Forum: Public Forum

Dear players,

I know we play PRPG, but I forgot to give access to the reviews I mentioned last time about the "4e traditionalists" and the "4e-ess" (for 'essentials') crowd.

This is Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

It is a bit long-winded at times, but the argumentation is pretty decent when it comes to market split and specifically the comments on the aim of bringing people back to D&D after the "4e misunderstanding" that the Essential line is supposed to address.

As for the current line of design for Paizo, they have clearly moved from:

• Developing Pathfinder RPG to support the Pathfinder line; as in "The stock of 3.5 D&D Player's Handbook is dwindling, we need a system in print."

• To something more like "Pathfinder RPG has been more successful than expected, i.e. it is more than just 3.5 on life-support for people to buy Pathfinder (the monthly adventure), thus we are developing Pathfinder RPG as the informal leading product.

Their release schedule is more like a playtested system book per quarter than the "hardcover tosh by the monthly shovel" from WotC (as of the dying days of Third Edition), but the Advanced Player's Guide and soon to be released Ultimate Magic are slowly changing the game too. The latter literally brings in a new system, a bit like what Tome of Magic did at the time.

I have said already that for your next level I will allow you to retouch your PC and make the use of the Advanced Player's Guide "legal" in the Rise of the Runelords campaign; but we need to realise that our system is shifting ever further away from Third Edition. It still smells like, and still is, D&D though. Well at least for the time being:

Our PRPG Magic missiles have always hit and our archetypes of Fighter, Mage, Priest and Thief have always been true to the game as in distinct, essential (no pun intended) and requiring party cohesion (Fighter does melee, Mage does attack spells, Priest heals and Thief gets the trap) instead of the 4e mush of "Fighter can heal himself", etc. So far the new base classes complement, without replacing, the core classes but we will need to keep a proper watch on the new Pathfinder RPG options and developments if we do not want to see ourselves turning into heretical "4e-ess"-like fanboys.

Laurent,