Thursday, April 25, 2013

Pathfinder makes me TIRED

Good morning,

I am not trying to start a flame war or any kind of contest between systems.  I'm just posting to show how much of a grognard I am (I guess).

This chart which obviously took a lot of time to make and is quite excellent -- just makes me tired.

Go take a look.  I'll wait.

The chart is for the Barbarian class ONLY.  There are many, many other classes in Pathfinder.  Just the thought of trying to understand all of these feats/powers/thingies is overwhelming to me and my old brain.

Hell, these days spell descriptions in anything but Microlite20 are too much for me.  This is my kind of spellbook.  Heck, this is my preferred way to run a wizard.

I just want to make stuff up on the spot and try to maintain consistency.  I find that my players will remind me of decisions I made and I try to maintain a non-adversarial approach with them.  That works pretty well.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

6 comments:

Trey said...

I hear you. Pathfinder is a fine game, but it's too complicated for my tastes. Almost everything is these days!

Keith Davies said...

To be fair, building the chart didn't take all that long. I've got software (http://www.graphviz.org/) that does most of the heavy lifting. The longest part was just collecting the set of rage powers in the first place.

However, I agree with the sentiment -- Pathfinder is a remarkably fiddly beast and my tastes for that kind of complexity have diminished.

Aaron E. Steele said...

On the other hand, I love the pathfinder minis.

Jesse Rodriguez said...

I'm playing in a now on hiatus Pathfinder campaign, and I am playing a barbarian. I have an index card for my main weapon, on one side is the formula for the 4 different types of attacks I can make with it. I enjoy the game, because I have a great a dm and I like the other players, but it is a hassle.

Unknown said...

As someone who rather likes Pathfinder, I have to agree with you that it can get tiring at times. While all those fiddly bits allow players to further customize their character, they also have the habit of making it more complicated than the game needs to be. That unnecessary crunch is one of the reasons I became burned out recently.

Tony Bro001 said...

I've barely played Pathfinder so can't comment about that system, but after witnessing a D&D 4e game GM by a friend (who is a min-maxer at heart) I think I'll stick to my retroclone of choice (C&C).

Honestly, it was like some weird CCG where players were continually calling out power names for extra attacks and damage.

C&C has just 5 Barbarian powers from 1st upto 13th level, you don't start raging until you're 3rd level.

Less is more and puts themphasis back on the Roleplay rather than Rollplay.