Diary of a Gamer : The End of Pathfinder as we Know it

Last night my group's Pathfinder game came to an end.  The campaign started in October, was relauched in January and has run more or less steady since then.  Perhaps it was the relaunch effect, but it doesn't seem as though we've been playing Pathfinder for about seven months. 

The climactic conclusion of the campaign (or at least this part, there is still hope that we will return to it later) was the party storming the castle of an evil witch to rescue the King... Well, technically he's a general, but he is the game's King Arthur equivilent.  The game got off to a rough start with one of the players (Moox) not being able to make it, and got worse when another (Revil) had to leave.  This left just your faithful narrator and AngryBear to face off against the Big Bad, a CR 15 Green Hag Witch.  Fortunetly we had some NPC backup including a faery who was able to break the Hag's mental hold on the King.  He joined us in the fight and we put a wooping on the Witch, Evard's Black Tenticles be damned! 

I was glad to see the game (or at least this chapter) get a good end to it.  The game started off great and had a lot of really fun moments, but started to get bogged down after the Witch kidnapped the King.  We found outselves battles Derro left and right with no way of knowing we were going the wrong way.  What should have taken a few weeks instead took us months, and that sapped a lot of ethusiasm and energy from the game. 

So after months of playing Pathfinder what do I think of it?  Well first off I find it damn confusing! The rules are so close the 3.5 rules that I often find myself almost shocked when they made a rule change.  For example, they changed DR a bit, making it so that you consider your total weapon bonus in the case of a magic weapon when determining if it passes a certain DR type (this is a great change in my opinion).  For example, my weapon was a total of +4 so that passes the Cold Iron DR (which came up as we were fighting this strange Nyph creatures).  I didn't know that, nor did anyone else realize it until the fight was pretty much over.  These types of mistakes were common during the campaign, and I'm sure happen all the time to people who have a lot of experience playing 3rd edition. 

Overall the Pathfinder rules are good.  They fixed some really big problems that 3.5 had and added some more flavor to some of the classes, like the Sorcerer.  Upgrading the DR system and introducing CMB and CMD for Combat manuevers was also a welcome change.  That having been said not all the changes were for the better.  Pathfinder knocked the Ranger back down to suck-town, did nothing to address the fact that the Monk is a crap class, and left several broken spells in place.  So between 3.5 and Pathfinder you can find things that are better about each. 

But at least for now, Pathfinder is the past.  The future is Hackmaster, Advanced Hackmater (the playtest).  I'll be making what I hope to be a triumphant return to GMing... If not at least I'll have a screen to hide behind.  I'm really excited about this playtest, but nervous as well.  It's been a while since a I ran a game, and a while since I played HM so I'm concerned about getting the kinks out.  I'm plan on taking time this week to review the rules and brush up on the setting we'll be playing in, Frandor's Keep.  With a great setting and a great Rulesystem if this game fails no one will have to look far for who to blame. 

Because I wanted the players to have some time to consider their options I let them roll their stats ahead of time to mull over their options.  One player (ManOnFunTrip) is rejoining the game and wasn't there so he'll be doing all of his character creation next week.  Those who have already rolled had some mixed results.  Both Revil and the Professor did well, but AngryBear barely qualified as a PC. 

I promise to try to do better with this damn diary.  I may have epicly failed for Pathfinder, but its a new campaign and a fresh start.  Plus, ever GM wants an audience to complain to, right?   Obviously I'll be limited what I can discuss rules-wise, but the general narative will be fair game.