4th edition, Planescape, and Paizo

Well, maybe that sounded a little too harsh, but I still can't help myself that the whole setup of the Pathfinder RPG Alphas (not anything else, just the "numbers"!) looks pretty much fast-paced-action-orientated at its core, and it does stress PC-power. While that's not bad on its own (streamlining and improving something never is, and I guess smoothing out some points in the skill system is good too), I get some sort of vibe that - in my eyes - doesn't go well with Planescape.

Paizo might employ whomever wrote whatever, that doesn't have to mean anything. In some cases, setting and system are closely tied together. With the D&D 3.5-base, I tend to view system and settings as separate entities, and whatever mentality is behind Pathfinder's writing as a whole, that might not say everything about the Pathfinder 3.5 system adaption.

Though maybe Pathfinder as a setting and the Pathfinder RPG go together very well (one should be able to expect that, heh), I kinda don't see it as a totally convincing option for PS material. I lack the insider-perspective though. I might very well be wrong. We shall see.

So far, I think the Pathfinder system is a worthy improvement on 3.5. Take skills, for instance. If your 3.5 character has more than one class, you have to keep track of which skill points belong to which class so you know which skills at which levels to pay 1 point per rank and which skills at which levels to pay 2 points. Oh, and if rogue is one of your classes, it had better be at 1st level to get that (8+Int)x4. :roll:

But in Pathfinder, you just add up all your skill points, assign them to skills, and add +3 to trained class skills from any of your classes. Is rogue your 1st level class or 2nd level? Doesn't matter, since you get the same number of points either way. Your max skill rank is your character level. That's it. Cross-class, multiclass, doesn't change a thing.

But that isn't the real reason Planescape fans should go with Pathfinder. The real reason is that Wizards of the Coast hates Planescape. Not everyone there does, as evidenced by the person who pushed to keep Sigil in 4E. But it's obvious that the 4E team went out of their way to ditch the old cosmology, and I think they did it to purge the last traces of Planescape from the game.

They say the Inner Planes are useless because you can't visit them without massive magical protection, yet the 1st-level adventure The Eternal Boundary included a visit to the Elemental Plane of Fire. Dead Gods includes a visit to the Negative Energy Plane. Neither one requires the PCs to have any special magical protections. This so-called "problem" was already solved in 2nd Edition. Why do we need it to be "solved" again in 4th?

They say the Blood War is useless because it's just evil fighting evil and the good PCs have nothing to do with it. Except, of course, for the PCs playing Hellbound: The Blood War. And so on.

I say Paizo should offer to buy the Planescape license. After all, with their new and "superior" cosmology, why would Wizards say no?

Paizo has stated on their web site that while they might sell 4th edition materials from other publishers, they will not author any. They will be using Pathfinder as their sole system for creating new content once it is published.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about this. Paizo is trying to keep 3.5 alive - kudos to them. But I am concerned about the fragmenting of the game. We'll have people playing 4e, 3.5e, Pathfinder, and 2e, not to mention if there are any other 3.5 variants that another publisher comes up with. I will be interested to see how many publishers move to 4e, and how many just don't bother.

Personally, I'm sticking with 3.5. Between all of the Dragon and Dungeon mags I have yet to exploit, the wealth of material from other publishers, online material, and my own creativity, I can continue playing for decades. I may pick up materials which use new rules, but that would only be for ideas.

Well, its certainly correct that there are plenty of other games out there. Planescape has survived the 2nd/3rd split fine, because most of the background material remains.

My concern is two-fold: will Paizo be able to have adventures set in the Planescape setting we know? Their recent adventure paths in Dungeon added a lot to the Abyss.

Second is the edition schism itself. I've seen a lot of games lose players when they shifted mechanics and setting. The World of Darkness lost a lot of players (myself included) when they arbitrarily went through Gehenna/Apocalypse/whatever, and remade their setting. Champions learned their lesson after the Fuzion debacle, and went back to their original system.

When 3E came out, we still could buy the books and use them for Planescape. While the mechanics changed, the setting didn't (for the most part). Now, the resemblance between 2E and 4E is only the most basic things. Paizo is attempting to update 3.5 to 3.75, but that's been tried before (in the CCG arena, especially). It hasn't really succeeded.

D&D will continue to be played in a variety of forms. But to be honest, I could run a generic fantasy RPGs with Lego figures and a few d6's. D&D has always been more than just mechanics to me.

this was an interesting tidbit James Jacobs wrote in March:

Now those are two very interesting quotes. Nine planes is less than 17, but the names given certainly sound colorful and there appears to be an effort to make the cosmology "planescape-like," and deliberately so.

Since Pathfinder is going to be supported by publications now, I'm thinking that it looks like Pathfinder mechanics would be a good update if people want to update Planescape to a current setting. Pathfinder may have its own cosmology, but it sounds like they're trying hard to keep the important parts so similar that you can swap some names and some history and make a go of it. I like that.

Where are you getting these quotes? I'd be interested in reading more.

Monthly subscription = yuck!