PDA

View Full Version : Popularity of Pathfinder?



fetito666
February 8th, 2016, 01:47
Well, this is embarassing. Today I learnt about the existence of Pathfinder. *blush*

I am kinda surprised that Pathfinder is very popular. How come? Is it meant to be a renovation of D&D?

RustyAngel
February 8th, 2016, 02:26
Basically Pathfinder started off as a continuation of 3.5. When Wizards of the Coast went to create something totally new with 4th edition a lot of people were upset it with the decision. Pathfinder is dubbed by many as '3.75' as it takes the 3.5 rules streamlines it and adds a lot more features and ways for a player to customize a character. It gained popularity due to 4th edition being very ill-received. Also many people who left Wizards because of the shift to 4th edition ended up contributing to Pathfinder, so its less of a renovation and more of a spiritual successor to something that wasn't really broke and didn't need fixing.

dulux-oz
February 8th, 2016, 03:33
Call it a "fork" :)

damned
February 8th, 2016, 03:43
Yes a programming fork is a very apt description.
Pathfinder is the 2nd most popular role playing game on the market - both in terms of sales and in terms of players and games being played.

Trenloe
February 8th, 2016, 04:15
A lot of the initial popularity was that Pathfinder was backwards compatible with D&D 3.5e and that it "fixed" a few issues with 3.5e - so there was a mountain of material available to continue playing when WotC moved to D&D 4e. Also, Pathfinder is released under the Open Gaming License (OGL) - this allows third party publishers to produce material for Pathfinder, and include any material covered by the OGL, which has resulted in thousands of pathfinder support products available from third party publishers. And, having all of the rules from the main hardback books available for free in the PRD (Pathfinder Reference Document) has helped open the game up to many people: https://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ Personally, once I realised the quality of the adventure path scenarios Paizo were producing I jumped ship from 4E to Pathfinder overnight - it helps when the first adventure path you read is Rise of the Runelords! Being a busy GM I was looking for good support in terms of long term campaigns, and WotC just weren't doing this with 4e, whereas the Paizo adventure paths do this very well (some people complain that they are too rail-roady - yes, they can be, but any commercial adventure that spans 1-15 levels is going to have some rail-roading in it).

Some people will complain (me included) that Pathfinder is now suffering from too much bloat - there are so many Paizo supplements available and more published each month, but the quality (and amount) of scenarios available from Paizo and third party publishers is astounding, and you don't have to use all the supplements - the core rulebook and a couple of other sourcebooks will do you fine.

fetito666
February 8th, 2016, 09:03
Thank you all for your reply! Sounds interesting, but since I grew up with the lore of D&D, I would miss Forgotten Realms and Drizzt I guess.

Anyway, I might take a look: If I buy the core manual as PDF, is it well readable on a tablet?

NicholasDM
February 8th, 2016, 21:26
Anyway, I might take a look: If I buy the core manual as PDF, is it well readable on a tablet?

I don't see why not - most pdf documents format pretty well to the different screen sizes automatically.

Nylanfs
February 8th, 2016, 21:52
Plus PCGen supports almost all of Pathfinder. :)