This month, I’m talking about the Pathfinder RPG. This game is built on the Open Game License that Wizards of the Coast put out for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, which was an upgrade from D&D Third Edition. I owned, and played, both D&D 3 and D&D 3.5, and when D&D Fourth Edition came out, I bought a copy of it… and tried. I really tried hard to enjoy D&D 4. It just was such a completely different game, and it was just such a painful experience. Combat went on forever… a fight that lasted five or six rounds took over an hour to play. Role-play itself was mostly ignored in the rules. (As you may see, I have a very low opinion of the Fourth Edition rules.) On the other hand, Piazo – a company that had been publishing D&D’s magazines “Dungeon” and “Dragon”, as well as adventure modules and other supplements for Third Edition (and later 3.5), decided to give the players what they asked for, and created Pathfinder. This game took what players liked about 3.5, and improved it, and smoothed it out a bit – and boosted the power level of just about everything. You could think of it as D&D 3.7. I waited a long time to pick up the Pathfinder core rules, but after reading them (and now playing a session of Pathfinder), I’m glad I did. A player of 3.5 could join a game with almost no adjustments. The few “new rules” are things that many people had used as house rules: the cleric’s “Turn Undead” becoming a “Channel Divine Energy” feature, doing direct damage to undead monsters, for example. Each class got a power boost, but a logical one. Each race is also a little bit better than their 3.5 equivalents… and the Half-Orc is now my favorite race, because suddenly their negatives aren’t overwhelming. Game play is smooth, and would be smoother still if I didn’t have so many versions of D&D’s rulesets rattling around in my head. (The way things work in Second Edition isn’t necessarily the way things work in Third, 3.5, or Pathfinder, and I have a tendency to remember an old rule instead of the newer one. Hey, I’m old, and so are the rules that I’m used to.) Character creation is straightforward, and again VERY familiar to anyone who’s built characters for D&D 3.5 (or d20 Star Wars, or d20 Modern, or any other d20 OGL game, for that matter.) The new way buying skills work is great, and much easier to remember. Tracy and I both agree that the “luck” rules from Rangers and Rabbits would have saved us quite a bit of hit point damage, and we may “house-rule” that rule into our games in future. Right now, we’re playing RAW (“Rules As Written”) as much as we can, and it works pretty well. This is a great game, and I highly recommend it. I think my favorite is still Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition… but Pathfinder’s right up there, now. (And, after playing a Pathfinder session, I want to check out Starfinder – see the article I wrote discussing it -- even more!) I may be discussing this game again next month, so let me give you a brief rundown of the party. It’s an unusual one for us, as I usually play a Paladin and the rest of the players play characters that get along with Paladins well. First, Tracy’s fighter: Lursa is a half-orc, wearing the best armor she can afford (scale mail), doing the old-fashioned sword-and-board (well, axe & shield) routine. The cleric, Koloth, is Lursa’s cousin, and another half-orc. In Pathfinder, half-orcs add two points to any one ability score (of the player’s choice); Koloth added his to Charisma. Koloth is a very persuasive fellow, wearing scale mail (again, it’s the best he could afford) and swingin’ a big ol’ great axe. The party’s rogue is a gnome, Querk. Querk is by far the smallest party member, and I’m not completely sure of her motivation. Rounding out Our Heroes is our wizard, Hix Nolothomir. Hix, an elf, isn’t a typical elf wizard – he specialized in Necromancy (or as he likes to call it, “Post-Mortem Communications and Deceased Personnel Management”). I rolled pretty well, and after being adjusted for Hix’s Elf race, he ended up with a Strength of 15, a Dexterity of 19, a Constitution of 14, an Intelligence of 20, a Wisdom of 16, and a Charisma of… 10. I figure he’s a creepy, Sheldon (“Big Bang Theory”)-like fellow. VERY smart, positive that he knows better, and more, than anyone else, but a severe dead/undead geek, which bothers everyone around him. He has no armor (wizard!), but that obscenely high Dex gives him a pretty good Armor Class (AC) of 14; casting Mage Armor brings that up to 18 (for one hour per level). Hix is going to be insanely fun to play, I think. I can’t wait for the next session! Roll some dice, let’s kill some goblins! Sum non Satis? Commodore Tank Clark, SFMD Team Leader, 33rd STARFLEET Rangers (“The Paladins”) “Have Phaser, Will Travel”
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Commodore Tank ClarkCommodore Clark has been the Team Leader of the 33rd STARFLEET Rangers for several years. His monthly articles about games (usually Role-Playing Games -- RPGs -- but sometimes about other tabletop forms of entertainment) appear regularly in the Regulator Charge!, the ship's newsletter. Archives
September 2017
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