Pathfinder Sells Out

Is it just me, or does that wizard look like the same one who's on the 4e PHB cover, aside from the hair color?

According to Paizo, as of Monday, their Pathfinder game’s core rulebook has sold out its first printing.  Now, this is mostly distributor orders — not actual sales — and there’s no indication of how large the first print run is.  Still, it’s a pretty impressive accomplishment.  I suspected that the initial sales would be very strong, and I hope it’ll bring people to the hobby, and not be confined to the existing 3.5 audience.

I have my doubts, though.

I haven’t seen the final revision of the rules, obviously, but the beta was not promising.  While the stated intent of the developers was to address some of the problems of 3.5e, and in particular to make melee characters a more viable choice, I found that the beta did the exact opposite — spellcasters were given a variety of bonuses.  Some problem spells were addressed, like Glitterdust and death spells, but there remained a wide variety of “I remove the enemy from combat” spells — including some new ones added by Paizo.  Fighters, on the other hand, were given more bonus feats… but they also need to spend more feats in order to achieve the same effect they used to get from a single one.  For instance, the +4 from Improved Disarm?  That takes two feats in Pathfinder.

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