hey everyone,

I realize that we will not likely go back to 3.5 as a system, which to me is unfortunate, but that being said, I would like to start bringing classes and templates over to pathfinder.

I would like to take it upong myself to go through some of the old classes and bring them over as easily as possible. Converting certain abilites and balacing. I will likely be leaving MOST of the classes as intact as possible. The idea behind this is to get a feeling on which classes would be ok and allowed within systems like rianardu and other pathfinder games. Obviously these would probably be considered third party and therefore subject to dm banhammer for people campaigns, but I would like some of these templates and classes back in the system.

I'm hoping that people will be ok with this idea, but i accept that there may be concerns, and i'd be happy to discuss any with you.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks

Keyes

While I would LOVE to begin converting 3.5 to pathfinder (feats, classes, templates, etc), I have a feeling many who play Pathfinder do not want 3.5 included. 3.5 has many, many options, and while I have always liked options, some people dont.

Only catch with your post: you refered to the 3.5 reworked classes as third party material. By the rules we have already decreed for Rianardu, third pary is not allowed, and therefore all 3.5 content would not be allowed in Rianardu. If you would like to do this for future campaign and by permission of said DM, you are more than welcome to (and I will likely join you in your endevour), but I do not forsee the group allowing 3.5 content into Rianardu.

I'd like to propose something a little different...what about attempting to crate our own system as we had previously discussed?  Use elements of various OGL products to cobble together something managable?

Also, I'm down for importing 3.5 stuff with a caveat...

There are many 3.5 splats that bring in 3+ base classes and a host of PrC's, many of which have similar (read, redundant) abilities.  I'd be interested in reworking to the feel of the book.  FOr example, magic of incarnum (one of my favs) has 3 base-classes (None of which are very good).  I'd be interested in importing them as a single class that combined the abilities.  The same goes for Tome of Battle, etc.

Many of the 3.5 classes would make decent PrC's.

I am open to creating our own system, with the understanding that it would not be implimented in Rianardu. I like where Rianardu is right now and dont have any desire to change it.

That being said, I disagree that 3.5 base classes and PrC's have an issue with redundancy. I understand why that might be something that can be perceived, I feel they are different enough to present different options. I really like 3.5. I feel the classes are balanced (or as balanced as they can be with "wizard" being a class) and that the system didn't really need a lot changed. Personally, I wish I had had the opportunity to play 3.5 untouched by "house rules."

I feel that we, as a group myself included, seem to deciding that something is broken before seeing it in play. For example, I am absolutely terrified of the idea of bringing in the Tome of Battle. NOT BECAUSE I THINK ITS BROKEN! But because it is PERCEIVED as broken. No one here (to my knowledge) has ever run anything from that book unblemished. The warblade as a class was, in my opionion, brutalized only because it was perceived to be "broken." Thats one of the reasons I'm against combining classes. I feel that anything that would be perceived as broken would get a giant nerf bat to the point that it would be unplayable.

I was talking to Pixality about a lot of things about our group and how we play. We have a very narrow mind when it comes to "gamebreaking" things. Let's look at our character creation. My initial playings into D&D were very open. I picked a cleric and ran into cool spells like "create campsite." I had no idea what the fuck i was doing with the character, but it was fun so i played. As we progressed in our games and in our settings (3.5, pathfinder, modified halo, etc) some people advanced in playstyle, others did not. I like having characters that had cool RP and were half dragon badass that ripped things in half. Sev liked to customize his characters to do certain things.

Character creation is the biggest part of D&D. It determines what you'll be doing and enjoying as you play. You build a character and you become that character. That character can surprise you. I go back to Mass Effect as an example of my character surprising me with the decisions he made. From being a cold douchbag to trying to save everyone. The change was subtle and gradual but it made the play so much fun. Character creation is a completely customizable artistic factor of the game. Some people create art of straight lines and fine points, and it can be just as beautiful as art that is abstract and colorful.

My point is, that by limiting that artistic vision in a character, takes away a vast amount of fun from the game. When you limit the game for the sake of being scared of what a character can do, you take away from the mystery of the character. The DM has a fantastic artistic piece that he is presenting to the players. Why are we limiting that? Why are we harrassing people who spend more time on their character than we do? If i spend two hours thinking about a character, and Sev spends 48 hours, why is that a bad thing? Sure he's dedicated to the character. His character may be more powerful than mine. That is going to happen. The DM's job is to take that into consideration and try to give everyone a shot at being the hero.

As a group, I think we seriously need to reevaluate what we are doing with limiting character creation. I personally want to spend more time crafting my character. I think it's a great part of the game that I'm missing out on. I'm also terrified of getting attached to an idea of a character, but the DM says no you can't do that. I hate disappointment. It's one of the reasons I was so frustrated with the warblade. I had found something cool that I wanted to do, but a piece that was intergrul to the character was ban hammered out before ever seeing play.

In conclusion, I'd like to revisit character creation as a group and start over. I've changed my mind on a lot of things that terrified me as a DM. One being Shiv's grappling. I had been scared of how potent it was. After seeing Shiv last night however, I have much less of a problem with it. Personally I'd like to give the Rules as Written a fair shot at standing on their own.

I realize that this post took a left turn from the topic, but its something i've been thinking about.

To point out something with Warblade. An infinite loop is impossible as it is explicitly stated that maneuvers cannot be recovered in the same round that they are used. Time stand stills does not give extra rounds but rather an extra full round attack action. Warblades are actually classified as high tier 3.

So, my thoughts:

In an open world, I like to have my options open to me. I like to be able to play weird-ish things that may not work well in a realistic setting but in a fantasy setting can work (for instance: a unarmored frontliner). I like my options open to me so that my character can be diverse from the next in the party, not just in roleplay but also in build.

That being said, there are some times when limiting the players is not an attempt at 'nerfing' or 'untrusting'. I myself have restricted players to better fit the setting of the world (and intend to again in the future). Im not doing it to be mean or because I dont trust my players, but to flavor my world differently than others (for instance, a european campaign, where i limit or ban the oriental themes, like monks).

TL;DR: I like openness as a player, and if we begin to import things I see no reason to group them up, as it would be much easier to keep things the way they are while importing. To be honest, I think many base 3.5 classes will fall behind their pathfinder comparisions. However, the meshing between 3.5 and pathfinder opens up many doors, and it becomes easy to find combinations that work very well together. Powerful characters are a very, very real reality.

I oppose going back to 3.5e (with no Pathfinder) because the 3.5e fighter and paladin eggregiously suck, which Pathfinder system has very elegantly rectified.  In 3.5 everyone who wants to play a fighter should be a warblade instead and everyone who wants to play a paladin should be a battle-oriented cleric instead.  While this is my (and Dave's) opinion, it became apparent during my Legacy campaign, and is the biggest reason why we like Pathfinder so much.

I have no opinion on the (separate and more complicated) issue of adding some 3.5e elements to our scope of what is generally allowed.  I need to read and think about that some more.

Pathfinder created a conversion guide for just such a thing.  Hybriding should be possible.

Keyes:  Have you considered DMing a campaign using your preferred ruleset?  If you want help with certain classes, I'm game.  But I do think this should be on an "as needed" basis.  This is why I suggested making a single initiator class.  Get the mechanics you want, without a huge amount of work.

If you are more interested in playing a class as a player, then need to find a Dm who will run that system with you.

Opal to that arguement at that point everybody should just play the same class and quit whining about it. 3.5 does have more options which leaves many classes less able to compete. However the Warblade functions as the fighter should, it is a similar class and I don't have a problem with players choosing that route instead (however depending on what type of fighter you want to be (tanky or whatever, fighter- dwarven defender would be better). Thats my point there is always better. As for the Paladin or Cleric, I have only ever built one Paladin build and it could hold its own against a war cleric (as they are not optimized) I was a halfling Paladin/Cavelier specializing in mounted combat as I wanted to utilize a feature available to Paladins. Sure mounted could be done without the Paladin mount but it was more convenient and I had it 22 hours a day anyway at 11th level. I dished out around 4 attacks per round that had high atk bonus and did 30+ damage (mind you I was small). That isn't counting boar gore and smiting. I would argue that Paladin could have taken on a war Cleric (sure Clerics have hold spells and the like but Paladin saves are great).

My point is that it is all about finding a creative way to make the game work for you. Contrary to popular belief not everybody power builds every time. However if that is what makes it fun for people so be it. I do think it is wrong to punish other players for putting the work in to make their characters powerful. It is the DMs job to find a place for every character to shine, and that may be some place as simple as using skills. If it is impossible to make a character shine in its own area, then maybe the character was poorly thought out to begin with (and we shouldn't punish other players for one players poor decision making). Roleplaying is important but at the end of the day if the character isn't survivable it will die sooner rather than later.

On another note Paladins also get DR, cannot be compelled, blinds evil creatures, and becomes a good outsider. Sure it doesn't outweigh cleric spellcasting but then again nothing does. One chooses to become a Paladin because they want to. The same arguement could be said for why would you be a melee character at all? All characters have weaknesses. Warblades rely on Int so they need 4 good stats as opposed to the fighters 3. On the same note neither has good will saves so wisdom would be good too. There is a flip side to every coin. I personally love prestige classes even though they generally make you less optimized for spellcasting.

Pathfinder tried to fix some things but it botched them pretty badly. I don't mind playing pathfinder but I liked the variety in characters in 3.5. I was always trying something new, if I played pathfinder for 13 years I may find that it is very lackluster. Part of this is that they heavily discourage multiclassing which is absurd. They gave all of the classes even more powerful abilities at 20th, I am not sure how that is changing the Paladin-Cleric argument because Clerics are still far better.

This is the reason that Keyes and I are going to join my dad's campaign. Have any of you ever been against a shadow dancing vampire? I have and I can tell you that was a TPK. As a DM I have always encouraged building whatever you like, but be aware that I am fully capable of making enemies more nasty in return. This tends to self-regulate itself. The other point is monster versatility. Pathfinder just doesn't have it. There are not enough monsters, my favorite (the illithid) is not even included.

Paladin: Keyes does want to DM a campaign, but it seems that everybody else is already running one. There is simply not enough time to add another one on top of all of the others. Everybody is already playing in a bunch.

Not a shot at anyone in particular but I find that banning stuff is just a lazy way to tackle a problem. It is much easier to gain credibility as a DM and enjoy a fun game with your players if you work with them.

Sorry about my vent but it seems that this thread has turned into speculation on returning to 3.5. Like I said I personally like it because it provides options without forcing anyone to take them whereas pathfinder does the opposite, it provides fewer options and encourage players to stick with the base classes. (For example, the game is D&D shouldn't I be able to play a dragon? 3.5 has a wonderful progression in Dragon Magazine. Sure dragons aren't actually that powerful since you accrue age categories so slowly but it is the POINT of being a dragon regardless of what that actually means power wise for your character).

I would suspect that I have a lot more experience playing 3.5 than many of you. I have seen some over the top power built characters (hide in plain sight at level 2, and some not so optimal ones, straight fighter that refused to even take power attack) but at the end of the day each character can have its place if the DM is a good one.

I must be missing a logic jump here.

We went from Opal saying he doesnt want to play 3.5, he didnt difinitively say he was against hybriding (he would think about it more). Paladin openly welcomed it, alebit with some ideas on how we could simplify. 

I am a HUGE fan of Pathfinder. I think many of the rules changes were well done, and it made the game a bit simpler. That being said, I really liked the versatility of all the different classes in 3.5. 

Other thing:

WHERE DID THE PALADIN VS CLERIC ARGUMENT COME FROM?

I understand paladins are shit in 3.5. 'Nough said. And it is true that Pathfinder gives a *benefit* for those who stick with a class to the bitter end. PRC's however almost all have capstones as well, most of which just as good as lvl 20 abilites from core classes. 

As to the shadow dancing vampire: that can be done, rules as written, in pathfinder too.... im not sure why thats a "we are gonna go play with my dad" reason. Im just so lost in this and dont understand where the vent came from. 

>.<

also as a little side note: I have no problem when a DM restrics the players for the intent of the story. It is up to the dm to create a world and a story that I can have fun with and that is unique. If the DM feels "hey im doing a no magic campaign, spellcasters are out" then "cool!" It may be weird, and I may not like the restriction, but that could make for a cool campaign, so lets see how that works out!

Opal brought up cleric vs paladain and warblade vs fighter as reasons why he did not like 3.5. Pixality was making argruments against those points by showing balancing factors in the game that are designed  in a way to keep classes different, yet on the same level.

Personally, I'm getting to a point where I am more interested in the mechanics of the game as I've seen them from a DM perspective and there are things that I don't like about pathfinder. I feel the game is overpowered in the players favor. The classes drastically overpower the encounters. It's much harder to die. And when it's harder to die, its more frustrating when you die.

The other thing I am coming to realize is that I'm not against "powerbuilding" as I used to be. Sev, I agree with you, restricting things based on the RP in the world is one thing. That is a flavor to the game that you want for the RP of the world. What I was expressing concern for was, Paladin mentioned combining classes to bring them over easier. I am completely 100% against that. My experience with any kind of class outside the core classes was, in my opinion, shit on with the nerfbat to the warblade. I am tired of seeing individuals get mad about people looking for things out side the core classes as a negative thing in the game, without ever seeing them play.

People assume the worst when something new is introduced, myself included. Sure i was against shiv's grappling, but like i said earlier, i saw that it wasnt as broken as I thought it was, now I dont have an issue with it. Even remotely. I'm down with him grappling a Colossol dragon, because at the end of the day, the dragon will swallow hole and it wont be an issue. There are things in the game that balance powerbuilding.

Ok...so this is a whole lot of drama for nothing....

Keyes:  If you want to play a strait up warblade, present the character concept/build to the DM of a campaign and ask for permission.  If you want help developing that concept, I'd recommend not starting out by yelling at your supporters that you oppose them 100% b/c you have the opinion that people only shit on the class.  I'd like to help, but it's tough to get motivated when the only answer is an all or nothing approach.  I've seen this a few times with this group, and I often deal with this same thing in my work.  As is usually the case, the willingness to compromise is the single greatest asset when attempting any kind of collaboration.