Pathfinder Zaniness: Introduction

The folks who wrote Pathfinder tried a nearly impossible task: condensing the best and most popular parts of an enormous amount of published 3.5e D&D material.  They made a more enjoyable game.  It even had usable grapple rules.

A huge problem with 3.5e D&D was that since so much had been written a player could pick and choose rules to make an absurdly powerful character.  The writers of different supplements never imagined that this character class would be combined with that prestige class, and use that magic item, and so on...but a player would notice an insanely overpowered way to combine details.

(Example A will always be Pun-Pun the Kobold.  But be warned that understanding that link requires more familiarity with the 3.5e D&D rules than I have.)

So one goal of Pathfinder is to remove this over-optimizing.  Yet this is an impossible goal.  Therefore, you get my brief new series: Pathfinder Zaniness.

• The 7 gold piece magic item
• The Staff of Vomiting Win
• The 360 gold piece magic item
• The Monk's Alchemist Cohort
• Air Elemental Familiar

Pathfinder Zaniness is done for now, by the way.  I had collected a few ideas during the last few months, and finally had time to blog about them.  Now on to better things!

Undoubtedly I will find a few more zany things to write about.  I am part of a group playing the Kingmaker campaign, which involves establishing a new kingdom.  The Pathfinder economy is remarkably balanced considering the existence of powerful magic items, yet it will always be true that a kingdom's tax revenues will be insignificant compared to sending its high-level rulers out adventuring.  Surely this will expose yet more silliness within the fantasy economy.

UPDATE: More!

• Chains of Alchemist Silliness

UPDATE: I also blogged about my Entertaining Pathfinder Forum Threads.