My Background in Tabletop Gaming Part 2

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.

My Background in Tabletop Gaming: Part 1

Now perhaps would be a good time to establish how much familiarity I have with tabletop RPGs, and of course knowing that you've played longer than I have will make it much easier to dismiss any points I have that you don't agree with; allow me to accommodate you.

During high school my little clique of friends and I decided we should learn how to play D&D. David bought up the core books to 3.5 from the Borders bookstore and we set about reading them. None of us could figure out how to actually play. He eventually returned the books and we shrugged our shoulders and go on with our lives.

As I came to college in fall of 2008 I fell in with a bunch that would eventually form the school's fantasy and sci-fi club, and the founder was adamant about getting some new players for his fresh D&D 4^th Edition books. So he helped us make characters and we showed up eager to learn how to play. The campaign began with all of us in an arena as enslaved gladiators. Now I wasn't actually told how the rules of D&D worked, I just knew to roll initiative when a fight started and that if it was my turn that I could attack. It wasn't until after that session that I saw my character, Tarnykus Thunderscale the Dragonborn Warlord, was capable of healing. That came in handy in the second session, since we ended up fighting the guards of the arena. Who were level 14 Yuan-Ti; we were level 2. We managed to bust out though since we'd found all the other gladiators and convinced them to help us (then snuck away while they kept the guards tangled). Having completely hopped his rails, Matt introduced a DMPC to sneak us off the island.

Looking back, it's pretty obvious that this wasn't the optimal way to be playing 4^th Edition D&D. For my part, I started to get really invested in learning the system and seeing if I could get a better grasp on it, so I grabbed the books and started planning out my first campaign.

The first session I ever ran didn't go super well. I was ripping off the story to Seven Samurai and had an uninspired and heavily railroaded first delve cooked up. I was inflexible. I included mechanics of my own design in a boss fight which came to an unsatisfying conclusion. I could tell I needed to get better.

So I read those forums. I also borrowed a copy of Keep on the Shadowfell from a friend (at the time). I studied that thing; tried to understand why it was laid out the way it was and see how I could use that as a model for my own attempts. I ran 3/4ths of that adventure for two players that semester. Meanwhile, I was branching out. I started playing Werewolf: The Forsaken and Star Wars: Saga Edition that same semester. I wouldn't get to play much of either afterward, but I was approaching a level of familiarity with the hobby that I could appreciate what they did well and didn't do well. I'm still in love with the Condition Track in Saga Edition. The idea that you could build a character that ignores dealing damage and just focuses on knocking you further down that track until you're either unconscious or left a babbling incoherent non-threat...it's the very best way to get me wistful.

Over the next year I got big on roleplaying over the internet using Maptools, a digital tabletop program. I got to play in a wonderful campaign called Palonian Intrigue run in D&D 4^th Edition, and played what has since become my very favorite character: Canticus D. Feywood, Half-Elven Bard. Canticus had so long studied the heroic poems, songs, and Eddas that he was convinced he could use his knowledge of how those stories unfolded to inform his decisions and lead him safely through his own adventure, which he could then profit off of by writing his own songs detailing his exploits. He got wrapped up in a truly labyrinthine scandal involving a frame-up between the human kingdom of Palonia and the Elven fortress the Aegisthorn. It soon became evident that we had no idea how far up it all went, and all throughout the murderous wildcard Velvet dogged us.

Next up: My Pathfinder period