Something Awful reviews Pathfinder Roleplaying Game

[Libertad]

I was a bit misleading in the title.  Something Awful forum members review Pathfinder as part of their FATAL & Friends Line-Up.

It's really good.  They have an insightful analysis of the system, and where the game designers succeeded and failed in trying to make a better 3.5

[cvar]

Play a half-orc if you just want to write surprise sex over and over for your character background

Laughed so hard I choked.

[FlaminCows]

Part 1: Introduction.
Wow. He sounds like a total prick. "The horrible people are plagiarising sacred WotC's game rules! Oh the humanity!"

Part 1a: The Licensees
Not much of a review here, since all it says is "anybody can use the license and 90% of the stuff made with it is crud," which is pretty obvious really. Still, a few chuckles are had. Maybe I should start a game company, too!

Part 2: Getting Started
In which the reviewer discusses Paizo's blatant shilling, and goes on to bash attribute rolling and give the usual complaint of "why do you need the scores, couldn't it just be modifiers? Tradition-humping trogs, they are!". This complaint is very common, and it is nonsense. Attribute scores are used quite often, because they are actually a type of hit point total. Lots of effects do ability damage, and unlike HP damage ability damage has an actual mechanical effect on your character. Food for thought.

Part 3: Races
In which the reviewer critiques the pointless piddly bonuses that the races get. Which is true. Paizo does that sort of thing a lot. Also everybody in fantasy is a racist asshole, but that's pretty much common knowledge by now.

Part 4: Classes
You could pretty much summarise this by saying "nothing that matters has changed", if you're familiar with 3.5. But for those who aren't, a decent overview of how core classes in 3.5 (and, er, Pathfinder) are badly balanced and stuff. I dunno who exactly doesn't know that yet, but perhaps somebody in the world has just discovered the Internet.

Part 5: Skills
Notes the changes to the skill system. Nothing big here. Also points out that the skills don't matter if you have spellcasting, which is true.

Part 6: Feats
In which Paizo fucked up and sucked badly.

Part 6a: Traits
In which Paizo fucked up and sucked badly, in smaller portions.

Part 7: Equipment
"Exotic weapons suck, the rest is boring." Yep. Moving on.

Part 8: Additional Rules
Not much is said here, but no surprise as there isn't much to say.

Part 9: Combat
In which Paizo's claim of streamlining combat is shown to be bullshit.

Part 10: Magic
It really isn't as hard as he's making it out to be, but whatever.

Part 11: Spells
Which are broken, of course.

Part 12: Prestige Classes
These suck. No surprise there, they are after all the ones from the 3rd edition DMG.

...

That's it, for now.

[RedWarlock]

I thought it was hilarious.

Though something for keeping in mind, the review seems to be from the context of looking at PF as a game on-whole, not just how it differs from 3.5. IE, they had the opportunity to fix a lot of problems in trying to be the 'next step' after 3.5, and they didn't. From a broad perspective, PF is pretty fucked up, as games go, and survives only due to its legacy-inheritance.

[littha]

I love how all the equipment is priced in sheep...

[Haakon]

I think that I'm missing something here, basically, that a bunch of Rogue feats were seen as Fighter feats. Also that Assassin isn't a Rogue PrC.

And also, they don't point out that dex bonus + AC means that there are armours that are better than full plate.
And that yes, this means rogues can end up with more AC than say, Clerics.

And that how much damage a light weapon did was of no consequence if you were a rogue, since sneak attack would deal so much more damage anyway, that it wouldn't matter.
So taking weapon finesse means that you can tell STR to go fuck itself. That means that you can put attribute points into other places. Like DEX.

So for a rogue, STR doesn't matter at all, which is great.