results to the situation (without negating the result's spirit) so that the story and adventure lives on.

Letting the dice have tyranny over the play session is asking for the dice to ruin a great night for someone or to trivialize the challenge of a module right sized for the party. In the end, if you're not having fun, it's your GM, not the rules or the dice.

Never played PF, but played a few D&D campaigns with an awesome GM who was great at finding fun/creative ways to not make us feel horrible for failing dice rolls.

For one campaign, he gave us all a coin that could be cashed in at any time for an attempt at a ridiculous, heroic, plot-point, crazy maneuver or action or kind of whatever outlandish thing we wanted to try above and beyond our normal character abilities to get us out of a jam.

During one hairy fight in which a group of high level bandits ambushed our camp, I (playing a shield dwarf fighter) was surrounded by a group of bandits near our horses. Our elven ranger decided to cash in his plot-point token, and attempt to vault over the bandits, into the saddle of one of the horses, and break the siege surrounding me with mounted archery.

GM tells him sure, roll a DEX check for your initial vault to start your action. He rolls a 1. The GM ad-libs it so that he ends up landing on the horse's ass instead of in the saddle, and facing backwards. The GM then had the horse rear up in response, and kick out with its front legs, making an attack roll against one of the bandits. The horse rolled a natural 20! Kicked the nearest bandit in the head, and killed it. As the horse reared up, he had the ranger roll another DEX check for falling off the horse, which he passed, and basically ended up on his feet beside me.

We were all dying laughing as this was going on, and it's just another great example of how a great GM can still potentially make the game a lot of fun despite bad dice rolls.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

True, but I feel systems should speak to that in some way, else it really is "GM whim" so far as what happens.

But, that would almost require some type of result chart or lengthy list of examples, and probably be just as prone to issues in interpretation.

 

[woodelf]

«…giving each player character more occasional opportunities to have the spotlight to themselves. »

“More occasional” is an ambiguous turn of phrase that usually means “less frequent”. But I suspect you meant "more frequent". And from reading the rest of the review, I’m still not sure what is meant. Did you mean that too much (shared) spotlight time was a problem with Pathfinder 1, and so Pathfinder 2 is reducing this a bit so that at any given moment fewer people are in the spotlight? The talk about proficiency tiers and avoiding “skill check bloat” supports that. Or did you mean that Pathfinder 2 lets people get the spotlight more frequently, by diversifying “useful” abilities and simplifying the math somewhat? The talk about proficiency tiers and the “three pillars” supports that.

----
I’ve been entertained by the people comparing Pathfinder 1-->2 to D&D 3/4-->5. It’s not that the parallel isn’t there. But the immediate resonance I got, right from the very first Pathfinder Second Edition announcement, was to AD&D2. Pathfinder 2 was announced in 2018 for release in 2019. AD&D2 was announced a little earlier—longer development cycles back then—for release in 1989. I’m entertained by the exactly-30-year cycle playing out here. The Pathfinder 2 announcement said almost exactly the same things as the AD&D2 announcement: more focus on story, less complexity while still giving you all the options you love, easier to learn, existing edition has become bloated and complex.
And the fan reactions were almost exactly the same. (The ones to the announcement, before there was even a playtest document to look at, that is.)

 

[woodelf]

Did they do anything to fix the problem of linear warriors/quadratic wizards that has plagued the system since D&D 3.0?

I was disappointed that original Pathfinder did so little to address that, and if Second Edition still doesn't do anything to prevent the problems where wizards are flat out better than fighters at higher levels (and certain spells making them better melee combatants than fighters!), then this edition is a non-starter for me.

D&D4E completely solved that problem.

But at the cost of making wizards and fighters basically function the same mechanically, and thus feel the same. Fighters felt "too magical" if what you wanted was the Conan/Lancelot archetype; wizards lost a lot of their flexibility. For me, the cure was worse than the disease. But plenty of people really loved D&D4E. And if it hadn't been called "Dungeons & Dragons", and thus been expected to feel like D&D, I suspect it would still be selling well.

 

[HiroTheProtagonist]

True, but I feel systems should speak to that in some way, else it really is "GM whim" so far as what happens.

But, that would almost require some type of result chart or lengthy list of examples, and probably be just as prone to issues in interpretation.

GM whim is part and parcel to the tabletop RPG experience. They will always have the last word, unless you're playing at some official major event, in which there will be official judges to settle disputes and issue rulings over the GM. And while that does give them a lot of power, it's a far sight easier than trying to decode the human condition and enumerate every possible success/failure event for every possible situation in a tabletop game.

Of course, if you feel that your GM is taking too many liberties with their rulings, you should talk to them about it. Some of them can be right bastards (I recall a GM in college who delighted in homebrewed cursed items designed to screw over players based on their class), but most of them are reasonable humans who are willing to hear constructive criticism on their style.

Or if you really dislike the idea that the GM has such agency over the game, you might be better served playing cRPGs or wargames, where the rules are more concrete and rigid and less open to strange interpretations.

 

[woodelf]

I'm surprised that the prices for the PDF versions are sane. US$15 each for the core book and bestiary is within the realm of sanity while not devaluing the material.

Edit: There's so many traditional publishers, tabletop RPG companies included, who price their ebooks at nearly the same price as paper and then announce ebook sales are terrible. For a lot of people if they can get paper for $50, or a PDF for $40 with no discount even if you buy both at once from their store, they'll buy paper. But $15 for the PDF? That's an easy buy for me.

Example? I can't remember the last time I saw an RPG PDF that was > 1/2 the hardcopy price. I mean, yeah, on DriveThruRPG they often list the PDF price as "{hardcopy price} sale: {half hardcopy price}", but that's just marketing—I've never seen any of those products ever not "on sale".

 

[woodelf]

I miss the way Fantasy Hero (based on the Hero system, AKA Champions) did things back in the 3rd/4th edition of things.
Proper Bell curves of difficulty with 3d6 always seemed more logical to me than the randomness of a single d20

Easy solution to put a bell curve into Pathfinder without needing to change anything else: roll 3d20, discard the highest and lowest.

Natural 1s being critical failure is in fact a popular house rule, not part of the rules-as-written for most games derived from the “d20 system”. According to the published rules, it may be an automatic failure (depending on the exact system and the exact type of d20 roll, eg skill vs attack vs save), but it doesn’t usually attract a penalty beyond lack of success.

Personally, I don’t use critical failure house rules. If a particular system has an official critical failure rule, I’ll use it, but I won’t add extra screwage on top. PCs should have above average competence. Looking awesome 5% of the time is good; but most people don’t particularly enjoy being made to look like a buffoon 5% of the time due entirely to the whim of the dice. (If a player chooses to do something dumb, then sure, it’s comedy time!)

Critical fails are a terrible rule for terrible people. Especially when they get applied to attack rolls, because the nature of combat means that experienced well trained people (who throw more dice) become more likely to crit fail simply by the brute laws of probability.

Another reason why they tend to be pretty unfair is the fundamental asymmetry between PCs and NPCs. Most NPCs, especially opponents, appear in exactly one scene. Those which appear in more than one scene usually appear in exactly one session/story. Only a tiny, tiny handful of NPCs will appear multiple times through a campaign. So it doesn’t really MATTER if an NPC suffers some major harm from a critical failure.

But if a PC loses a hand to the whim of the dice and GM sadism (for example), that’s a major loss to that character, which could last a very long time depending on the setting’s assumptions about healing.

This is the same basic reason that NPC spellcasters often punch above their weight. Since they're (typically) one-encounter characters, they have no reason not to go nova and blow every high-level spell as quickly as possible. PC spellcasters are more likely to have to conserve resources to last over multiple encounters.

Since, as you point out, NPCs and PCs have very different roles in the game, the obvious solution is not to use the same rules to build NPCs. Lots of other games have figured this out; it always surprises me that more of the D20 System games haven't. Especially with the very swingy results that a flat d20 and relatively small modifiers produce.

 

[Deleted member 4603]

To be fair, NPC's have been created with no rules for the most part, in every edition.

Oh, there are rules like monsters get a D10 for hit dice, and outsiders can be banished, and that sort of thing.

But compare any two creatures of the same CR and you see some wild differences.

Some critters get way more than an equal-in-level-to-hit-dice player would have, others get far less.

And the rules for making your own critters in D&D have never truly felt complete, if included at all. If you go back to 2nd Edition DMG, the rules for making critters pretty much always resulted in something "better" than an equivalent PC, yet plenty of critters in the various manuals clearly didn't used the same rules printed in the DMG, for better or worse.