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So, today I started my first Pathfinder campaign. My players and I are doing the Kingmaker adventure path. So far, it's going swimmingly. This is my first time GMing anything and it has been crazy fun so far.

Anyone on the forums tried any Pathfinder Adventure Paths? If so any other recommendations?

Also, the GameMastery Guide is incredibly cool.

All in all, I fucking love Paizo.

The group I play with is on the third book of the Kingmaker adventure path currently. Really enjoying it so far. This is the third adventure path we've played and to me its the best of the ones we've tried. The other two ive tried were the Rise of The Runelords and the Council Of Thieves. Runelords was ok but it was also the first of the adventure paths and they've steadily gotten better and better as they go. Council of Thieves was great fun, but overall Kingmaker so far is better.

Man, the Game Mastery Guide has definitely become an invaluable asset. Especially since I am completely inexperienced. I cannot recommend it harder.

I got billed last night for my Advanced Players Handbook, the last Part of Kingmaker, and the first part of the next adventure path.

I'm strongly considering running Kingmaker. I've never GM'd before so I might just start with a module first. Read through Curse of the Riven Sky last night, really want to run something now.

I love Paizo. Pathfinder is a great system, and their stuff for it is top notch so far.

Kingmaker is great, BUT, it does require a lot of self direction on the part of the group. It's very sandboxy.

My copy of the Advance Players Guide is on it's way, which means the PDF was available to me last night. Cool stuff so far, a lot of stuff for existing classes which makes me happy. Some cool new spells, more racial abilities, a lot of new fighter based feats. I haven't even looked over the new classes yet, I'll be doing a lot more in depth reading once my hardcopy comes in.

My friend's going to pick me up a copy when she goes to Gencon, so, I got a couple weeks before I get one.

I was just trying to bump my old Pathfinder thread, but it's long lost locked so whatever.

Anyways, I just got my copy of the Pathfinder version of the Tome of Horrors Complete ( http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/f/frogGodGames/pathfinderRPG/other/v5748btpy8ody&source=top ). This monstrosity is 750 odd pages big and puts the Pathfinder Core Rulebook to shame with it's girth. It's going to be many a long hour before I get through it but I'm stoked for so many hundreds of new beasties to fuck with my gaming group.

There's another 120 monsters in the Tome of Monsters from 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming, as well: http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinderRPG/4Winds/v5748btpy8klf

Ignore the review by Demiurge, he's the owner of Demiurge Press, a competing 3PP that only makes bestiaries, and he gives negative reviews to most other 3PP monster books.

I've been running a D&D 4.0 campaign for...several months now? I think it was in April I started. Maybe March.

Anyway. Once I'm done with this campaign...I'll be looking into either 3.5 again or Pathfinder, which has been described to me as D&D 3.75 (4th ed is...okay. I don't make it out as the horror story that a lot of people have, but I still massively prefer 3.5 thank you very MUCH). What does Pathfinder bring to the table, exactly? Other than a precursory look at whatever their equivalent of the PHB is - Or maybe it was the main game book? I'm not sure - I know almost nothing about it.

How about a combat maneuver/grapple system that doesn't suck? 9 core classes that are playable to level 20. Archetypes that allow you to play a particular type of a class that doesn't make playing a straight class meaningless? A skill system that makes class skills meaningful without rendering cross-class skills useless (no more damn half rank). Spontaneous casters being able to trade out spells they know every few levels, 0-level spells being spell-like abilities. Options for Paladins that don't want a mount, or wizards who don't want familiars.

I could probably go on, but I think you get the idea. If you want the books the Core rulebook is obviously a must. For players you will definitely want to pick up at least the Advanced Players guide, the Ultimate Magic and Ultimate Combat books have some good things to, but I would get the APG first. If you are a GM you have 2 Bestiaries available, the GM screen is rather nice, made of a real solid board and nice art (stat tables are good to, but use will tend to vary by experience). I don't recommend the GM Guide unless you are a new GM in which case I would definitely recommend picking it up. It really is what the titles says, a guide. Not super helpful if you're a seasoned vet.

The GM guide has some awesomely useful tables and a very, very nice NPC section but ultimately your mileage would vary with it. I also dig the Inner Sea World guide which is a huge fluff book for the official world of Pathfinder, Golarion. I don't set my campaigns on Golarion but it's heckuva handy for inspiration.

You can read all the rules here for free.

House ruled versions of 3.5 classes. Monk is still terrible, druids got some well-deserved nerfs, bards did not, but on a whole, everyone is better. Thanks to splat books, monks do get better.

Paizo hates multiclassing, so they generally try to make it worth it to stay in a class from 1-20. If you were a fan of prestige classes, welp.

Races are improved. You always get a net positive to stats. Favored Classes got changed. Rather than allowing you to avoid an experience penalty for multiclassing, you either get an extra hit point or skill point for taking a level in the class.

Classes get archetypes, which are basically groups of alternate class features. You can choose to have an archetype when you enter the class. You don't have to choose and can just be vanilla.

You get more feats. Feats are generally worse than they were in 3.5.

Skill system was consolidated. This means that rogues don't have to choose between being a sneaky rogue or a social rogue. They can be both. Concentrate was gotten rid of. Now it's based on level.

Grapple, trip, and those various combat maneuvers were changed so they all work off the same bonus.

It's basically compatible with 3.5. If you have 3.5 material on hand, with some modification, you can still use it in a pathfinder game. Assuming whoever is GMing is fine with it.

Monk with Ultimate Combat is not terrible. Just saying. That entire book was a love letter to the monk.

Concentration is now pretty tricky for casters. It's genuinely harder to make concentration checks in Pathfinder rules I've found and it makes combat casting and traits that boost concentration very, very desirable.

I did say that monks get better with splats. Ultimate Combat is such a good book.

There's also a lot of excellent 3PP material available for it.

Ha ha ha, you shill.

Frankie Williamson said:

Ha ha ha, you shill.

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Yes, because it's totally inappropriate to recommend products appropriate to a thread, just because I happened to work on some of them.

Anyway, some that I didn't work on: Super Genius Games has a lot of fantastic PDFs, especially the Time Thief and Time Warden, decidedly flavored by Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Well balanced and a nice addition to the players' options. Rite Publishing has the "In the Company Of..." series, which give rules for monster race PCs. And Louis Porter Jr Games has the most awesomely ridonkulous monster I've ever seen: the Cerebral Assassin, aka Penishead Vaginamouth.

That wasn't an insult. I have one of FWFG books that I won from 3.5 Private Sanctuary. Strategies and Tacticians? Anyways, it's pretty good (some of the stuff in it even seemed to show up in Ultimate Combat).

Frankie Williamson said:

That wasn't an insult. I have one of FWFG books that I won from 3.5 Private Sanctuary. Strategies and Tacticians? Anyways, it's pretty good (some of the stuff in it even seemed to show up in Ultimate Combat).

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...Yeah. There's a lot of stuff in UC that is oddly similar to material that appeared in 4WFG products a year or so earlier, but apparently there's no acknowledged relation. I understand that it's all OGL and there are some distinct differences as well, but I can't say I was overly pleased to see some of it. And while I'm biased, I'm quite certain that the 4WFG Samurai from Paths of Power is better than the Cavalier Samurai of UC.

But yeah, Strategists and Tacticians by Ryan Costello is probably my favorite 4WFG book that I didn't work on (the material reprinted in it that I get credit for originally appeared in Luven Lightfinger's Gear & Treasure Shop).

While I'm guessing some people out there are playing a ninja or a gunslinger, I sincerely doubt that fucking anyone is playing a samurai (or cavalier for that matter).

Well, they do get a lot of discussion on the paizo forums, but it's hard to tell what is general nerd dissatisfaction and what's actual legitimate complaints about the class.

I'm running my first Pathfinder game tonight after a loooong break from 3.5 and its relatives. Everyone seems really eager to play, especially the new ones. I don't think I've seen first time players this excited for a game before. Here's hoping everything goes smoothly.

Good luck Baer!

Bump for Penny Arcade Goodness.

http://penny-arcade.smugmug.com/photos/i-kF3N9SG/0/L/i-kF3N9SG-XL.jpg

My group and I play Pathfinder and started the Kingmaker campaign back in September. We are about to start the 4th module of that line. Unfortunately/fortunately, we play pretty much every week...marathon sessions that normally go for 12 hours or so. Needless to say, I burned out a little bit, especially when players started getting pissy that I wasn't letting them have their way. We took a month break to start a Council of Thieves campaign and will be switching back and forth every month or so. The DM who's running CoT? He already wants to get back to playing and now understands my concerns/complaints a little better.

On a whole, out of the 3.0, 3.5, and 4E, I prefer Pathfinder. Once you get used to the slight differences (Dodge and Cleave work differently, to name two changes to fairly common feats), it's a great system.

They need to make their stealth changes official. Stealth as written doesn't work.

Frankie Williamson said:

They need to make their stealth changes official. Stealth as written doesn't work.

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Oh, god. There was a 40-page debate about this on the paizo forum that more or less boiled down to "use some sense when attempting stealth".

E6? Yeah. It's pretty fun.

I did this today: http://paizo.com/products/btpy8mq4?Pathfinder-Battles-Heroes-Monsters-Case

The whole fucking case.

There goes my discretionary spending for the month.

Jesus Christ! When I grow up I wanna be just like you. You know, with more money than sense...

So.... is anyone running a game right now? And that might be interested in playtesting a base class for 4WFG?

If no one is running one you might want to check out the Pathfinder's Society, I'm thinking about checking it out in my area:

http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety

Pathfinder Society is Paizo-only, Golarion-only material. Since I freelance for 3PPs, that would be counterproductive for me.

I am in a friend's homebrew game, what is this class you speak of?

So, I picked up the hardcover of the Pathfinder comic today. It's not half bad. It's not great mind you, not by a long shot, but it's a fun read and for a 200 page hardcover comic, 20 bucks was definitely worth the price of admission. Now, the neatest part is they include Pathfinder RPG material for the adventure in the comic. Stat blocks, maps, adventure hooks, etc. It's fucking brilliant thing to do with a comic based around a tabletop RPG. The art's...a little 90'ish. The artist seems to be channeling a mixture of Joe Mad and Lenil Yu. Overall, it works. The gems in the artwork are definitely the parody covers.

Stuff like







It's better than any official D&D comic I've ever read and the additional RPG material make this a fantastic little bit of novelty in my opinion.

Amazon link : Amazon product

Funny thing is it's cheaper on Amazon.ca. I don't think I've ever seen that happen.

So, with the new rules from Ultimate Combat, and wanting to build archetypes for Paths of Power 2 off the classes I made in Paths of Power 1, I'm having to go back and completely re-write them to make them work better. The Gladiator was really over-complicated and had too many useless / hindering abilities, so it's requiring the most re-writing. The Samurai wasn't bad, it just didn't get many abilities and felt a little underpowered / overly linear. I've added three new abilities and that's made making the Soukihei - "lancer" - archetype much easier.