Hmm, the only first level PF mods I have right now are Hollow's Last Hope and Master Of The Fallen Fortress, with Crypt Of The Everflame on the way. Your suggestions are noted for my next buying spree though

>Expletive!!!!< They have a bunch of pictures over on Warseer, and the new box models put the skull pass models to shame. The HE lord on the griffin is gorgeous!

GW is the devil!

Man their boxed set models are getting nice. Every one improves on the last in quality.

I'll tangent back to the Pathfinder discussion here. *grins*

I'm not at all for edition wars, either. 3.75 and 4 are simply two different games, both of which have strengths and weaknesses. And I play and love 'em both.

Since the Pathfinder one is the one I'm GMing, I wanted to chime in to that:
I'm currently running Fallen Fortress with several groups of friends to get them used to the rules. (Some of them have never played P&P, others 4e or 3rd, or the German system "Das Schwarze Auge")
Time constraints have made it necessary to use a published adventure and since I got that one for free, I went with that. I do not regret.
While it isn't the strongest or most sensible adventure I've read so far, about 3 lines of made-up backstory turned into a very neat and fun tutorial, really.
Oh, Revenge of the Kobold King is a free PDF at paizo.com, by the way. You can turn D0, D1 and D1.5 into a cute mini-campaign and only have to buy one out of the three if you're happy with PDFs.

What I hope to do in the near future is to run CoT with at least two groups, since that means a much more favourable preparation-time:playing-time ratio for me.
I really love that Path. The first two books alone are so amazing that I couldn't NOT play them and... well... it's an urban campaign. There will definitely be lots of opportunity to use the Himmelveil Terrain my friend has been building!

As for conversion from 3.5 material to Pathfinder: There's a free conversion PDF on paizo.com again and I agree with the Grump in that it seems straightforward enough. You might want to pay a little more attention to it than just calculate CMB and CMD, since the core classes did get stronger and it might be that not updating major villains/bosses/npcs might lead to them not being a challenge for your heroes. But that still is pretty simple.
Then again, updating the classes, especially on the lower levels, also was in part because levels one and two were particularily deadly in 3.5, no?

I just got the Advanced Player's Guide for Pathfinder.
...
...
...
Dayum! Just, dayum!

The book messes with character creation in a whole bunch o' ways. Good ways. A whole bunch of abilities that can be swapped out for races, classes, domains, and even the magical Schools.

The new classes are... very different. Bomb hurling alchemists, crippled, blind, or deaf oracles. Just plain messed up summoners. About the only 'normal' new classes are the cavalier and the inquisitor.

by , on Flickr

Very nice book, lots of new options, especially for folks who just want to mess around with their characters.

The Auld Grump

Actually I was just talking to my buddy last week about running a campaign with just the advanced player classes, with none from the core book. I think it would make for a pretty interesting game!

Believe it or not they apparently had to nerf the new summoner with stuff they were seeing out of the playtesting, the original critter was just too powerful!

As an aside - at the local Borders Pathfinder outsold 4e for the months of July and August. Almost twice as much.

I shouldn't be surprised, I saw how the books were selling, I think I even commented once or twice on it, up above.

But selling almost twice as many books, with fewer than a third the number of total volumes.... That can't be good for 4e. It means a lot of those 4e books just aren't selling in worthwhile numbers. I think WotC may have glutted their own market, and can't blame the 3pp this time around.

Though the local Borders running through sixteen-plus copies of the Gamemastery Guide didn't hurt.... So far eight of the Advanced Players Guides have sold, with a delay while they wait for more copies.

The Auld Grump

Something to bear in mind - sales figures are generally determined by presales, not actual sales volume.

Locally, sales by presales favor 4e. Sales after returns favor Pathfinder - as yet the local Borders has not had to return any Pathfinder. It has returned entire cases of the core rules for 4e in the months following the big push - those returns were larger than the actual sales.* They also had to return entire cases of the PHB 2 and 3, and one of the DMG expansions.

They have not had to return any of the various Monster Manuals, except after the big push. They have also been getting a lot fewer of the MMs and other critter books. Selling three out of half a dozen, and leaving three on the shelf, does not cause problems - having two or three of a strong selling RPG on the shelf is kind of what they aim for.

The returns are a killer, and annoy the manager of the store, since it is shelf space that could have been used for stuff that might sell. When they get in an entire case of a 4e product more than half is generally returned. And Borders tends to send things like PHB2 and 3 in full cases. I think that he would be okay with 4e, if Borders corporate didn't shove way too much product down his throat. If he could get, say, half a dozen of PHB 2 rather than two dozen.

There have been months where they might not sell two dozen RPG supplements total, let alone of one book. They were sent four cases of each of the core books when they were new. They sold just under one case of each. (And yes, twenty-four was more than they have sold of Pathfinders core book. Then again, there have also been no returns of the Pathfinder core book....) As an aside - he has recently started facing Pathfinder, and leaving 4e spined.

Sales figures often do not mean actual sales - this is a big chunk of what killed TSR. Decent presales, and way too many returns. And neither WotC or TSR does remainders, which means that merchandise that does not sell are sunk costs in an edition change.

TSR had a warehouse full. WotC has been doing smaller print runs on the books that they feel have a more limited audience. TSR was doing new dress while still having the older covers warehoused. Hell, they had print runs that overlapped.

That said - I suspect that the Essentials line will do well for WotC, maybe even locally. I also suspect that Pathfinder outselling 4e's total is a two month long hiccup, that with Essentials things will normalize, and 4e will regain top position. Maybe even Gamma World. (I have yet to see a copy. I know that it is out, I just have not seen it.)

But the returns are worrisome, and are quite aside from who sells most. High returns can kill even a large publishing house. (Doubleday was in serious trouble in the eighties because of this.) The D&D novels line has also seen a lot of returns - but the paperbacks can be stripped. This is fate of far too many paperbacks. Hardcovers are returned, and are sent back out as demand allows, remaindered, or pulped. (The waste in the publishing industry is appalling.)

The Auld Grump

* WotC has since sold through those print runs, so lost little, except some goodwill from the managers of the stores that had to make those returns....

TSR never even did market surveys. That's the reason they failed. The CEO prided herself on not knowing what the company did. That's how they got Spell Jammer. That's how they got bankrupt.

WOTC on the other hand, ran two way mirror tests before they released 4e. Then the marketing grognards crunched the numbers.

I can't imagine Essentials will do anything meaningful. Its certainly not competing with anything. Its Basic D&D, cut to fit in the red box. Most regular 4e players will get all the updates for free when they get the Character Generator update next month.

Mine is already donated to my son for him and his pals to play with.

I really don't pay attention to presales. Its not information I have access to. I talk to salesmen. Lots of them. I just know that in a town of 1,100,000 4e is outselling off the shelves in large volumes. That's what the sales men tell me. On the other hand, Pathfinder is now the second most popular RPG on the market with 20-30% market share. Not bad. Sale of all other d20 products has all but ceased.

Presales are tricky - even a popular book can kill its own profit if it is overproduced because of presales. (Get three million presales, print three million, sell 500,000 - still a decent seller, but the profits are gone.)

An interesting article on the .

You seem to be slightly misinformed in regards to Essentials - the Essentials starter box is the beginning of a new line - a lot more is coming out in the line. At least five more releases, not counting dice or tiles. This has led to some people griping that WotC has broken their promise of 'no 4.5'.... (Not a particularly valid argument, since WotC is not discontinuing support for 4.0.) More to the point, it means that WotC will now have two lines of products that compete with one another. If the new line acts as a gateway then all is fine, if not... then there could be problems.

The Auld Grump

For what it is worth - it looks like WotC will regain lead position at the local Borders - with pretty much all the sales taking place this last week. (Lots of 4e releases - including Dark Sun, the boxed basic, and the trade paper Essentials.) Up until this week, it looked like Pathfinder would take September, but those were all strong releases. With Christmas on the horizon it seems likely that they will hold their lead.

On Pathfinder, on the other hand, it looks like I will be replacing my CSI: Arkham game with Kingmaker. (Kingmaker is, I am sorry to say, excellent. Having the PCs as the movers and shakers instead of the moved and shaken.)

One aside from the early talking over of the switch -
Me: Alchemist sounds like it was tailor made for Molly.
Player: That... doesn't sound like Molly....
Me: The class has a first level ability called 'bombs'.
Player: Okay, now that sounds like Molly!

After that, I am looking to an Eberron game (using Pathfinder) with the PCs as a salvage and recovery agency.

The Auld Grump

Still not clear on the "Essentials" line. Is their a Players Guide as such or just a basic book for each race/class? I looked at a Dragonborn book, but was unclear as to if it was part of the Essentials or just a little expansion book. If I, as a regular RPG player is confused...I pity the average mook looking to get into the game.

I was also reading that article about the WotC buyout of TSR and...they are doing to D&D exactly what is described TSR doing to it. History looks to be repeating itself.