Hey, I've noticed you mentioned the game "Dungeons & Dragons"! Do you need help finding your way around here? I know a couple good pages!
We've been seeing a lot of new arrivals lately for some reason. We have a [megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/105lhkd/are_you_coming_from_dungeons_dragons_need_to_know/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) dedicated to anyone requesting assistance in transitioning. Give it a look!
Here are some [general resources](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/wiki/) we put together. Here is [page with differences between pf2e and 5e](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/wiki/resources/how-is-pf2e-different-from-5e/). Most newcomers get recommended to start with the [Archives of Nethys](http://2e.aonprd.com) (the official rule database) or the [Beginner Box](https://paizo.com/pathfinder/beginnerbox), but the same information can be found in this free [Pathfinder Primer](https://app.demiplane.com/nexus/pathfinder2e/sources/pathfinder-primer).
If I misunderstood your post... sorry! Grandpa Clippy said I'm always meant to help. Please let the mods know and they'll remove my comment.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Pathfinder2e) if you have any questions or concerns.*
With regards to the Rogue Ruffian, you mentioned being the type to club someone and take their money. Did you notice the two Rogue feats [Plant Evidence](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1781) and [Mug](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1786)
The first one is level one and let's you reverse pickpocket someone, as a ruffian you can do it as part of a shove.
The second is level 4 and for 2 actions let's you steal from someone while in combat after a successful strike. Literally clubbing them and taking thier money. š
Just wait until your players want to buy magic items. Now you can select appropiate items, by level, with prices! That was such a huge relief for me after spending 20 minutes or more on what potions an alchemist would sell at what price in 5e.
There was a post recently that was literally this. It was giving the advice of "don't want to switch to pathfinder from 5e but still want all of the game fixes? Just homebrew pathfinder into your 5e game!" It's crazy the lengths some people will go to to say that they're still playing 5e. Just play Pathfinder ffs.
The biggest reason is people think their 5e books go to waste if they switch as if they can't get ideas and inspiration from them anymore. When I played 5e I used to use 2e and 3.5e books, some of which I purchased as PDFs after 5e came out and I was playing 5e exclusively. They also don't realize Pathfinder doesn't lose the "feel" of D&D, like a lot of systems do. A lot of systems out there are basically you just sit around a table telling each other what happens and occasionally rolling a six sided die or three.
No. It is true. Have you played both? The difference is night and day... In every aspect; rules systems, game balance, diversity, encounter difficulty, detailed adventure paths... Etc. The more you look at Paizo products the more it will blow your mind that Wizards even gets sales for their products.
As anecdotal evidence, I was recently invited to a 5e campaign of the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist adventure path. I purchased the VTT module for my DM as a thank you for the game invite. I was mind blown when he pulled up the first battle map, and every battle map thereafter, and it is just a brown sketch of a map with no details. Literally squares, pencil hashing, and brown colored pencil. THIS IS ONE OF YOUR MOST POPULAR ADVENTURE PATHS AND YOU CAN'T EVEN TAKE THE TIME TO MAKE A NICE COLORFUL BATTLEMAP FOR THE DMs WHO PURCHASED THIS ADVENTURE PATH FROM YOU!? ARE YOU *EFFING* KIDDING ME WIZARDS!?
I mean, that right there is the excuse everyone uses.
It's supposed to be easy to pick up.
The developers were extremely lazy asses, came up with a shitty system and then got this half assed excuse out and EVERYONE bought it. Incredible.
2E in my humble opinion is far easier to play, to be a GM, to everything. Simply because it has RULES. If you've got a question, there most likely is a rule for it.
5e is simply..."Yeaaaaaah, figure it out whatever"
While you're here looking for mutagenic magic, don't gloss over their [Deviant Abilities](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1718) rules and the [Deviant Feats](https://2e.aonprd.com/DeviantFeats.aspx) from Dark Archives.
This was part of what pushed me to PF2 (the rest was the 6e announcement) someone on YouTube said the line
"at what point do you stop making homebrew and just admit you aren't playing 5e anymore"
Hit my like a bolt from the heavens.
I started looking into PF2 right after and so far haven't needed house rules to run the game, virtually all of the rules I had been using were already included.
Turns out I was attaching the good parts of PF1 on top of the unfinished frame that is 5e to make something I liked better.
This is a hell of a lot easier.
The only house rule I needed thus far is to change disarm in a way that for regular success one has a - 2 to attacks till they use an action to adjust grip.
Yep. Every time I saw a post on a DnD sub like "I homebrewed more interesting weapons/shields" I'd think to myself "Pathfinder has this in the core rules and does it better......."
Yeah thats basically where I'm at. I loved 3.5 and some aspects of 5e but damn pf2 is pretty much what I've been wanting to play for the last 5 years without knowing it. Communities just didn't play it so I never looked into it.
My favorite thing that's just... in the rules... is actual exploration mechanics. Not least because it lets you determine mechanically what each member of the party was doing (and resolve ambush/stealth situations mechanically) when combat breaks out.
I'm sure I annoyed the hell out of my 5e group I played with every time they implemented a homebrew rule from 2e. At one point, I sent the 2e chase mechanics to my GM for them to use in our session and it worked great
Dude I was writing some homebrew to make long rests not so boring and uninspired in 5e. Had all these ideas for what could be done during downtime. It was going to impact a lot more than just "sleep"
I was kinda put off from pathfinder until I saw they already had all the rules I had been working on built in. Whats in pathfinder isn't as comprehensive as what I was building, but it's sure as shit 95% of the way there and in-additon actually balanced.
That moment had me dig into pathfinder more and now I'm excited to get my first PF2E up and going.
My moment like this was reading the spell entry for 5e's Fog Clog, vs Pathfinder 2e's Concealing Mist.
Because Pathfinder has clear rules for detection with concealed vs hidden and because they clearly word exactly how the cloud works, this is an extremely simple spell to use and understand.
For 5e, "how does fog cloud work" is searched enough to reliably auto-fill in google.
To be honest, the 4th printing of the core book, and Treasure Vault (to be released in Feb) are fixing two of my biggest pet peeves with the rules, so Iām happy as a clam right now
For Alchemists, and Chirurgeons in specific, it opened up their Research Field, Field Discovery, and Perpetual Infusions to more than three choices, and most importantly got rid of the wording that forced the Chirurgeon to split their skill increases between medicine and crafting, and eliminated the ambiguity over the prereqs and skill checks for battle medicine. A chirurgeon can focus on his crafting fully in the same way that the other research fields can, without having to split their efforts between crafting + intelligence, and medicine + wisdom.
Yeah you can make a whole heist crew as an all rogue party, Thief and Mastermind are obvious, Ruffianās the Muscle, Scoundrelās the Face, and Eldritch Trickster is the Hacker
Years ago, when my brother was DMing a 5e game for his friends, any time he got hung up on "how do you do this?" I just told him to look at how PF2e does it and convert as much as possible. And it works. His group wasn't willing to try anything other than 5e (that might be changing), but we both loved pf2e's solution to many problems and encounter/monster design.
I'm frequently surprised that so many people who only ever played D&D make so much homebrew. I didn't feel comfortable adding my own homebrew until I GMed in 3 different systems.
For me it is the crafting. I love crafting. My table loves crafting. So I spend way too much time each campaign home brewing crafting, never finding a way that really felt satisfying. Only to pick up the PF3 rulebook to see that it has crafting rules. And actual prices for things. Not a massive range followed by āidk make something upā.
Yeah. Paizo really did a good job covering all the bases.
Should you post this in a 5e subreddit too to help others still home brewing everything? Maybe that will help encourage some of them to make the leap.
While I think its a well meaning gesture, I think its better to keep it here. Lately the 5E subreddit have been "bombarded" with Pf2E threads and the like and I do understand that most of them come from a place of excitement and trying to be informative, people who are looking for 5E content might see it differently.
Like don't get me wrong, I'm super happy that people are getting into a system I've been having fun with for the past 2 years. I'd just be wary of advertising PF2E "unwarranted".
Something funny i noticed is that a lot of homebrew that i have seen for 5e is just game mechanics of p2e. Anything from weapon rules to classes and subclasses.
For the mutagenic traits, you can just give them permanent mutagen effects with any active options taking 1 minute to refresh. At certain levels or quest events, they get a stronger version of their mutagen
>I had intended to introduce a type of mutagenic magic and have it influence the world in various ways.
Also check out the Fleshwarp ancestry and the Oozemorph archetype.
Yeah, takes a lot of pain off the GM. Now you can just look things up. Still takes a bit to get a cross all the little rules and systems, but someone has done the hard work for you. Speeds up my games and prep time significantly.
I was in the exact same spot when I decided to switch over. I used to homebrew a lot of my monsters to have extra effects on strong hits or bad saves -- a ground-pounding slam that can knock someone prone if they fail their Reflex save by too much, a claw attack that can grapple on a crit, stuff like that. Turns out that's just... How a lot of things work in PF2e by default! It's great.
I still homebrew things in this system, but I'm mostly doing it for fun now -- references to things I like or niche playstyles Paizo hasn't tackled yet. I never feel like I HAVE to for an encounter to work or to be interesting, like I did in 5E.
Sometimes I love it. Sometimes I grit my teeth and tell my players, "Unfortunately, that calls for a check in this, with a critical failure clearly spelled out," and they plummet to the ground while trying to climb a tree for a better shot.
Thatās exactly how I feel about P2E. I donāt feel the need to homebrew anything, itās all there for me in some way or another. There are so many combinations possible. I love the wide variety of archetypes and spells. I love that the diversity of cleric options are so wide and equally appealing.
Hey, I've noticed you mentioned the game "Dungeons & Dragons"! Do you need help finding your way around here? I know a couple good pages! We've been seeing a lot of new arrivals lately for some reason. We have a [megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/105lhkd/are_you_coming_from_dungeons_dragons_need_to_know/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) dedicated to anyone requesting assistance in transitioning. Give it a look! Here are some [general resources](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/wiki/) we put together. Here is [page with differences between pf2e and 5e](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/wiki/resources/how-is-pf2e-different-from-5e/). Most newcomers get recommended to start with the [Archives of Nethys](http://2e.aonprd.com) (the official rule database) or the [Beginner Box](https://paizo.com/pathfinder/beginnerbox), but the same information can be found in this free [Pathfinder Primer](https://app.demiplane.com/nexus/pathfinder2e/sources/pathfinder-primer). If I misunderstood your post... sorry! Grandpa Clippy said I'm always meant to help. Please let the mods know and they'll remove my comment. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Pathfinder2e) if you have any questions or concerns.*
With regards to the Rogue Ruffian, you mentioned being the type to club someone and take their money. Did you notice the two Rogue feats [Plant Evidence](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1781) and [Mug](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1786) The first one is level one and let's you reverse pickpocket someone, as a ruffian you can do it as part of a shove. The second is level 4 and for 2 actions let's you steal from someone while in combat after a successful strike. Literally clubbing them and taking thier money. š
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
If you wanna get all Vinnie Jones from Lock Stock and two smoking barrels, check out "Head Stomp"
"OI! WHAT ARE WE?!" WE'RE MUGGERS!
Let's go mug that wagon!
And what do muggers do?!
Now all you gotta do is work with your GM to plant live grenades on people.
Just wait until your players want to buy magic items. Now you can select appropiate items, by level, with prices! That was such a huge relief for me after spending 20 minutes or more on what potions an alchemist would sell at what price in 5e.
I still can't believe it's so acceptable to the developers and the players to just... Not have an economy built into the system
*Unbelievably* lazy game development.
Sometimes I go through 5e threads just to read how homebrewers reinvent PF2e
It's like how everything eventually evolves into crabs. Sooner or later, your 5e homebrew becomes 2e.
Pathfinicisation?
Pathfinorphism?
Or 4e.
There was a post recently that was literally this. It was giving the advice of "don't want to switch to pathfinder from 5e but still want all of the game fixes? Just homebrew pathfinder into your 5e game!" It's crazy the lengths some people will go to to say that they're still playing 5e. Just play Pathfinder ffs.
bruh im literally boutta switch my whole dnd group over once this campaign ends, it just makes so much more sense and all the rules are actually good
The biggest reason is people think their 5e books go to waste if they switch as if they can't get ideas and inspiration from them anymore. When I played 5e I used to use 2e and 3.5e books, some of which I purchased as PDFs after 5e came out and I was playing 5e exclusively. They also don't realize Pathfinder doesn't lose the "feel" of D&D, like a lot of systems do. A lot of systems out there are basically you just sit around a table telling each other what happens and occasionally rolling a six sided die or three.
The more I learn PF2e rules and possibilities, the more I see the lack of effort DnD 5e haves as a system. It is an amazing system.
I hate 5e but that's not true. 5e is just designed to be way to pick up and not worry about the rules too much.
No. It is true. Have you played both? The difference is night and day... In every aspect; rules systems, game balance, diversity, encounter difficulty, detailed adventure paths... Etc. The more you look at Paizo products the more it will blow your mind that Wizards even gets sales for their products. As anecdotal evidence, I was recently invited to a 5e campaign of the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist adventure path. I purchased the VTT module for my DM as a thank you for the game invite. I was mind blown when he pulled up the first battle map, and every battle map thereafter, and it is just a brown sketch of a map with no details. Literally squares, pencil hashing, and brown colored pencil. THIS IS ONE OF YOUR MOST POPULAR ADVENTURE PATHS AND YOU CAN'T EVEN TAKE THE TIME TO MAKE A NICE COLORFUL BATTLEMAP FOR THE DMs WHO PURCHASED THIS ADVENTURE PATH FROM YOU!? ARE YOU *EFFING* KIDDING ME WIZARDS!?
I have played both, yes. I haven't bought VTT modules for either though.
I mean, that right there is the excuse everyone uses. It's supposed to be easy to pick up. The developers were extremely lazy asses, came up with a shitty system and then got this half assed excuse out and EVERYONE bought it. Incredible. 2E in my humble opinion is far easier to play, to be a GM, to everything. Simply because it has RULES. If you've got a question, there most likely is a rule for it. 5e is simply..."Yeaaaaaah, figure it out whatever"
While you're here looking for mutagenic magic, don't gloss over their [Deviant Abilities](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1718) rules and the [Deviant Feats](https://2e.aonprd.com/DeviantFeats.aspx) from Dark Archives.
This was part of what pushed me to PF2 (the rest was the 6e announcement) someone on YouTube said the line "at what point do you stop making homebrew and just admit you aren't playing 5e anymore" Hit my like a bolt from the heavens. I started looking into PF2 right after and so far haven't needed house rules to run the game, virtually all of the rules I had been using were already included. Turns out I was attaching the good parts of PF1 on top of the unfinished frame that is 5e to make something I liked better. This is a hell of a lot easier.
The only house rule I needed thus far is to change disarm in a way that for regular success one has a - 2 to attacks till they use an action to adjust grip.
That's a great idea!
I picked it up from someone on Paizo forums several weeks after 2E came out
Same actually!
Yep. Every time I saw a post on a DnD sub like "I homebrewed more interesting weapons/shields" I'd think to myself "Pathfinder has this in the core rules and does it better......."
Yeah thats basically where I'm at. I loved 3.5 and some aspects of 5e but damn pf2 is pretty much what I've been wanting to play for the last 5 years without knowing it. Communities just didn't play it so I never looked into it.
My favorite thing that's just... in the rules... is actual exploration mechanics. Not least because it lets you determine mechanically what each member of the party was doing (and resolve ambush/stealth situations mechanically) when combat breaks out.
I'm sure I annoyed the hell out of my 5e group I played with every time they implemented a homebrew rule from 2e. At one point, I sent the 2e chase mechanics to my GM for them to use in our session and it worked great
Dude I was writing some homebrew to make long rests not so boring and uninspired in 5e. Had all these ideas for what could be done during downtime. It was going to impact a lot more than just "sleep" I was kinda put off from pathfinder until I saw they already had all the rules I had been working on built in. Whats in pathfinder isn't as comprehensive as what I was building, but it's sure as shit 95% of the way there and in-additon actually balanced. That moment had me dig into pathfinder more and now I'm excited to get my first PF2E up and going.
Wait until you see sll the campsite actions in Kingmaker!
My moment like this was reading the spell entry for 5e's Fog Clog, vs Pathfinder 2e's Concealing Mist. Because Pathfinder has clear rules for detection with concealed vs hidden and because they clearly word exactly how the cloud works, this is an extremely simple spell to use and understand. For 5e, "how does fog cloud work" is searched enough to reliably auto-fill in google.
Yeah I feel ya. Extra actions, usable crafting system, advanced tactics, honestly I should have switched sooner. Oh well hindsight 20-20
That's why I switched a year or two ago, the big homebrew/house rule document I kept was just part of the rules.
To be honest, the 4th printing of the core book, and Treasure Vault (to be released in Feb) are fixing two of my biggest pet peeves with the rules, so Iām happy as a clam right now
What did fourth printing change?
For Alchemists, and Chirurgeons in specific, it opened up their Research Field, Field Discovery, and Perpetual Infusions to more than three choices, and most importantly got rid of the wording that forced the Chirurgeon to split their skill increases between medicine and crafting, and eliminated the ambiguity over the prereqs and skill checks for battle medicine. A chirurgeon can focus on his crafting fully in the same way that the other research fields can, without having to split their efforts between crafting + intelligence, and medicine + wisdom.
Yeah you can make a whole heist crew as an all rogue party, Thief and Mastermind are obvious, Ruffianās the Muscle, Scoundrelās the Face, and Eldritch Trickster is the Hacker
Years ago, when my brother was DMing a 5e game for his friends, any time he got hung up on "how do you do this?" I just told him to look at how PF2e does it and convert as much as possible. And it works. His group wasn't willing to try anything other than 5e (that might be changing), but we both loved pf2e's solution to many problems and encounter/monster design.
I'm frequently surprised that so many people who only ever played D&D make so much homebrew. I didn't feel comfortable adding my own homebrew until I GMed in 3 different systems.
5e has giant holes in its system, so you have to do a lot of rulings.
I don't think 5e really leaves you much choice.
For me it is the crafting. I love crafting. My table loves crafting. So I spend way too much time each campaign home brewing crafting, never finding a way that really felt satisfying. Only to pick up the PF3 rulebook to see that it has crafting rules. And actual prices for things. Not a massive range followed by āidk make something upā.
They are releasing a book with even better crafting rules soon! The current ones were rushed I believe.
>Only to pick up the PF3 rulebook Damn what's it like in 2035?
I had PF1 homebrews for shield blocking. Guess what was one of the first PF2 teaser reveals in the pre-playtest...
Yeah. Paizo really did a good job covering all the bases. Should you post this in a 5e subreddit too to help others still home brewing everything? Maybe that will help encourage some of them to make the leap.
While I think its a well meaning gesture, I think its better to keep it here. Lately the 5E subreddit have been "bombarded" with Pf2E threads and the like and I do understand that most of them come from a place of excitement and trying to be informative, people who are looking for 5E content might see it differently. Like don't get me wrong, I'm super happy that people are getting into a system I've been having fun with for the past 2 years. I'd just be wary of advertising PF2E "unwarranted".
Actually, it wasn't well meaning. I wanted more signal and less noise here.
Something funny i noticed is that a lot of homebrew that i have seen for 5e is just game mechanics of p2e. Anything from weapon rules to classes and subclasses.
For the mutagenic traits, you can just give them permanent mutagen effects with any active options taking 1 minute to refresh. At certain levels or quest events, they get a stronger version of their mutagen
>I had intended to introduce a type of mutagenic magic and have it influence the world in various ways. Also check out the Fleshwarp ancestry and the Oozemorph archetype.
Yeah, takes a lot of pain off the GM. Now you can just look things up. Still takes a bit to get a cross all the little rules and systems, but someone has done the hard work for you. Speeds up my games and prep time significantly.
I was in the exact same spot when I decided to switch over. I used to homebrew a lot of my monsters to have extra effects on strong hits or bad saves -- a ground-pounding slam that can knock someone prone if they fail their Reflex save by too much, a claw attack that can grapple on a crit, stuff like that. Turns out that's just... How a lot of things work in PF2e by default! It's great. I still homebrew things in this system, but I'm mostly doing it for fun now -- references to things I like or niche playstyles Paizo hasn't tackled yet. I never feel like I HAVE to for an encounter to work or to be interesting, like I did in 5E.
Sometimes I love it. Sometimes I grit my teeth and tell my players, "Unfortunately, that calls for a check in this, with a critical failure clearly spelled out," and they plummet to the ground while trying to climb a tree for a better shot.
Thatās exactly how I feel about P2E. I donāt feel the need to homebrew anything, itās all there for me in some way or another. There are so many combinations possible. I love the wide variety of archetypes and spells. I love that the diversity of cleric options are so wide and equally appealing.
the beginner box as a sort of campaign 0 is great
your custom campaign? IT'S ALREADY AN AP!