Alrik -
on Pathfinder:
In short, so far i like it. Last two weekends, we've played. I had the first weekend post 3.5 conversion be sort of a getting familiar session, w/ a town faire similar to beginning of nwn2 w/ various events the players could participate in and better check their chars out. One event was a sort of "ninja event", where the players could compete against a rogue over an obstacle course across the town skyline with jumps, climbs, tightrope walk, etc. Balance and jump are now rolled into acrobatics. There was a sumo-like unarmed combat event in a ring, wherein the first to be knocked out or pushed out of the ring lost the match. That's where the CMD/CMB thing was tried out.
CMB/CMD replaces the myriad of rolls and combat chapter lookups when one wants to make a combat maneuver such as tripping, grappling, etc. Decide if there's an attack of opportunity, then roll your 'combat maneuver bonus' against the opponents 'combat maneuver defense'. In reality, it's a modified attack roll using a different size mod, but it gets the job done. the classes, skills, feats, everything's undergone a good tweaking.
This post will ramble on forever, and I'd rather be gaming when I'd spend quite a while typing a really long post. I'll just refer you to this link instead:
rough outline of pathfinder changes from 3.5
Also,
here's the SRD w/ basically all the rules if you want to check it out in more depth.
I do feel it's for the better, if youre into d20/3.5 style RPG. The game seems a little more streamlined and flashier, but not excessively. It's still rules-crunchy as ever, but so far it's been fun for the players, and as a DM it's not that hard to convert over. Actually things are a little easier on me now here and there..
And it has to be said that
Paizo's business model is so worthy of praise when it comes to the accessibility of their products, and just being "for the players" in a way that
WoTC just shamefully isnt. Look at both sites, and you'll see what I mean.
First and foremost, Paizo's products are ALL available on PDF. Try and just simply get the Players Handbook from WotC on pdf from their site. Good luck w/ that. I went and bought the pathfinder core book in hardcover from a local store anyway (which might i add is PHB & DMs guide in one), but i still want to have it on PDF as well so I went and bought it off the site in PDF as well for ten bucks. No hunting around the internet, no shady trades between friends because they simply want to have the PDF on their laptop. Need a module? Go to Paizo's site and theyre all up there for DL. Sure they charge for them (there are free ones as well), yes it's a business, but it's all about accessibility and being there for the players of their games.
Theyre innovative too, w/ things like their awesome
critical hit deck and
critical fumble deck which we literally use every game and are fun as hell.
At first I wasnt really interested when I heard about Pathfinder, but after the fail that is 4E and quite frankly kinda bored w/ 3.5, I figured it was time to see what all the fuss was about. I'm glad, it appears to be a quality product and I'm impressed w/ how Paizo in general supports it.