Weekend Review - Pathfinder RPG Part 1

During this month of GenCon, my reviews will be concentrating on Pathfinder.  One of the best things to happen to role-playing in the last decade was the creation of 4th edition. True it created a rift in the community for a while, with the edition wars, but though it all came rebirth. People who didn't like 4e were suddenly free to explore new systems, a resurgence in all RPGs occurred. This is how I see what happened, The giant had left the door open, and the smaller companies flooded in. We just need to keep bringing in new gamers. The Golden Age is long gone, the Dark Ages are behind us, time for the Renaissance in gaming. Amongst the new systems leading this Renaissance in gaming is Pathfinder. A new system built on the foundation of old. For a taste of the rules for those unfamiliar with Pathfinder, go to the Pathfinder Reference Document on Paizo's site!

Pathfinder Role-Playing Game Review

This is a review of the core system rules for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, as published by Paizo, under the OGL. This is an update to the 3.5 Ruleset for Dungeons & Dragons.

First Glance: This book is HUGE, and it’s HEAVY; almost 600 pages Full color, glossy print, with gorgeous artwork. Glancing through You see all the familiar faces, from the fighter to the monk, the sorcerer and wizard, druid, cleric, all the core classes are there. No Major changes to equipment, though heavy armors did get a 1 AC Value jump. Only 1 major weapon change, with the spiked chain losing its reach.

Main Review: Pathfinder RPG, premier game line of Paizo publishing. The book gives you all the rules to play the game. All the classes from 3.5 core rules are included in this edition, from the cleric to the sorcerer, the core races included as well. The races received updates, each race receives a +2 to a physical, and a +2 to a mental stat and a -2 to a stat. There are many updates to the system, some sorely needed such as the grapple rules. All maneuvers from disarms to grapple are now covered under the Combat Maneuver system. Some of the updates are just new fluff powers, wizard’s gain new school powers, all the melee classes receive amazing revisions, fighters, rangers, paladins, and rogues. Cleric domains are updated. Many save or die/suck spells were changed to be not quite so brutal. Melee classes got a major boost. However, it is still the core system, thus it still has high level play issues, where combat at the upper levels can take a long, long time, and have a lot of book keeping, though the polymorph updates definitely helped iron out some of the issues by making bonuses static, not dynamically based upon what you changed into.One really interesting change is the Hit Die change, low BAB classes all have d6s, medium have d8s and full have d10s, except the d12 barbarian exception, this makes characters a little more hardy. I like the change, many do not.

As classes were the major update to the rules. I'll concentrate a portion of the review on classes. 
Barbarians: rage powers have been updated with additional rage powers which can be activated grant special abilities such as scent, or the ability to enter a rage even when fatigued.
Bards: Bards get a major updates to the performance abilities. In addition they gain a slew of new tune abilities, culminating in the capstone ability of Deadly performance.
Clerics: Clerics get a updates to their domains, adding additional flavor to the domains, instead of just receiving the single ability, with and additional 8th level power, while the domain spells got updated. Channel energy has been updated to also be used as a healing ability. A much debated change was the loss of Heavy Armor as a starting proficiency.
Druids: Druids received few updates, with a slight shifting of wild shape uses. Wild shape receives the same polymorph updates as the others.
Fighters: Fighters are majorly updated, while the retaining the bonus feats, they gain many new abilities making them a powerful force in world, gaining Armor Training, Weapon Training, Armor Mastery and the Capstone ability Weapon Mastery.
Monks: No major updates to monks in the Core rulebook, however, with so many abilities to modify,, they become very mutable in the Advanced Player's Guide. Flurry of Blows, and Ki (type) mechanics are the only real chance to the core monk.
Paladins: Paladins get a major rework, with smite and mercy abilities, in addition, divine bond, no longer is just a mount, it was be a weapon instead. The mercy ability combines the cure disease, blindness and other powers into a pool with expanded uses. A Code of conduct is added, returning to an earlier less carefree type of Paladin, with great power....

Rangers: Rangers return to being able to take a little more abuse, as they can now wear Medium armor once more. In addition, they gain favored terrains, and hunter's bond, hunter's bond replaces the animal companion rules and allows those rangers that don't want an animal companion to for a bond with his party instead.


Rogues: Used to be a 1 level dip class, now with rogue talents, rogues are fun for much more than just a dip class. Rogue talents include many things, from minor magic or weapon finesse, to the advanced talents of dispelling attack or even an opportunist strike, free AoO one a just struck opponent. The Master Strike capstone adds a sleep, paralysis or kill effect to a sneak attack...deadly!

Sorcerers: Sorcerers, while still trailing a level behind their arcane brethren, have bloodline powers, giving a class skill, bonus known spells, and powers throughout their career, as an example, the draconic bloodline grants, claws (1st), dragon resistance (3rd), breath weapon (9th), wings (15th) and power of wyrms (20th). These bloodlines really make sorcerers different from wizards.

Wizards: Wizards get some love as well with their own schools, granting a 1st and 8th level ability based upon the school. Including a Universalist school, with a nice little metamagic ability allowing free metamagic use based upon level.

Artwork: Epic! The artwork is second only to the artwork in the new Legends of the Five Rings, and pretty much only because I have a few gripes about the equipment illustrations which are recycled from the Equipment Card set.  The solid use of the Iconic characters throughout the book really ties everything together; these iconic figures are carried through the other Paizo products.

Replay Value: Excellent, as an RPG, there’s always good replay value. Pathfinder is amazingly well suited to running long term campaigns, with the advanced books, such as the Advanced Player’s Guide, Ultimate Magic, and the upcoming Ultimate Combat.

Comprehension Level: Good. There’s a lot of information in the Core Rulebook, so much information that it can be daunting. It is well written however, and the website provides plenty of answers to FAQs. The forums at Paizo.com contain hundreds of experienced players willing to help newbies with questions as well.

Humor: Pathfinder RPG is produced as a serious RPG. Not a lot of humor going on here, it’s pretty cut & dry.

Game Mastering: To game master; This game pretty much requires experience in previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons, I personally would not recommend picking up Pathfinder with the intention of running it if you’re not already somehow familiar with the system.

Family Rating: 9 and up, due to complexity of the game.  Lots and lots of number crunching, if you’re a parent looking to pick up something as a present, and you’re not a gamer yourself, you should find a gaming group for the kids.

Price Tag:  The core rulebook will set you back $49.99, however, Paizo has a nice price point for their PDFs and that is only $9.99. The Gamemastery Guide is NOT required to play (This supplement will be reviewed in a future post). To run the game you will also need at a minimum the Bestiary in addition to the Core Rulebook. Other supplements such as the Advanced Player’s Guide and Ultimate Magic are excellent resources, which both have archetypes, which introduce many, many choice options, to your characters. In addition to new classes, and race options.

Value: For me, it’s well worth the money. This is the true successor to 3.5. This is the culmination of 30 years of D&D.

Overall Rating: EPIC! This is quickly becoming THE fantasy RPG. As it uses the base 3.x OGL system, older adventures are easily converted, or useable as is (calculate party value as 1 level higher).

Note: To properly go over this book in detail it will take several reviews, I will return to Pathfinder Core review in a redux review in the future. Truthfully I could spend an entire month reviewing just this book.  Part 2 will cover skills and feats.

Weekend Review - Gam3rCon edition

The weekend review this week is from the games we played at Gam3rCon. (just me on Friday)

Friday night, Well I got my first taste of 4e with a foray into Gamma World, and I must say, the taste was non-descript. While the changes from 3.0 aren't as drastic as I had thought they were, it was about what I expected. But onto the Gamma World front, the changes in the way characters play completely changes the existing world, part of what I enjoyed about Gamma World was the exploration for ancient tech, the secret societies, and the good and the bad mutations. Pure Strain humans, mutant humans, mutant animals, etc, made the game really fun. Exploring to find old tech and the slow progression is what I liked about it. So it was different, kinda fun, but I think I'll take a pass on it. If constantly mutating characters are your thing, by all means have fun. The second game I played on Friday was Guillotine, a Wizards of the Coast card game from 1997,which you take part in three days of the French Revolution as a competing executioner, most the nobles are valued from 1 for a rival executioner to 5 points for Marie Antoinette or King Louis, then there are negative cards such as the -1 Martyr or the -3 Hero of the People. . You take turns using action cards to do things such as move a noble in the line, giving someone the next noble in line with the after you card or even stealing a noble.  After the action phase you take the head of the noble at the front of the line, executing any special actions that card may have. It's a very clever game and I highly recommend it for a quick game.

Saturday, The boys and I started out with Outbreak Undead. Now this is a really fun game, while it could probably be played with other systems, the SPEW-AI character creation rules let you actually create yourself (to the extent you answer honestly) and includes an interesting mechanic called Gestalt dice, which are handed out equal to your age as a one-time bonus, to grant use of specific skills you really know, but aren't on the character sheet. The game is designed for campaign play, and I believe the system really kicks in for extended play, for one-shots, it's pretty easy to blow through your ammo and survive the encounter, but what do you do next time with no ammo, and 20 additional zombies.This is on my future purchase list.  The next game we played was Zombie Munchkin!! You know how much we love Munchkin, and the boys had been wanting to play this. There was no disappointment, the game played pretty fast, and within an hour or so, we were done, I used the tricky card which allowed me to piggy back off Ian's combat and steal the two levels I need to victory! Now Zombies seems slightly higher power level than regular Munchkin. But having Zombie hordes jumping in on combats tends to make it more hectic, I'm curious to see how it plays out.Boys and I played Guillotine to pass the time before we got into the Outbreak Undead game, they really liked it too.

Sunday Sunday SUNDAY!! Well I was prepping for my own Zombie fun running "28 Sleepcycles Later" Alpha Complex under seige of the walking dead in ZOM sector, but while I was preparing my scenario, Sean got to try out his new ICONS RPG (which he won for the Zombie Kill of the Day, shanking a Zombie with a toothbrush in the eyeball) with Ian, as Chris Czerniak ran them through a quick scenario, the boys really enjoyed it, and I believe THEY specifically will recommend it. After they finished, with Icons, that group came over and played PARANOIA! Running the pure mayhem of Paranoia was a blast, from the mumbling mousy violet citizen with the kill first fine second attitude briefing officer to the PLC room with one clerk, and 2 miles of empty line, 500 windows and a 30 minute break, after the brisk jog to reach the one clerk the Hygiene Officer ran a surprise inspection , which resulted in not one but TWO emergency scrubdowns, the trip to R&D resulted in the first clone replacement as a the tiny closet was ripe for theft by the Pro-Tech secret mission, but the 20 rolled on the sleight of hand caused a hilariously deadly incident. Then it was onto ZOM sector, where more experimental weaponry and mutant powers led to more deaths and a brain scrub at debriefing. I always recommend Paranoia. I know everyone had fun, from the newby role player to the veteran of Paranoia, and I know one was talking about convincing his friends to get into it...My job is just beginning....

Game on!

Weekend Review: Earthdawn RPG

Earthdawn 3^rd Edition

This is a review of the core system rules for the Earthdawn, which includes the Player’s Guide and the Game Master’s Guide. Available in both print and PDF format from Mongoose Publishing’s Flaming Cobra Imprint. Licensed from FASA Corporation by RedBrick Ltd.

First Glance: This is Earthdawn, the game I remembered from FASA, from the artwork to the system, this is Earthdawn. The cover art is absolutely gorgeous, evoking the feel of Ancient ruins with the use of an Aztec calendar style mask, on a solid background. It’s begs you to look inside to find what is within.

Main Review: Earthdawn is fun system, it uses a step die system, with exploding dice. This was an early innovator of a hero point system, through the use of Karma Points. While Karma has been updated the usage has not. Earthdawn uses a non-Vancian skill based magic system, which eliminates part of the 15 minute adventure day problem of other systems. Earthdawn uses a wound system, and had recovery checks long before the newest edition of the Dungeons & Dragons. All magic is thread based, such that you weave part of yourself into the magic of the world, experience is measured as Legend points, the more your legend grows, the more your reputation grows. You might find a powerful legendary item such as Purifier, but not realize its full potential until much later in the game, as you explore the history and prove yourself worthy of its greatest secrets through deeds. The Horrors should be gone, but they still linger, corrupting name givers feeding on the fear, and hatred, like psychic vampires. Dragons are still around, some protect their humans like pets, others just eat them, Dragons are the oldest of the name-givers, and the most powerful. Players need not know a lot of information about Earthdawn, as they can just be leaving their Kaers, at the end of “The Scourge”. Much of the information contained in the supplements from the original system have been brought straight into the player’s guide, such as the Air Sailor and Scout Disciplines. The talents have been slightly altered so that every 3^rd circle Warrior doesn’t have the exact same disciplines, which it s very nice change. The skill system has been updated nicely so it doesn’t feel slapped on any more. Even the step table has been updated to eliminate the d20 and make the curve much more balanced. Another balancing issued was addressed by adding a point buy system for attributes. Not needed, but more balanced.

In Earthdawn you don’t play a mundane character, you play an adept, someone who taps into the magical energies to increase your ability with a sword or a bow, give you the ability to leap great distances or use magic in spell form. You don’t have classes in Earthdawn, you have a discipline, though you can be multi-disciplined, it will slow down your advancement. Your strength and the weapon itself determine what damage you do, instead of a static bonus, strength step is added directly to the weapon step to get an over-all step. It’s a game which must be played to fully understand.

Artwork: Good. The artwork is decent, most is recycled artwork from previous editions all the way back to the original FASA Jeff Laubenstein artwork, which to me is Earthdawn. The color plates from the first edition are gone, which is unfortunate as there were some beautiful pieces of color art in there.

Replay Value: Excellent, as an RPG, there’s always good replay value. Earthdawn is a big world, but with many enemies, no single group would encounter all the major horrors, or find all the legendary treasure.

Comprehension Level: Good. The rules are decently written, there are some editing errors, but not too bad.

Humor: Not so much humor in the main game, the older version had a bit more fluff humor, but there’s some to be had.

Game Mastering: Game Mastering Earthdawn is about weaving a story; it’s not a super difficult system to master, though creating appropriate challenges can be difficult as there is no Challenge Rating system in place like the d20 systems. Even at upper power curve of the game, it still plays quickly, and is very fun, as it doesn’t bog down with 20 feats and iterative attacks, damage scales with level as the steps increase.

Family Rating: Tween+, Earthdawn is a world of great upheaval, with truly horrific monsters, from predatory mutant baby calves, to the Verjigorm, the Corrupted Dragon. Even the zombies, cadaver men, are meaner, quadrupling their attacks if they’re wounded. The rules are easy enough for younger players to grasp however, and if the GM can tweak the world a bit, it can be fun for younger crowds.

Price Tag:  The price to play is decent, but to Game Master you’ll need at a minimum the Player’s Guide and Game Master’s Guide. Costing $39.99 retail each. This is on par with Industry average for B&W Hard Cover editions. Player’s Companion and Gamemaster’s Companion are needed to take a campaign beyond circle 8. The Namegiver’s Companion, while not required, definitely adds lots of nice fluff, and several race specific disciplines.

Value: For me, it’s well worth the money. It is one of my favorite systems and the setting is fun as well.

Overall Rating: EPIC! This is High Fantasy at its greatest, the progress from young adept to legendary adventurer is definitive, and advancement comes in little steps, almost addictive.