I was first made aware of Pathfinder on the traditional gaming board of 4chan, /tg/ in 2009. By this time I'd played and ran D&D 4e and had looked at 3.5 a good bit, and I could tell that a big problem with 3.5's design was what are known as "dead levels." Now any level based game puts a lot of focus on the accomplishment you feel when you gain a level. In D&D typically it meant you'd gain some hit points and greater accuracy with your attacks. If you were a spellcaster you could learn new spells, or perhaps be able to prepare and cast more the spells you knew.
Starting in 3rd Edition, every other level you were guaranteed a feat, and depending on your class you could gain bonus feats at specific levels. 3rd also made the decision to spread out the class features you gain from your character class, but only for the first 10 or 12 levels. Past that you really didn't gain any specific benefit from taking those levels in one class or another. This was in all likelihood done to promote the usage of Prestige Classes (thematically focused classes with a list of requirements for you to take levels in, such as a certain focus in a few select skills and a number of levels, usually 7, in a given base class).
Various issues arose from this decision, however. 3rd Edition was designed with the intent that not all character options be equal and that some feats, spells, and classes were simply better overall than others. This coupled with a relative lack of incentive to progress in your base class once you had all of your class features meant that any class that didn't have spells would find themselves well behind the curve if they didn't begin multi-classing.
When you add those factors up together, they become one of the major problems I have with 3rd Edition. Pathfinder (which is the same system as D&D 3.5 with tweaks and fixes published by a different company) addressed that issue by minimizing the amount of dead levels for all classes. Even up into the higher levels you would gain new class features and, at 20th level, a Capstone ability. These are very powerful features; as an example the Rogue, a class to represent tricksters, thieves, and cutthroats, from first level have a class feature called Sneak Attack which allows them to deal extra damage to a surprised enemy. The Rogue Capstone, Master Strike, states that when a Rogue deals sneak attack damage they can additionally put the target to sleep for 1-4 hours, daze them for 1-6 rounds, or kill them outright. Capstones provided a major incentive to stick to one class for a campaign, and that intrigued me.
After joining a Skype group dedicated to playing tabletop games I found myself with plenty of Pathfinder to play. While initially Pathfinder seemed a considerable improvement over 3.5, after three years of regular play it has revealed itself as deeply flawed, oftentimes more than its predecessor in the same problem areas. Pathfinder's real strength today is the robust line of printed adventures it boasts, complimented by the wealth of adventures available from smaller independent publishers online. The system itself though has grated on me for too long now for me to have much interest in it outside of those adventure paths.
Next we'll look at the new d20 games I've had experience with, 13th Age and D&D 5th Edition.
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