I'm done with Pathfinder

Sorry for the clickbaity title but this post came from really strong feelings that occured due to a breaking point. But really its not as bad as it sounds.

What do I mean when I say that I'm 'done' with Pathfinder? Well here's what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that I'll stop talking about Pathfinder on this blog. It doesn't mean that I'll stop writing reviews of third party material or ignoring news about it. It doesn't mean that I am angry at Paizo or Pathfinder. It doesn't mean that I'll stop playing Pathfinder.

What it does mean is that I won't be going out of my way to buy new Pathfinder material whether its third part stuff or Paizo stuff. I'll pick up some things that I wanted to pick up for a long time and things that are too good to pass up but I'm not thrilled with getting more stuff and will soon eliminate my Pathfinder budget. The Villain Codex will be my last hardcover purchase. The hardcover Curse of the Crimson Throne will be my last Adventure Path purchase. I do not intend to get new Player Companions or Campaign Settings. I have some third party things I intend to get to round out what I have, such as the remaining Spheres of Power supplements and maybe additions to the corruptions from Horror Adventures. But that's it.

Why?

1) I have enough stuff.

I have a shelf dedicated to holding all my Pathfinder hardcovers and the player companions/campaign settings. I have another shelf that holds all my print third party stuff. I have another shelf that's half full holding my adventure paths and modules. I haven't gotten the chance to even use all of it. I've only completed less than half the adventures I have, I have used bits and pieces of most of the other material but I haven't really used much of the options and classes and alternate rules that are on these shelves. The same goes for the gigabytes of pdfs on my computer. I'm pretty sure that I have enough Pathfinder material to last me a long while before I get bored, and better yet I have enough material to handle most concepts, settings, and styles that I can think of as long as they have some magic in it. I have material for outer space, cyberpunk, Ebberon-like dungeonpunk, and almost 200 different classes to work with. I'm good. I don't need any more. I can already do whatever I want now. For christsake, I have Ponyfinder, Thunderscape, and Aethera coming soon. I can throw ponies in space with magitech arms coming out of their backs that shoot lasers and they all fly through Stargates in a TARDIS to fight Galactus (LPJ's Crisis of the World Eater). What else do I really need at this point? Even the additions to the stuff I like are getting kind of unappealing because I'm not bored with what I have already. I have third party things that are expansive enough to represent things that will keep me busy for years but still have new things coming out of it. I was not actually ready for a Path of War 2. I wasn't ready for anything psionic past Ultimate Psionics. I already have so many things to do with that material.

2) Starfinder is coming.

I dedicated a lot of effort to collecting material to bring Pathfinder into outer space and making scifi or sci-fantasy adventures. Now Paizo is putting out an entire game where it's on a silver platter, and given the space Pathfinder game I'm currently running it'll probably go smoother than what I'm doing right now because I'll tell you right now that it is difficult to manage even with all the scifi crap that's out. Depending on what it winds up looking like I'm either going to discard or convert the scifi material I have because I know that Starfinder is going to wind up becoming my go-to Sci-fantasy game leaving Pathfinder to handle the straight fantasy stuff. That's an entire realm to be explored now that there is going to be a dedicated corner of Paizo working on it. And that's when we already have a shrinking new idea pool in Pathfinder itself that we take a huge chunk of territory to handle and just shoot it over to a new game. Plus its a new game to learn that's probably less crunchy than Pathfinder but likely more crunchy than Dungeons and Dragons. Either way given my enthusiasm for Space stuff in Pathfinder I'm all but guaranteed to buy Starfinder and Starfinder is pretty much going to talk over quite a few grounds that I use Pathfinder to cover because of it's nature. And its not just Starfinder.

3) I've been playing other games lately. 

So here is the list of games that I've been getting into lately and will probably talk about more on this blog. Ryuutama, Savage Worlds, Dungeons and Dragons, OVA, Golden Sky Stories, and Fate. Now I have assorted feelings about each of these but most of them have a place and a mode of play that Pathfinder doesn't really reach or does not reach easily. I think that if I want to run a module or one-shot from Pathfinder, I'd much rather do Dungeons and Dragons than Pathfinder because its faster to make a character and conversion is very easy. Pathfinder doesn't do low fantasy very well and I suspect Starfinder won't do 'hard' scifi very well so I've been getting into Savage Worlds. Same goes for anyone who is fairly mundane like college students  and stuff like that is hard to do with Pathfinder because even 'mundane' classes get super sturdy quickly. Some games I really need to represent something obscure or deal with entire campaigns where fighting just isn't a thing so I have the other stuff.  Its not that I'm tired of medieval fantasy or whatever Golarion is, I just have some other stuff to play too and in some cases they are absorbing some aspects that I was using Pathfinder for due to campaign length or complexity. And really once that happens the more I don't need new Pathfinder stuff. I already have what I need to represent medieval fantasy to renaissance steampunk with airships, but I also want to play around with contemporary settings with normal people or a high school drama, or fighting Nazis on a land of the lost. I just have some other stuff to play and I don't want to deal with Pathfinder to do it because Pathfinder is kind of complicated. Which leads to my next point.

4)  Pathfinder is kind of huge, bloated and unbalanced. 

Over the course of collecting third party material I think I've found ways to handle pretty much any general balance issue that exists in the game. If magic in general is overpowered, just replace it with something more far reaching and more balanced. If martial options are too week there's stuff out there to make them better from just better options or entire rewrites or replaces the weaker classes. Skill distribution is unbalanced? Just introduce rules from Pathfinder Unchained. But that's the way that Pathfinder is 'unbalanced'.  Pathfinder is unbalanced starting from its very premise just by the fact that it is very possible to have a badly made character and very possible to make a very well made character and the gap between that is huge. that the Strategy Guide exists is somewhat proof of this and that it starts with the core rulebook. Because of this as the game releases more and more options this gap gets wider. Now it is entirely possible to restrict books so that things aren't overwhelming but that kind of makes it seem like the complexity, the glut of options and the growth you experience by being able to make a 'good' character is a bad thing when that's one of the best parts about the game. It gives choices meaning, it makes you think about your character and it makes just the process of making a character an exciting experience. Not only that but having to look up stuff, crunch numbers or make builds just adds to the amount of hours being involved with the game and if that is fun for you, then its just more hours of having fun and the fun extends past the table. However there's a consequence to this and that is that new players that don't want to or can't look deeper into the rules because they don't want to spend the time or don't have the time or don't find it fun just kind of fall behind. It is possible to come to a table and your character just sucks and the rest of the party has to carry you or ignore you whenever combat happens, or even worse, the other players have to reign it in because one or more player can't hack it and start to resent not being able to do anything because its overpowered by comparison or use interesting options because it's restricted to another book.  When everyone is on the same page Pathfinder works beautifully even if everyone is a new player just learning the game but I personally am starting to resent everyone when they aren't on the same page. I have to tell some players to tone it down because other players aren't up to speed and the gap is so huge that they need to basically break a leg to get in line. I have to spend an entire session to teach players how to make a character, even though they have played the game before, while the players that know what they're doing either have to twiddle their thumbs or just not attend session zero. I have to check character sheets so that players aren't running around with vanilla Rangers with 10 wisdom (which has happened before) or that they aren't geared towards making an army of summons or clones. I have to adjust the difficulty of NPCs so that they have to be able to handle the guy with a million AC but not be capable of immediately killing the guy that still doesn't know how Power Attack works. Its actually less work when everyone is overpowered because I can throw whatever I want at them and I don't have to check character sheets or explain things. Its also easier when everyone sucks because I don't need to look at stat blocks that look like essays because NPCs don't do anything more complicated than run up and attack, plus everyone is learning and growing together and getting into more and more advanced options and ways of thinking. But for now, since I actually like perusing and using the huge list of options I perfer to play or run Pathfinder when everyone knows what they're doing and leave everyone else to Dungeons and Dragons.

5) I have far too many adventures to run. 

I like making adventures that are interesting or quirky or play around with genre. I also have a lot of published adventures. And really I find it difficult to get through them all and part of that is because I primarily focus on Pathfinder. One thing you'll notice is that the list earlier of RPGs I'm getting into is full of non fussy and easy systems. These aren't the only RPGs I own or that I like,  but I only have room in my heart for one really crunchy system and the list is full of simpler games for expediency and price. I want to be able to run more concepts as one shots or short campaigns and I'm tired of doing that with Pathfinder because it is option heavy and front-loaded. If you bother to make a character in Pathfinder using a bunch of options and stuff I imagine that you're in for the long haul. At least 12 levels of campaigning that can take about a year. Because that character took work and investment compared to the 5 minutes it takes to make a character in Savage Worlds, Dungeons and Dragons, or FATE. So those adventures that take a few levels or five sessions to complete seems like a waste of time. Worse yet, I have trouble keeping a Pathfinder game going for long before somebody has a baby, or gets a new job or some other obligation and nobody can agree on a new time. The only adventure path I personally saw from start to finish had 12 different players go in and out, and only two of us (not including the GM) were there from the start. I have several Pathfinder Adventure Paths and actually got to play about half of them due to this. And again, I love having an invested character built from a ton of options in a long game but sometimes I can't do that or I only have a certain range or a certain power level of ideas. Sometimes I just shorten them out so we can get something done that has an actual conclusion. This is why the primary new games I'm getting into is FATE, OVA, and particularly, Savage Worlds. For a low price I can get a lot done really quick and the range is wide. Heck, I don't even like FATE all that much but its a game that builds other games instead of a game that has a very narrow focus so I'm good with it enough to need it for obscure concepts rather than having to pick up a whole new game that can only handle it's own specific type of play. And despite the difficulty to maintain group long enough to complete an adventure path apparently I have a lot of people in my area that want to play and like my campaigns so I just have a lot on my hands and Pathfinder doesn't go through it fast enough.


So that's why I'm done with getting new Pathfinder stuff. As I said before this doesn't mean that I will stop posting new reviews of third party stuff. I have enough of a backlog to go on with that for a long time. I also won't stop playing and running Pathfinder because I do really like the system. Some would say 'with it's warts and all' but in my case I really like the warts. I'm like a troll from Elfquest, that stuff just gets me off. I just have had my fill of it in the sense that I have more than enough to do quite a bit and lately I've been getting into things that can handle whatever Pathfinder can't handle without getting too much in the way. I just hit a wall where new Pathfinder stuff isn't really useful to me anymore so I'm just going to stop.

As it stands now, here is my RPG list and what I use for what.

Pathfinder: Heroic Fantasy and Dungeonpunk for long campaigns.
Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition: Heroic fantasy for short Pathfinder modules or string of modules.
Starfinder: Mostly speculation but, heroic sci-fantasy for long campaigns.
Savage Worlds: Contemporary fantasy/horror, gritty fantasy and dungeonpunk, hard sci-fi, superheroes, and anachronistic pulp for long or short campaigns.
Ryuutama/Golden Sky Stories: For their intended purposes (they have very narrow modes of play). Particularly for young players.
OVA/FATE: the remaining weird stuff that needs abstract or very narrow sets of mechanics like high school romance or replicating a linear subgenre. Particularly non-action or non violent subjects.

FATE, D&D and Savage Worlds has the most support so I'm going to talk about those on this blog the most after Pathfinder and maybe Starfinder when it comes out. Of course this is pending my overview of each of those games as a whole.