I’m honored to host a series of guest posts by famed RPG reviewer and excellent gamemaster, Caesar Slaad. He’s going to be testing out some of the claims made around the Web that the Pathfinder RPG isn’t as compatible with 3.5 Dungeons & Dragons as it purports to be. Here’s what he has to say:

So then, I’m still hearing claims to the tune of
1) Pathfinder isn’t really compatible with 3.5 and
2) Pathfinder really doesn’t fix anything.

To get the “real story”, I am heretofore enacting “The Pathfinder Experiment”. The methodology of this experiment is simple. At off days in my local gaming group, or at gamedays, I’ll run an adventure written for D&D 3.5 using pathfinder. I will not do a “pathfinder rewrite” of the adventure. At best, and modifications I make to the adventure will be either on the fly, or no more expansive than the prep time I would take for a normal, impromptu game.

Then I’ll provide a brief report (for my own reference and for any interested) in
1) how the adventure ran, with special attention to the impact of any back end rules changes (grappling, etc.)
2) any changes that were required to adapt to Pathfinder rules, and how I handled them.

I ran the first such game Friday, so will provide the first report shortly.

Personally I can’t wait to hear the reports coming from Caesar Slaad’s playtest!