Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Paizo's Pathfinder: The future of d20 3.5 [backlog]

Last week at the bookstore, I stumbled across Pathfinder Chronicles: Classic Monsters Revisited. This book takes 10 of the most common humanoid monsters of D&D--including kobolds, goblins, bugbears, hobgoblins, orcs, trolls, ogres, lizardfolk, gnolls, and minotaurs--and tries to bring a fresh take on each by going back through both D&D's Monstrous Manual history as well as the scraps of original folklore on which these creatures are based. Though I flipped through only casually, I was quite impressed with what I saw. It was all "fluff", rather than "crunch", but very nicely done. I plan to take a closer look next time I'm in, and possibly pick this one up. [Update: And so I did. I didn't agree with all the characterizations, but reading it forced me to clarify my own. And that's the whole point: encounters with different kinds of humanoids should be significantly different, or what's the point of having more 1HD and 2HD humanoid races other than just Orcs?]

I'd never heard of Pathfinder before though. Turns out it's the product of Paizo Publishing, who used to publish the Dragon and Dungeon magazines. They've released a Pathfinder RPG, currently in beta and downloadable as a free PDF (registration required). Pathfinder is based on d20 3.5 OGL rules, so it's basically like playing D&D 3.5. But they've gone through and tweaked a few rules, streamlined others (including some skills), and beefed up some of the standard classes (so you'll think twice about abandoning them for prestige classes). Again, I only skimmed through the PDF, but I liked what I saw. It was like reading through 3.5 when it first came out: mostly small changes from 3.0, but all that tweaked the game to be a little more fun and a little simpler to play.

Some of the things of note that caught my eye were the alternative to having animal companions and familiars; the many bloodlines that characterize sorcerers based on the source of their magic; 0-level spells are now unlimited at-will powers; grapple and other combat maneuvers are simplified; turning undead is more impressive and useful, acting more as a positive energy burst.

Paizo is also releasing a 96-page adventure every month, forming 6-month long campaigns that take characters from 1st to about 15th level.

All-and-all, I got the feeling that Paizo is providing a lot of support and vitality for the 3.5 rules now abandoned by Wizards of the Coast. If you're leery about taking up 4E just yet (or just want to get a little more mileage out of your collection of 3.5 supplements), don't feel like you've been left behind: check out Pathfinder.

1 comment:

ThornWeaver said...

Excellent review. Having played some of the Pathfinder RPG beta, I've got to say, they do their thing pretty impressively.
Good changes, nothing drastic, and they did make the game a bit more sensible (but still usable with the 3.5 supplements that many of us own and love).
Cheers,
~ThornWeaver