It’s been a while, but finally I start a new campaign in Pathfinder tonight. I will be playing the Samurai Ki in it. He is a man of the sword, but due to a very bad experience in his past, he avoids killing people at any cost. In honor of playing Pathfinder, I am going to do an article comparing Pathfinder to 4th Edition and what I think of the two systems. Now get you, I am mostly making these bases of argument from third party sources and friends who have played 4th Edition. So Yes, it will be biased and yes I probably don’t know what the hell I am talking about, but if you don’t care ab0ut any of that, feel free to read on.

The Good about Pathfinder:

I could write a whole college thesis on why Pathfinder is such a great system, but I will lay down a few key points here:

-The artwork is amazing. I know that seems like a strange thing to put on this list, but I look at it this way, if the artwork is good, it will inspire better immagination and better roleplaying to go along with it. I think this is more important than a lot of people will give credit for.

-The Classes are finally always fun to play. This is due to the fact of no what I like to call, “dead levels” that they used to have in 3rd edition. There would be a few levels where you would basically get a few hit points and some skills and that was about it. that changes in Pathfinder. There is never a level where you don’t get either a feat or some special ability or something to make your class more interesting.

-The system is 3.5 but better. This I can’t stress enough. I played 3.5 for quite a long time, and I loved the system. Pathfinder takes the same system, but makes it even better tuned and even more fun to play than ever before.

-The books are all worth buying. Now this might just be partly due to the fact that the system is still relatively new, but when it comes to the books for Pathfinder, there is not one that isn’t a worthwhile purchase. I own all of the hardcover books that have been printed for it so far, and I also have a GM screen. I love this system so much that I started pre-ordering all the hardcover books that have been coming out.

The Bad:

-I have seen like two, and that’s it as far as I know the number of times, that they have re-used a piece of artwork. The Magus class from the Complete Magic book and the Eldritch Knight from the core book are the exact same picture. Now, I love their artwork, but I would really hope that even though they have only done it a couple of times, that they don’t re-use artwork again.

-The system does have a little bit of a learning curve if you are new to the D20 system. It is in my opinion a bit easier to learn than say 3.5 system, but at the same time, it still takes a bit of time to get used to all the rules in this system, there are a lot, and there are a lot of little things you kind of have to keep track of. So unless you were either into 3.5 or you are a newbie that really wants to learn this system, it is going to be a bit of work to learn all of the rules for it.

The Good about 4th Edition DnD:

-The fucking miniatures, they are pretty cool looking and they have a crap ton of them. I always loved having miniatures to play with when we were doing battles and other random things, but it seems like even though you really don’t need them in Pathfinder, they are still fun to have.

-It is fairly easy to learn. They made it much easier for new players to get into playing 4th edition by really simplifying a lot of things. The classes are also more self-reliant, so if you don’t have a well rounded party, it’s not the end of the world.

-They have a lot of books and source material. They have put out a lot of books for this edition so far. There is plenty of info for different campaign settings and random other things you would want to know.

The Bad:

This is where I could be a monster, but I will try to keep it short.

-You NEED the minatures to play 4th Edition. I think this is Hasbro try to sell toys to be quite honest. They try to force people to need the miniatures to play. Yes, I do like the miniatures, but that doesn’t mean I think they should be a requirement.

-It is too simple. I just can’t stand the fact of how much they dumbed this system down. Hasbro was trying to appease to new players by making it easier to learn, which I can understand, but by doing so, they have alienated their veteran players. I think in the long run, most of their veteran players will seek a different system to play. I know in my region of the world, the game shop owner says that they can’t hardly sell a 4th Edition book, while barely being able to keep Pathfinder books on the shelves.

-They took out most of the roleplaying. This is the thing that probably bothered me the most. I don’t play table top role playing games only to roll dice and kill monsters, it is an escape for me and a way to be somebody else. How does a person do that? They do it by roleplaying. 4th Edition has mostly killed roleplaying.

-Too many of the books are meh. A lot of the books released ended up being like 3.5 edition. They just didn’t seem worth buying. They were either info that had been compiled from a lot of other books, or it was stuff that just was too specific to be re-usable all the time.

Yes, in the end I was being nice. I can’t stand 4th Edition. I think it is a way for Hasbro to grub money from players without getting the experience they deserve. I don’t know about the rest of you, but my money is going to Paizo for making the amazing Pathfinder game.