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15:16, 29th March 2024 (GMT+0)

(Pathfinder) Path of War: How is it?

Posted by Samus Aran
Samus Aran
member, 351 posts
Author, game designer
Part-time Metroid fighter
Thu 10 Aug 2017
at 09:56
  • msg #1

(Pathfinder) Path of War: How is it?

One thing that's kept me from getting into Pathfinder or back into 3.x is LFQW. This, to me, is a dealbreaker of a problem. But Pathfinder's Path of War and Unchained look like they might help alleviate that problem, especially if I gave all martial classes the Martial Training feat(s) for free. Those of you who have played with it, how is it for giving the martial classes actual cool stuff to do? Do the maneuvers make enough of a difference?
GamerHandle
member, 949 posts
Umm.. yep.
So, there's this door...
Thu 10 Aug 2017
at 12:19
  • msg #2

(Pathfinder) Path of War: How is it?

So, unless you play E6 or E11 style ( or whatever variant ) you will always have the fabled "Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards" equation.

With E#, you can prevent it by simply never reaching those insane levels.  (Not sure if you're familiar with the idea - essentially, characters stop leveling at a designated level, such as 6 - a point where fighters are still able to take-on wizards to a degree, but, wizards still have a lot of "one-encounter" power.)

That being said - yes, Path of War and the Unchained books do offer a lot of neat stuff for fighters and rogues, however; only the most munchkined of character builds will ever compete with a vanilla wizard, or *shudder* a summoner.
Egleris
member, 169 posts
Thu 10 Aug 2017
at 21:43
  • msg #3

(Pathfinder) Path of War: How is it?


You might also want to consider the "Weapon Master's Handbook" - for the Fighter class in particular, it is a pretty good increase in usefulness on multiple fronts. As for Unchained, not all of it is good, but the Stamina rules, Revised Action Economy and Automatic Bonus Progression benefit the martial classes a good deal more than the casters while still being generally "quality of life" improvements over the Core rules. And the U.Rogue is better than the standard Rogue under nearly all possible points of view.

Additionally, "Spheres of Power" and "Spheres of Might" are pretty good, despite being third party - the first is a way to check the power of casters while still leaving them a lot of creativity and freedom in using magical powers (in fact, from a concept/creativity standpoint, it's probably superior to Core PF despite being slightly less powerful), while the second allows for a set of supernatural and extraordinary ability for martial classes along the line of traditional manga/superhero tricks. Using both together can go a long way toward leveling the playing field among the classes.
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