Goto [ Index ]

Pathfinder RPG Alpha

The Pathfinder RPG is a new effort from Paizo Publishing, former publisher of Dragon and Dungeon magazines and current publisher of the best D&D adventures on the market. With the new Fourth Edition of D&D looming, they've decided to continue on with a game based on the openly licensed 3.5 edition instead. A ballsy move, to be sure, but which will be the better game?

This is the "Alpha" release of the rules by Jason Bulmahn; a physical "Beta" book will be available at Gen Con (though will also be a free PDF). They plan to have an open beta for a year and then have the "final" version at Gen Con 2009.

Style

As would be expected, the PDF is pretty and well formatted, a professional product all around. The cover art features their iconic character party (most notably Seoni, the sorcereress with the amazing jugs) battling a white dragon. There's a decent amount of high quality art throughout, albeit repurposed from other Pathfinder and Gamemastery products. Even though this is an "Alpha" it's well edited.

Substance

The book starts by stating its design goals in altering 3.5e - improve the game, add options, and back compatibility. Then, we launch into the familiar litany of Player's Handbook sections.

Races

They keep the "traditional" races - dwarf, halfling, elf, human, gnome, half-orc, and half-elf. They are very familiar, only amped up slightly - an additional +2 to a stat here, an additional ability there. For example, elves have "Unnatural Beauty" which ups friendly NPC starting attitude. (Given our group's experiences in the latest Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path, perhaps they should have called this "Purty Mouth" instead!) In fact, all the races get a net +2 to ability scores; humans get to pick one.

Classes

The alpha version only has the "big four" classes represented (cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard).

Cleric

The cleric is largely the same, although gets more domain powers at about every fourth level. And they can cast orisons (zero level spells) at will. (Cure Minor Wounds got removed to accomodate this.)

Fighter

Heh, the 'fighter'. It always makes me pine for the 'magic-user' of the Basic Set. Anyway, the big change here is a benefit at every level. In between the bonus feats are weapon and armor training, which yield a +1 to AC (armor) or to hit and damage (weapons); the fighter picks a weapon or armor group this applies to and it can be stacked on the same group or spread around as the character likes. The fighter also has a level 20 "capstone ability" (the cleric doesn't) called Weapon Mastery, which autoconfirms crits, increases the crit multiplier, and makes it non-disarmable.

Rogue

The rogue gets promoted to d8 Hit Dice, and also gets some new stuff layered in so that they get something with every level. In this case, it's rogue talents at every even level, which are abilities like the current rogue "special abilities" but that come in lesser denominations suitable for lower levels as well. Sneak attack now works on about everything, which is reasonable. And the rogue has a capstone ability Master Strike, which causes a sneak attack to potentially put to leep, paralyze, or kill based on a Fort save.

Wizard

Again, the wizard is mostly 3.5e standard with some additions. You can take an "arcane bond" to an object instead of a familiar, which allows you to cast any spell you know once a day, but if you're deprived of the object you have to make Spellcraft checks to cast spells. Also, you get "school powers" once every other level from your specialist school, or universal if not specialized. Oh, and d6 Hit Dice!

Skills

Like Star Wars: Saga Edition, 4e, and Monte Cook's Book of Experimental Might (not to mention my gaming group's house rules), Pathfinder streamlines the skill system. You just have "trained class skills" (rank=level+3) and "trained cross-class" (rank=1/2 level) skills. You get a new trained skill every 2 levels. In addition, many skills have been merged - balance, jump, and tumble into Acrobatics, for instance. Deception, Stealth, Theft, and Perception result from this. Yay!

Feats

Many of the feats here are familiar. They have a new section of "combat feats", which are really maneuvers - they're defined as stuff that's not always in effect but that you say you're gonna use. This includes Cleave but also a bunch of new ones - Double Slice! Overhand Chop! Medusa's Wrath! Razor Sharp Chair Leg! No, I'm not kidding. Incidentally - man, there's another picture of Seoni in this chapter and she must have the new "Engorged Zero G Tatas" feat. It appears to have been left out due to editing error.

Combat

Combat is pretty much 3.5e stock - too much so for my tastes, actually, I hope they work on it a bit more throughout the beta phase. They make a couple small tweaks for consistency, like having all the various special maneuvers (bull rush, disarm, grapple, trip, etc) work exactly the same so it's not so fiddly. They did a very clever thing with turning - it's a positive energy burst that does 1d6/2 levels damage to undead and makes them flee, save for half and no fleeing, and heals living people in the area for the same amount.

Spells and Magic

Here you get the details on the school of magic bonuses that wizards. Most of these aren't too impressive - they are frequently "you can cast spell X once per day." Take the sixth level Conjuration School ability - cast Stinking Cloud once per day. Better than a kick in the sack, but not all that hot. The first, eighth, and twentieth level abilities tend to be cooler; either always-on or usable at will to a caster-level defined limit. Cleric domains are very similar, though the powers are more spaced out - this is a little odd, as a cleric can choose two domains. So instead of one ability every two levels, they get two at a time every four levels.

Spells

Here they only focus on a couple spells that needed changing for balance or clarity reasons, mainly grapple related (Black Tentacles, the Hand spells, Entangle).

Running the Pathfinder RPG

This is a "DMG Stub". It talks about constructing encounters using CRs, awarding experience (story awards!) and converting from stock 3.5e.

Playtesting

This is a preliminary version, and so they describe the playtesting process and how anyone can participate!

Summary

The Pathfinder RPG has promise. It's trying to fix some of the problems of 3.5e without tossing out many of the time-honored tropes that people like about D&D. So far, none of the changes are bad; in fact, they're probably less daring than they should aspire to. Our gaming group is discussing not whether to uptake the new rules but when - convert midstream in our current campaign or start with the next one? We had already created homebrew skill rules that are nearly identical to these, and who can say "no" to combat special maneuvers working more smoothly? So in conclusion, the Pathfinder RPG is definitely a great mod to use immediately to 3.5e. It's too early to say what it'll look like and what 4e will look like upon delivery. But if you're in the mood for less change and an incremental change, versus major changes in races, cosmology, etc. - the Pathfinder RPG looks like it has promise.