Pathfinder a Bite at a Time: Druid and Fighter

I hope you're enjoying reading this series on Paizo's Pathfinder system as much as I enjoy writing it—there's little more enjoyable than exploring an updated and streamlined version of my favourite gaming system.

The Druid

A longtime favourite of mine, the druid maintains all of its trademark abilities such as wildshape, spellcasting, woodland stride, and wild empathy. Better, she now gains wildshape starting at 4th level (rather than 5th) and the ability is based off of the beast shape (or plant shape or elemental body) spells, all of which are new and which should simplify the process considerably. Her orisons are all at-will now, and her hit dice, skill points, and weapon and armor proficiencies are still suitably nature-focused.

Best of all, her animal companion has become a nature bond, where the player chooses to either form a bond with an animal that starts out as normal for its kind but grows in power as you do, or to form a bond with nature itself, granting the druid a choice of nature cleric domains that function just like the cleric's class ability. I love my animal companions, but I've often heard complaints from players who would prefer to just leave them (along with familiars) at home. Paizo listened.

The Fighter

This "simplest" of the classes occupies a little less than two pages in the PF Core Rulebook, but the straight-forward nature of the Pathfinder fighter doesn't necessarily mean it's underpowered, even compared to Wizards (a common complaint from 3.5 players). They just do very different things, and it's the nature of the beast that a fighter's skill with his sword will never cause time to stop or miracles to be cast. Frankly, I don't really care about that, and I think you could make a million enjoyable, effective characters from this class alone.

Whirlwind attack. Awesome.

Simply put, the fighter grows to become the undisputed master of "conventional" combat—putting pointy bits into the enemy. He still gains a ridiculous number of feats (one per level), but he also gains bravery (climbing bonuses to saves vs. fear), armour training (climbing bonuses to his armour class), weapon training (focused climbing bonuses to his attack and damage rolls), and finally weapon and armour mastery (DR 5 and automatic critical confirmations and an increased damage multiplier with a given weapon).

Complaints?

I don't really have any about these two—it seems that Buhlman and Paizo listened to the common complaints and paid attention to the playtesters, and addressed the issues people had. Fighters are now much more powerful, arguably better at what they do than any other class. Druids are still strong, but their contentious and often messy wildshape ability has been streamlined, or even removed if the player so chooses. Good changes overall.

Join me tomorrow for a discussion on the Monk and the Paladin, and thanks for reading.

Comments

[kaeosdad]

cool review series. Will follow. I just got a copy of pathfinder given to me by a friend and I am loving it. Paizo did an excellent job with making 3.5 their own. I get the vibe that they took a lot of the cooler aspects of 4e and put it into pathfinder, at will cantrips and orisons, more options, more feats, etc. etc... I have not finished reading the book, but this game system as far as I can tell is much deeper than 3.5 and 4e combined.

The only downside I can see is that for the casual or new gamer the learning curve is much more difficult due to the crunch involved. 4e is to me the perfect rules set(as far as dungeon/fantasy sort of games go) to attract and introduce new gamers to the hobby. Pathfinder however has this crunchy depth that will entice those who are looking for even more.

I'm hoping to start my next campaign in the homebrew 4e setting I've been running using the pathfinder rules. Hopefully I'll be able to find a group up to the crunch.

[RPG Ike]

Cool—I think we're pretty much on the exact same wavelength when it comes to 3.5E, 4E, and Pathfinder. I had a chance to see just how pick-up-and-play 4E can be at PAX this past weekend, something that would have been much harder with Pathfinder or 3.5E (but it's so crunchy and delicious...).

My current crew are mostly new to D&D and tabletop rolepaying entirely, and it was a struggle for me to decide what system to run with them. They're big into WoW, so 4E would have been an obvious choice for an easy transition, but in the end I opted to go with that I really wanted to play in, even if it meant they'd have a bit of a longer learning curve. They're doing just fine, though, and loving Pathfinder as far as I can tell.

If you're in the Edmonton, Alberta, Canada area, I'd be happy to join your game. :) Otherwise, thanks for the comment, and good luck wth finding players!

[kaeosdad]

I'm pretty far, hawaii. thanks for the offer though, hopefully I'll get a pathfinder game started early next year, I have one player for sure, and a couple potential players but am holding off for a few months as I still have some ideas I want to try with the 4e rules set, and a couple more gamers interested in trying out 4e.

[cheap ugg boots]

When I was 10 or so, I had a conversation with my dad in which he casually mentioned that he would<a href="http://www.lastugg.net/">ugg boots sale</a> almost certainly not live past 70, because his dad didn’t and most of the men in his family seemed to succumb to something or other at around that age. The women of his line all lived until 100, even while their spines crumbled and their brains turned to custard, but the men (who were probably like my dad—amiable, didn’t want to be a bother to anyone) up and died at relatively early ages. At the time of this conversation, I was none too pleased at this news, but at the same time I thought, well, 70 is <a href="http://www.lastugg.net/">cheap ugg boots</a>
exceedingly old, after all, and by then it will be The Future, and we’ll all be living on the moon. And then I wandered off to play with my Atari 2600 or whatever the hell I was doing at 10.