"What Do You Think of Pathfinder?" Topic

What is your opinion of the Pathfinder FRPG?

* I love it, it's my principal FRPG
* tried it, didn't like it
* never heard of it
etc.

I have played a few versions. If that is what a DM wants to run a campaign in, I will play it.

Played the hell out of it for years but switched to D&D 5th Edition since Pathfinder is harder to play at higher levels and much harder to GM since prep time is much greater.

Comparatively, D&D 5E requires far less prep to GM and is much easier to play as a player at higher levels.

My last Pathfinder campaign ended about 3 months ago, and several players had to have custom spreadsheets worked out for the different combat options at higher levels. I played an Inquisitor and my own combat conditional modifiers took quite a bit of time to work out each round of combat, making it a true chore to play.

As much as I used to enjoy Pathfinder, I don't think I'll go back.

Pathfinder still has one of the best starter boxes ever made, though.

I found character creation and play in Pathfinder a little too complex for my taste and it only gets worse when they get to higher levels.

Otherwise it is ok.

It's not GURPS

Its not Melee/Wizard or the Fantasy Trip

Bloated, bloated, bloated. Did I say bloated?

I enjoy it but agree that it can get out of control when stats are bloated and item creation is out of control. That said it beats the snot out of the arcade game feel of 4 or 5th edition D&D and I grew up a brown box D&Der

Never heard of it.

Never heard of it. RPGS not my thing though.

It is basically D&D 3rd edition. My group went to D&D 5th edition.

Likd the starter box, but found the full thing way too complex for my aging brain

everything bad about an RPG. They never knew when to stop, so yes, bloated.

Heard of it but haven't seen it. Waiting for cable.

Looks nice, but too many books to buy….

I went for 5E just using the core books, then to Dungeon Crawl Classics for the old school feel and less rules.

I have played and enjoyed it. However the older I become the more I prefer more simple d6 based RPGs.

Not having played any RPGs in many years and just being a casual observer now, the difference between Pathfinder and D&D is very minor. I've heard Pathfinder described as D&D 3.75. It picks up where D&D 3.5 left off. Whereas D&D 5th edition is a throw back to old AD&D 1st and 2nd editions. For my money and ease of play if I were to ever RPG again I would go with "Basic Fantasy RPG". It's free on the internet or you can get paper copies very cheap online. It's basically a rewrite of the Basic D&D rules.

D&D 3.5 as reimagined by someone who's read too many of those 'how to draw manga' books, and not the good ones that actually come from Japan…

d20 games seem overly complex to me (prefer role playing, to min-max'ing, crunching numbers that heavily -- I want to roll relatively simple dice in combat, and move on…). Never tried them, to be honest. Still playing 2e AD&D and loving it. No desire to move to another rules set -- absolutely no need to, either; older rules still work, and no one is kicking my door down to confiscate my out-of-date/out-of-style gaming books. No problem locating players for my old-style games, either. Cheers!

No problem locating players for my old-style games, either.

What is this I feel? Oh yes. Envy.

I agree wholeheartedly with Mark Twain's assessment of the literary sins of James Fennimore Cooper.

Just stumbled across this old thread.

Pathfinder is a great game system. Yes, it's complex. Yes, it's a continuation of DD3.5. Yes, it's somewhat bloated, if you insist on using every splatbook they've published. But it's still a great game, strongly in the tradition of the D&D games we grognards have been playing (off & on) since the mid 70s.

On the news front, this August, Paizo will release a playtest version of the much-awaited second edition of the Pathfinder game. Yes, they are well aware of the irony in publishing a second edition of the RPG that was expressly created by and for folks who didn't want to switch editions (DD3.5 to DD4). But the glimpses we have seen of the upcoming changes on the Pathfinder playtest blog and in several demo games look very promising. They are simplifying a lot of needlessly complex and bloated rules systems and taking the d20 engine to clever and innovative places it has never gone before.