Reasons to Love Pathfinder
Here's some of what makes Pathfinder (1st ed.) work for me:
- Level Loss: Now with far less cheese and book-keeping than any earlier rules: Level Loss
I've never liked level loss as a mechanic. Too much book keeping, especially when "rolling back" multiple levels, plus it makes players feel jerked around--often even more than character death. The Pathfinder technique provides something that hurts, without hurting the game.
- Low Level Character Flexibility: Characters start out being able to do a lot of things. Some call this overpowered, I call it skipping the sucky levels.
Plus, what they can do isn't overwhelming once a player has managed to cope with the basics of making a character in the first place.
- Cleaner Skills Tree: earlier versions of d20 split too many hairs on skills. PFRPG undoes a lot of that without making the skills so general they're meaningless.
There are still a couple of places I see room for consolidation, but overall it's a big improvement for both game masters and players (the Beginner's Box is even better, though there are a couple of skills I'd put back in for a regular game.)
- Levels Mean Something: Pretty much each level has a tangible advancement associated with it, not just more HP and a higher number for power calcs.
It's not just that there's something to every level, most any system can slice and dice to have "something" at every level. It's also that the number of levels is limited, and there's a "capstone" ability associated with each class.
- Core Classes Count: They aren't just where you park your character until you take a prestige class.
The capstone abilities are part of what makes this work, but there's also the fact that the core classes are powerful enough to not put a player who sticks with one at a big game disadvantage at mid and high levels.
It's not that More Power = More Fun, it's that reasonably equal levels of power between core and prestige classes keeps core classes fun. (Personally, I really dislike the entire concept suggested by the term "Prestige Class.")
Reasons to Dislike Pathfinder...
It's good, especially in its simplest forms, but it ain't perfect...
- Stacking Effects: There are still so many conditions and spell effects that may be affecting a character at any time that it takes a spreadsheet to keep track of the net results.
- Plussing Up: a related problem is the endless opportunities for plussing up a character or their action's effect. A large party can compile their abilities to turn one or more of their number into an overpowered weapon of mass destruction.
-
Powergaming: The game's mechanics strongly encourage powergaming, for the above reasons. This results in OP characters alongside 'ordinary' characters of more casual players, with the ordinary characters overawed in practically every situation by the powergamers' tuned characters. The problem here is twofold, aside from some players being left out of play by power differentials:
A. The game is too mechanically complex for a more casual player to build a viable character.
B. There are too many weak options among the high powered ones. The flavor text makes everything sound superlative, while far too many feats and other character options are really too limited in actual application to be at all powerful. - Slow Play: These flaws result in slow combats and leveling that feels as much fun as doing taxes, especially at level 5 and above. They also encourage constant rulebook consultation because of the degree of complexity. Play is slow, too much game time is spent discussing and tweaking mechanics, rather than in-game actions.
- Insignificance of Choices: as the game grew with book after book, and too many options, the core mechanical problem with Pathfinder becomes apparent--it gains 'game balance' by turning every choice into a scissors/paper/rock decision. Once enough options are accumulated, their actual nature stops actually mattering (so long as you're not wasting slots on the ones that suck.) In the end, every class, every race, and every character just feels like a cookie cutter "Level X Character" with different skinning on the same abilities as any other similarly leveled character.
Reducing the Suckage
It is possible to limit the issues...
- Limit Levels: Pathfinder plays best up to level 5 or 6. Many variants stop standard character levelling at one of these levels, with additional levels gained granting only Feats rather than class level abilities.
-
Limit Books/Classes: Too many books and supplements contribute to Pathfinder's problems. Added complexity, too many variations on classes, too many Feats with severe mechanical impact. Fight back by restricting the game to a small selection of core books. For example, limit the game to just the Core Book, APG, ARG. Or, even better, run a Core Book only campaign, with the sole modifier of replacing Rogues with Ninjas (which do a better job of thematically capturing the Rogue type than the original Rogue.)
Or a Beginner Box campaign, perhaps using some of the online variants to extend it to 5 levels.