Pathfinder?

[Bobson]

I know that Incursion's not a direct implementation of the D&D 3.5
rules, because of the different needs of a roguelike, but it's based
on them. Has there been any thought towards basing it on the
Pathfinder ruleset instead?

Pathfinder is itself a derivative of 3.5, and is mostly compatible
with it, but has many balance changes (for example, all races have
either +2 to two stats and -2 to one, or else a floating +2 that can
be applied to any stat), new abilities (for example, sorcerers choose
a bloodline to represent their heritage, which grants them extra
spells and unique abilities), and new rules (grapple/trip/sunder and
so on now have you make a Combat Maneuver Bonus check against the
target's Combat Maneuver Defense, rather than opposed rolls). All the
published rules are freely available online - not just the rules from
the core book, but from all the additional rules books they're
releasing, and all the crunchy bits from the world-setting books.

My gaming group made the switch to Pathfinder about a year ago, and we
never looked back. There's a fairly short PDF (18 pages, including
cover and artwork) of a conversion guide available free from
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/v5748btpy89m6 which will give a good
overview of the changes, and the rules are at http://paizo.com/prd.

[Journeyman]

I'm definitely aware of Pathfinder; I'm in a Pathfinder
(tabletop RPG) game right now. As I do with a lot of d20
stuff, I'm going to cherry-pick what I like from lots of
different sources -- Pathfinder, Trailblazer, Fantasycraft,
3.5, 3.0, etc. -- open licenses are wonderful like that. I
own the books and frequently check d20pfsrd.com besides.

Incursion will ultimately be its own system and have its
own SRD, which I plan to make useable for tabletop play as
well as the roguelike game, with differences to accommodate
the different needs of each. Pathfinder fixed a lot of
things that were broken in 3.5, but it also broke several
new things, and there's a whole tabletop RPG balance
discussion there that I probably shouldn't go into here.

Some things I probably will take from Pathfinder include
sorcerer bloodlines, CMB/CMD, some OGL monsters, changes to
several classes, new OGL spells and feats, etc. You might
see versions of some Pathfinder classes -- the Oracle, Witch,
etc. -- in a new version of Incursion whenever it comes out.
But it's not going to hew to the system overall because it
has its own instead. Notably, racial attribute bonuses will
work quite differently in Incursion than they do in
Pathfinder. Incursion races are more powerful than any other
d20 system base races without Level Adjustment to my
knowledge, so they need their own standards.

[Backgammon]

Given that my first contact with any form of d20 in a playable form
was with Incursion, I just can't imagine it being any different. That
said, a different system in regards to some game mechanics might turn
out interestingly enough.

On May 22, 1:10 am, Bobson <bobs...@gmail.com> wrote:
> many balance changes (for example, all races have
> either +2 to two stats and -2 to one, or else a floating +2 that can
> be applied to any stat)

Being a roguelike, I don't think balance has much, if any, bearing on
the game. Certain classes and races are going to be drastically easier
to win with; it's similar in most every roguelike out there. What this
"balance" would take away is some of the extreme specialization
Incursion allows: if I play a kobold, I want massive stat differences
from a human, because that's part of the charm of playing a difficult
race, adjusting to large racial stat maluses and taking advantage of
large stat bonuses. Incursion is interesting because the races are so
different from each other.

[Journeyman]

> Given that my first contact with any form of d20 in a playable form
> was with Incursion, I just can't imagine it being any different. That
> said, a different system in regards to some game mechanics might turn
> out interestingly enough.

d20 and Pathfinder are much more alike than either
is like the currently released Incursion (percentile
speeds, non-standard template rules, non-standard
skill rules, more powerful feats and races, non-Vancian
magic, no initiative roll, no iterative attacks, etc.)
Lots of people seem to think that Incursion is a really
faithful implementation of d20, and honestly it isn't
at all. It's just a really detailed one. (The "Temple
of Elemental Evil" CRPG is probably the most faithful
d20 computer game; it's fun and I recommend it.)

The new game will have several more things in common
with canon d20 (real Initiative, d20 style rounds and
actions instead of percentile speeds, actual Vancian
spell memorization albeit heavily modded, etc.) but
it's still going to be really different overall.

[Bobson]

On May 24, 11:54 am, Journeyman <jmen...@shaw.ca> wrote:
>   Some things I probably will take from Pathfinder include
> sorcerer bloodlines, CMB/CMD, some OGL monsters, changes to
> several classes, new OGL spells and feats, etc. You might
> see versions of some Pathfinder classes -- the Oracle, Witch,
> etc. -- in a new version of Incursion whenever it comes out.

That's pretty much what I had in mind. The "Big Thing" with
Pathfinder classes is that there are no dead levels where you gain
nothing from your class, and (to a lesser extent) everyone gets
something early on that scales with level. I'm not looking for a
perfect copy of it, just something with those general guidelines.

Glad to hear you're working along those lines!

[Journeyman]

> That's pretty much what I had in mind.  The "Big Thing" with
> Pathfinder classes is that there are no dead levels where you gain
> nothing from your class, and (to a lesser extent) everyone gets
> something early on that scales with level.  I'm not looking for a

This is definitely going to be true in Incursion as well.
I really think Pathfinder did good making the base classes
more customizable, though they dropped the ball with the
fighter. 3.5 had too much focus on prestige classes;
Pathfinder was right to refocus the expansion options
on the base classes for more organic development, and
the archetypes are a much more elegant way of realizing
that than 3.5's alternate class features.

Incursion already had fewer dead levels than 3.5, long
before Pathfinder was published -- "rich classes" were
always a design goal. And we'll probably have 20th level
capstones to reward single-classing, though not
necessarily the same ones Pathfinder does.

Expect to see some Pathfinder feats too, probably
reworked mechanically but still recognizable, as well as
a form of rogue talents and some Pathfinder-inspired
bardic stuff. And more I can't think of right now.