quigs said:
Paizo makes great adventures! But I can't say I agree with their decision to stay with 3.5 as I really really loathe that game system. I looked at the Pathfinder PDF and still saw the same issues I saw in 3.5. The tweaks to certain feats, races, classes, spells, and the whole CMB CMD mechanic were fine, but I think they missed out on an opportunity to make 3.5 fun past level 10.
Exactly! I felt the same way about Conan 2nd Edition. It failed to adress the basic mathematical issues of the game, such as attack and defence progression. You might be interested in checking out Acheronian Edition, our set of house rules for Conan. The intent was to fix the high level game, which had several gaping holes:
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/conan-ae/wikis/acheronian-edition-rules
I think it is working fine now with minimum amount of trouble to convert RAW stuff to the Acheronian Edition.
I have many gripes about 3.5, as I have had 2 campaigns end early because of broken rules and the insane amount of prep time required as DM. Things like iterative attacks, spell slots, immunities, damage reduction, and mandatory magic items make me sick to my stomach these days.
We've houseruled our fantasy D&D too in the similar style as the Acheronian Edition. Unfortunately the wiki for the Netheril Edition is far less detailed than AE.
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/netheril-edition/wikis/main-page
In addition to AE-like mathematical changes, most magic items have been dumped. No more stat boosters, no more several kinds of AC boost items. Weapons and armor only have +1 as a basic level of enchantment. After that, it is just additional qualities - such as "Flaming" for a sword. You can't get a +5 plate armor, for example, but you can get +1 plate armor of something worth additional +4. Characters generaly have 50% of the listed starting wealth while item costs are RAW. Thus everyone has less magic items.
Magic has been divided in to 20 spell levels according to some Monte Cook book, I think. I'm not playing a spellcaster, so I'm afraid I've given very little attention to the magic rules. I just roll a save when one is needed, heh.
4E is good for D&D, it's fast, fun, and easy to learn. It has a more "gamey" feel to it than 3.5 did but I like that. It's a breeze to DM as well.
Mmm, we did run a test campaign on 4E and I didn't like it very much. D&D 3.5, despite all its flaws, has fun aspect in customizing your character and in the general flow of the game. 4E felt more like a board game and characters were severely constrained by the class they chose. I'm pretty sure it is easier to GM though... but I think Savage Worlds does what 4E tries in a vastly superior way. SW is fun, fast and furious on an entirely different level.
Furthermore, 4E never felt dangerous. We were just counting hit points and at some point they ran out. Before they were low, you simple knew you wouldn't die yet. In D&D 3.5 combat felt dangerous at every round, because of the save or die effects and other dangerous stuff. Combat without a feeling of danger isn't that exciting.
This feeling persisted even though we lost the first party entirely in one fight to a TPK and several characters of the second party died too. We were playing the official starter campaign/adventure, can't remember the name - so the deaths were not caused by a sadistic GM. It is hard to put this feeling of...non-lethality in to words, as it persists even when characters die. I guess the death of characters in 4E is something like "Oh, I ran out of game credits, now I lost my game token", while in 3.5 it was more like "Goddamn, my wizard got an arrow in his eye!".
This is all player perception, I've run neither Savage nor 4E. I'd still be perfectly willing to play 4E, I just find other systems to be more fun.
If I ran Conan again though, I'd have to go with either Savage Worlds, or possibly FantasyCraft (after I give it a good read through). I refuse to use the d20 version as is.
Yeah, if I started to run my campaign now, I'd use Savage Worlds. However, I didn't even know it existed when I started to run my game. Converting all the stuff to SW would be too much trouble for me, although I seriously considered it for a while. I don't enjoy messing around with rules and numbers like some people do, so the conversion would have been a dreadful amount of boring work. Thus the Acheronian Edition is the second best thing.