So, Paizo Publishing has decided to put out a product that will, I suppose, compete with 4th Edition. In a bold and, I think, savvy move, they have released an alpha version of The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, so that people can read it, play it, and provide them with feedback that they will use to make it better, stronger, funner. I downloaded it last night and gave it a cursory read. I’ll preface this by saying that I was excited going in. I’m generally a fan of Paizo, and I’m generally a fan of free products. Thus, I was happy to give this thing a look and see just how they plan to fix 3.5.

My overall impression, after an admittedly brief look, was a resounding “meh”. I didn’t see anything particularly revolutionary or interesting in the rules. They’ve tried to maximize compatibility with existing products wherever they could, which means that they’re pretty limited in what they can change. They want to fix things like player durability at low levels and slow combat at high levels, but many of the problems the seek to fix are problems inherent to the core of the system, not just subsystems that can be re-written. How can you fix slow play at higher levels without eliminating iterative attacks or doing something about spell bloat for magic users? How can you make lower-level PCs more durable without changing the way experience points are calculated and levels are gained? And if you change that, you’ll have to change things like magic item creation and spells with XP components, because the value of the experience point has suddenly changed.

Pathfinder seems to me more like a band-aid solution than a true repair; too many of the system’s flaws are in the middle of tangled webs of rules subsystems to be fixed while still maximizing compatibility with the basic rules system. You either fix the system, or you make a compatible product, but you have to choose one of the two.

Now, I’ll admit that maybe I’m wrong about this. Maybe future iterations of Pathfinder will provide more solutions to 3.5′s issues, and maybe they’ll be a little bit bolder with their mechanics. My main issue, though, is that I don’t understand who their target audience is. Those who, like me, are kind of tired of the current version of D&D and want something fresh and new that doesn’t get weighed down by its own body of rules will immediately switch to 4th Edition. We’re probably not going to buy Pathfinder. Those who don’t want 4th Edition, who think that the current rule set is fine, may be willing to try Pathfinder, but will they be willing to pay full retail price for an incremental upgrade? In most cases, probably not. The problem is that, while Paizo seeks to solve 3.5′s ills, Pathfinder doesn’t really do anything that new or exciting. It’s the same old 3.5, just a little bit different. Is it better? Hard to tell.

But really, don’t take my word for it. Follow the link at the top of this post, download the alpha (it’s totally free), and read it yourself. If nothing else, the artwork in the book is stellar.

When I first got my DS, my introductory game was The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. It was fantastic, in every sense of the word; one of the best games I’ve ever played. Hungry for more Zelda goodness, but knowing that that was the only title for the DS, I purchased The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap for the GameBoy Advance. At first the mechanics and gameplay were charming and fun, but it quickly become an exercise in frustration; the puzzles were obscure, the boss fights were not particularly fun, and I had to resort to walkthroughs entirely too frequently.

I suppose, in a way, Phantom Hourglass probably spoiled me a little; it was innovative and intuitive at the same time, and the puzzles were challenging in a way that was fun rather than frustrating. The game also had that secret ingredient, that extra special bit of personality that made it more than the sum of its parts. The Minish Cap, while not a bad game, lacked many of these traits, and so disappointed me. I’m finished with it now (after a boss fight that was, you guessed it, frustrating and not particularly fun), and I think I’m going to play Phantom Hourglass again. It’s been a few months since I played it, so it’s no longer fresh in my mind, and I’d like to remind myself what a Zelda game should really be like.

Yesterday, I ran another proto-4E module; this time, instead of using one that I downloaded from the Internet, I created one myself. And yes, I have observations on that process:

1. Re-purposing monsters is easy. I mean, really easy. On the one hand, monsters are pretty distinct from each other, and each have unique “schticks” that differentiate them. On the other hand, it’s easy to alter those schticks a little bit, change their flavor, and leave most of the mechanics the same in order to create a monster that feels different to the PCs but takes very little work to create. Many of the creatures that my PCs fought were re-purposed in this way, largely because they were fighting a lot of ratmen, and ratmen do not appear in any of the leaked 4E monster documents. A goblin picador became a ratman lasher, complete with barbed whip. An orc raider became a ratman mutant, using claws instead of a battle-axe but attacking twice as quickly (though they never actually got to this encounter). The hobgoblin warcaster became a human mage, a cult leader of considerable oomph. I even got to use the shadar-kai chainfighter, transmogrifying it into a ratman chain-fighter and replacing one of its abilities with a chain grapple attack (which it never actually got a chance to use). I even dabbled in creating new creatures; I created a non-combatant NPC, whom the PCs were escorting. She had a weak attack with a dagger that did only 1 point of damage and she had only 10 hit points and very low defenses (she was based loosely on minion rules). She did, however, have a recharging ability that allowed her to heal allies and grant them saving throws.

2. Encounter design seems easier. Granted, I don’t know the experience point value of all of the creatures I used (and some may have been more or less powerful after modification, which may have affected their XP value), and I don’t know how much XP a level X encounter should be worth. So, I eyeballed it. I put together encounters that I thought my PCs could handle, and some of the tougher encounters I made easier by making my bad guys flee when a certain condition was met. Overall, it seemed pretty easy to create encounters by just eyeballing them, and I really think it’s going to wind up being more art than science.

Now, that’s creating an adventure. I created an adventure with six encounters total, and many of them were designed to be quite challenging. I had two players, each controlling two of the six PCs. Mike played as the cleric and the ranger, while Cary played as the paladin and the warlock. One defender, two strikers, and a leader; no controller. At first I thought this might be a problem, but my players were savvy and picked up on some of the finer points of 4E combat quickly (even Cary, who had never played 3E), and the lack of a controller didn’t seem to disrupt the balance of the game. Here are some observations on the four encounters that we got through yesterday; I’ll go encounter by encounter.

Encounter 1: Ambush!
The PCs had been hired by a local lord to escort a healer, Illyria Jeren, to the town of Amber, where a plague was killing off the townsfolk. On their way to Amber, the party was ambushed by bandits hiding in the trees on either side of the road. The PCs were not surprised, however; the ranger spotted two of them and alerted everyone else–in elven–to their presence (thank you Passive Perception). This allowed everyone to make a Perception check to scan the area, and the cleric wound up spotting three more bandits. All told, there were two bandits with maces, two archers, and a bandit leader with a hand crossbow and a rapier (based on the defiant rake). Two level 1s, two level 2s, and a level 5.

The ranger managed to get the highest initiative roll, and promptly fired an arrow at the closest archer. The paladin wasn’t so lucky; a bandit charged him and got in a good hit with his mace, both dealing damage and causing the poor paladin to be dazed for one round. The other melee bandit charged the warlock, but ended up missing. The cleric moved to protect Illyria while the warlock cursed his foe and fired an eldritch blast, dealing significant damage. The two bandit archers took shots at the paladin and the ranger, while the bandit leader came out of the trees and advanced, firing his hand crossbow at the paladin. The battle continued in a similar manner; the closest archer was eventually bloodied, at which point he turned tail and ran. Next down was one of the bandits, also bloodied, and also fleeing. In the third round of combat, an unseen ally began firing arrows at the bandit leader from hiding; nobody managed to spot him during the combat. One of the bandits was killed, while the rest fled, but not before the leader took some significant damage: a critical hit from the ranger that almost took him from full hit points to bloodied in a single shot (1 more hit point would have done it), and a well-placed witchfire from the warlock.

Afterward, the unseen ally revealed himself and introduced himself as Erik, a local hunter. A few Diplomacy and Insight checks revealed information about the bandits, and their ties to the plague and the ratmen that had begun appearing in the area.

Observations: The paladin makes a really good defender. His marking ability is pretty potent in that it deals 8 points of damage when the enemy attacks someone else, so it provides a pretty good incentive for people to focus on the paladin. Combine that with the fact that the paladin had a really high AC and plenty of hit points, and it makes him a really good defender. The ranger and the warlock both did significant damage during the fight, and were probably most directly responsible for defeating most of the enemies. The cleric, unfortunately, wasn’t rolling very well and continually missed his targets. He did get in a Healing Word, which helped the injured ranger out.

From the bandits’ side, there was some unintentional teamwork built into the group. The mace-wielding bandits had the ability to daze opponents with their charge attacks, granting all of their allies Combat Advantage against the dazed character. Every single bandit present dealt extra damage, either 1d6 or 2d6, when they had Combat Advantage. A nasty combination that never actually wound up working, because only the paladin was dazed, and only once, and only for one round, and was never hit by anyone else during that time.

Encounter 2: Abduction
The PCs made their way to Amber and were let in despite the quarantine through a combination of Erik’s vouching for them and a letter produced by Illyria proclaiming what they were there to do. They stayed at a local inn, the Traveler’s Rest, for the night, allowing them to recover fully from the bandit attack. However, during the night, they suffered another surprise attack. This time, there were four melee bandits, one bandit mage, and two ratman lashers. So, four level 1s, two level 2s, and a level 3.

The ranger, being an eladrin, had only had to enter trance for four hours in order to rest fully, so he was awake and unsurprised. Everyone else had to take time to wake up. Had I know the specific values granted by armor and shields, I would have ruled that nobody was wearing their armor; lacking those things, and for the sake of simplicity, I allowed everyone to use their armor instead. The ranger was attacked by a lasher while everyone else was assaulted in their beds by bandits. The second lasher went after Illyria, binding her with his whip and pulling her toward the stairs down. The ranger bloodied the lasher he was facing, but as soon as he saw Illyria being taken away, he used his Fey Step ability to teleport out of the room he was trapped in by the lasher. Unfortunately, the lasher escaped with Illyria while a bandit pushed the unfortunate ranger back into a corner from which he could not escape without suffering an opportunity attack.

Meanwhile, the cleric rushed out into the hallway, ignoring the bandit that had engaged him, only to be knocked prone by a spell cast by the bandit mage. The paladin did a good job keeping one of the bandits focused on him, while the warlock used Eyebite and a curse to damage her bandit and vanish from his sight. That bandit, confused, went after the paladin (suffering an opportunity attack from the warlock in the process), unknowingly increasing the paladin’s AC in the process because of his Lost in the Crowd feat.

Once the lasher escaped with Illyria, the mage made a tactical retreat, his objective accomplished, and ordered the bandits and remaining lasher to stay behind and deal with the PCs. Through some clever positioning and good teamwork, the PCs were able to make quick work of the bad guys, and pursued the kidnappers. They found out from a witness that the kidnappers had fled to the west, and had been allowed to pass by the guard manning the gate. The PCs interrogated the guard (at arrow-point), and found out that he had been bribed, and that the villains were likely heading for an abandoned temple half an hour outside of town.

Observations: Teamwork and clever positioning can grant the PCs a healthy advantage. A defender in tight quarters is a dangerous thing. Eyebite is an extremely useful power to have when you’re cornered. The ranger’s Split the Tree daily power is extremely effective when it hits. The ability to teleport is very, very useful, but not unbalancing at low levels. Cornering a ranger is pretty darned effective.

Encounter 3: The Old Temple
The PCs followed tracks in the fresh mud to the old temple, and kicked the door in. Inside the found a bandit, the bandit mage they had faced in the inn, and a ratman with a vicious-looking spiked chain. One level 1, one level 3, and a level 6.

The ranger moved to attack the mage while the paladin quickly marked the chainfighter. This turned out to be an extremely effective tactic, because the chainfighter used an ability shortly afterward that allowed him to shift six squares and attack three different targets. One of these was the paladin, but the other two attacks, against the warlock and the cleric, both missed and caused the chainfighter a total of 16 points of damage. Combine that with a well-placed curse by the warlock, as well as a very effective witchfire, and the chainfighter only lasted until the second round. Once the chainfighter was down, the bandit and the mage soon followed. This fight could have been very difficult, but some good teamwork and clever tactics made it probably the easiest fight so far.

Once the fight was over, the PCs interrogated the dying mage and learned that Illyria was being held below the temple, beyond the crypt. They also learned that the cult was known as the Children of Pestilence, and that Amber’s plague was their way of offering up the town as a ritual sacrifice to their god, Ualath the Diseased One. They also learned about the cult’s leader, the Vermin King. After the interrogation, they searched the area and found some useful magic items that they took with them, as well as some healing potions. They also used a magic circle on the floor to regenerate their wounds, rather than using up their precious healing surges.

Observations: The paladin’s Divine Challenge is extremely effective when used against an enemy that can make multiple attacks against different people.

Encounter 4: The Crypt
The PCs then descended some spiral stairs into a darkened crypt. They had a sunrod that they used for light, but the skeletons waiting within had an advantage with their darkvision. There were three skeletons and a boneshard skeleton. Three level 3s and a level 5.

The cleric used his Turn Undead power and missed, but even the miss allowed him to do half damage, and since that damage was radiant, the skeleton that he affected with it took additional damage. The skeletons weren’t all that dangerous to the PCs, just hard to hit with their high defenses. At one point the warlock provoked an opportunity attack from a skeleton, and its Speed of the Dead ability allowed it to do some extra damage.

During the second round of combat, though, the boneshard skeleton came out and did a massive amount of damage to the ranger, dropping him to -1. A little while later, a skeleton attacked the warlock and dropped her to 0. Both of these situations were quickly remedied by the cleric’s Healing Word, but the crypt was extremely confined and the skeletons definitely had some advantages on their side.

The PCs wound up winning the day, but the boneshard skeleton’s boneshard burst hit them twice in the process, once when it was bloodied and once when it finally died. Because it did necrotic damage, the PCs took full damage while the skeletons were unscathed.

Observations: The paladin and the cleric were the stars in this fight, mainly because they both had abilities that did radiant damage, which the undead creatures were vulnerable to. This seemed to be a difficult fight, not simply because the creatures themselves were challenging, but because the close quarters made it very difficult to move around, and skeletons get some nice bonuses when they make opportunity attacks.

General observations: Overall, I think it went really well. PCs are clearly capable of taking on foes several levels higher than their own level, which opens up a wide array of enemy possibilities to the DM. This also means that fights can be big, and you shouldn’t be afraid to outnumber the PCs. It also means that you can have several relatively weak enemies and a single “boss” enemy in a fight three or for levels above the PCs’ level. Terrain is both more important in 4E and easier to adjudicate than it used to be. Simple conditions like Combat Advantage, Cover, and Difficult Terrain make it easy to deal with most types of terrain, and those conditions make good yardsticks for coming up with other things, as well. It’s not difficult to run an encounter with multiple different types of creatures. From the PCs side, Healing Surges are a great addition to the game. They make healing simplified and reliable, and they allow the PCs to recover from a difficult fight in a few minutes so that they can easily go into another difficult fight relatively fresh. Overall, this, and the previous proto-4E session that I ran, have both served to make me even more excited about the actual release.

Since the D&D Experience hit, EN World has done an admirable job of keeping us all informed of the inner workings of 4th Edition as they are revealed. I won’t re-tread any of that. Instead, I’m going to relate my experiences running a reasonable facsimile of 4th Edition, using the aforementioned rules tidbits (by candlelight because the power was out for the first third of the session).

I thought about creating my own dungeon crawl for the occasion, but instead opted to save myself some time and use the Raiders of Oakhurst adventure that is circulating on the Interwebs. It fit my needs, and was better thought out and more thoroughly playtested than anything I could have created in the couple of hours I had to do so before my friends arrived. Three of us were present: myself, and my friends Tad and Chris. I was the DM, while each of them took control of three of the six pre-generated PCs. Tad took control of the ranger, wizard, and paladin, while Chris took the fighter, warlock, and cleric. Now, on to my observations.

1. If you’re passingly familiar with 3.0/3.5, picking up 4E requires some learning but is not that hard. Tad and Chris had played some, but not much, D&D, and while I think the vast array of powers at their disposal was overwhelming at first (a fact that was exacerbated by their control of three characters each instead of one), they learned the basics quickly. With a single character that you create yourself, it’s probably much easier.

2. The roles seem pretty well defined. The ranger and the warlock were both dealing large amounts of damage. The fighter and paladin were both soaking up a lot of attacks. The wizard was blasting foes from afar, and using a lot of area effect abilities. The cleric was bolstering his party a lot.

3. Some powers and abilities complement each other in fun ways. The ranger would frequently choose someone as his quarry and attack with a careful shot. This resulted in a +10 bonus to attack (by far the largest bonus in the group), along with a whopping 1d10 + 1d8 + 4 damage, or 6-22 for a single attack. The warlock’s curse, when combined with a well-placed eldritch blast, would frequently bring an opponent down, allowing the warlock to use misty step to teleport three spaces and gain a more advantageous position. At one point, the fighter moved adjacent to a hobgoblin archer, and his combination of abilities effectively gave him three options: use a ranged attack and provoke an opportunity attack, move away and provoke an opportunity attack (even if he shifted), or drop his bow and use his sub-par longsword attack. It’s all very good stuff when it works out well.

4. Some powers seemed like they would have been great, had they worked. In particular, I’m thinking of the ranger’s split the tree power. He gets to choose two targets to hit with his longbow, gets to roll twice, gets to take the better of the two rolls, and gets to do double weapon damage to each target. It would have been very, very effective, except that he rolled a 7 and a 3, missing completely.

5. Encounters are, in fact, pretty easy to run. Even when you don’t know all the rules. Monsters only have two or three signature abilities, which doesn’t sound like much at first blush, but winds up being plenty when you’ve got three or four different kinds of monsters on the board. Minions also allow you to have lots of critters with minimal complexity.

6. Using the environment to your advantage is a bigger deal. In the first encounter, there’s a big fire pit in the middle of the room; anyone who enters it takes 1d6 damage. At one point, the hobgoblin leader comes out into that encounter, launches a couple of spells, and retreats. The first spell that he launched allowed him to deal 2d6+4 points of damage and slide the character 3 spaces. He targeted the ranger, hit him, did significant damage, and slid him into the fire, dealing even more. The ranger hand lost 2 hit points previously to a minion attack; this attack dropped him to 0. Nasty stuff. I think the addition of push, pull, and slide effects will necessitate the design of more interesting areas to fight in, with more hazards to move enemies into. Also, on more than one occasion, the wizard used his minor action to lift a burning log from the fire pit and kill a minion with it. Clever. Not sure if it’s exactly kosher per the rules, but it was cool so I ran with it.

7. Coming up with rules for special cases is really easy. The fact that there are a few general conditions instead of a bunch of specific ones really helps. Need to move through a friend’s space? Difficult terrain. Standing up on a bed while attacking your enemies? Combat advantage. Easy peasy.

I may post more on this later. We didn’t finish the dungeon crawl, so I may post more after that, or I may add to this post as I think of additional observations. On the whole, though, I really enjoyed running my proto-4E dungeon crawl.