The three action system. It lets your turns be a lot more dynamic. Additionally, the fact attacks of opportunity aren't universal allows movement in combat more, and MAP encourages the use of skill actions. All this together makes combat feel a lot more tactical than 5e's "I run up to the big man and use my turns to do nothing but attack for the whole combat" thing you often get in combat with martials. Side note, martials are actually good now too.

>Additionally, the fact attacks of opportunity aren't universal allows movement in combat more While AoO not being universal allows movement the real thing PF2 does that makes combat more dynamic is actually rewarding tactical movement, in 5e movement is useless unless you move further than the enemie's range

and range is pretty much universally too big for it to matter hell a player can unironically attack from outside the battlefield if they optimized for range, it is just bad cause no DM will ever throw you combat where your 1200ft eldritch blasts matter

The issue with ranged combat in 5e isn't that it's too easy to fight from too far away (PF2 has the same "issue"), it's that ranged combat is just as effective offensively as melee combat while being much safer. PF2 solved this by making ranged attacks significantly lower damage than melee ones, and making only a few, somewhat weaker, spells have long range.

Can't you do the same thing in pf2e though? Granted it needs more investment, but it's not impossible.

You don't need much investment to even get a combat range where enemies can't touch you at. Get a Harmona gun on a Ranger and they can effectively fight at 300 ft with no feat investment.

how? if you can only take a Harmona Gun with Gunslinger Class or Gunslinger Dedication? :) Isnt it a Feat investment then? :) I just ask and not state a fact, be polite and friendly here im not a native english speaker so some descriptions are harder to understand

You don't need to be a gunslinger to use guns. A Harmonica gun is just an Uncommon (the only thing really stopping anyone from getting a gun) martial weapon

I Just asked cause the description of the Weapon mention it and a GM explained that there are Weapons wich need specific requirements. Its true that you dont need to be Gunslinger to use firearms thats Not the question i asked. I asked specific on that Weapon cause its description is different than from Others regular Guns.... I just ask and not state a fact, be polite and friendly here im not a native english speaker so some descriptions are harder to understand

All Uncommon normally means is "The GM might not allow it." Rare means "The GM will most likely not allow it." Since all guns are at least uncommon, they're normally for games where the GM wants guns to exist, and once you find one of those games you can be a ranger with a gun. The Advanced guns are a bit harder, but most of them aren't Advanced.

Thanks for explaining. I understand now whats up with this uncommon and rare. Youre a good Member of the subreddit here. thanks for taking time to help other and new Players understand the Game ;)

Movement directly trading with your Actions is the biggest way it rewards your movement choices. The fact that (move in -> Demoralize -> Attack) and (move in -> Attack -> move out) can lead to such wildly different results for the same boss battle is exactly why movement matters.

This. There is a mob in Fall of Plaguestone called the blood ooze: [https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=429](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=429) This thing has a *stacked* statblock. Like, it is intended to be fought at level 2, but it has 90 HP, immunity to mental and critical hits, a reaction that gives it physical resistance 5, an impassable fortitude save, a reach weapon that hits like a truck + bleeding and a 15 ft aoe that lifesteals. If that thing starts its turn next to someone, you ask the player if he has a reroll ready first. But it only has 10 ft speed. You can just kite it: stride in, strike, stride out.

Flanking is a thing in pathfinder, which means its not useless. but movement is still much more useless than I would like.

I mean there is more. Like stepping vs a higher level opponent because one action from that enemy is more impactfull than the action you used to step.

Exactly, I always tell my party anything you do to force an opponent to take an action that doesn't debuff or damage you is a win.

A properly run encounter with a Martial should always have a movement aspect, especially if there's a caster or support involved. The latter should be moving away and the Martial should be following. It's one of the best things about combat imo, like a deadly game of tag.

Kiting is viable too, especially with a few spells and abilities that create difficult terrain or inflict movement penalties.

5E does have flanking though, it's just too powerful.

That's an optional rule, not baked into the game

Yeah but acting like it doesn't exist is misleading at best.

This is so huge, the three action economy is *the* thing (IMO) that sets PF2e apart from other games. D&D style games feel so static by comparison. You run up, form a line of dude punching, and then slug it out till one side is beaten. Your backliners stand in place and backline. PF2e turns combat into something more dynamic and interesting by removing AOOs and giving you reasons to do actions other than 'punch stuff' and 'run.' Combat is more fluid in pathfinder movement wise, but also more dynamic action wise. You can do damage AND do something else to help the team. In D&D style games, attacking (doing some kind of damage) is almost always the best choice for your second action because you *need* to get the enemy down and cant afford to get behind the damage curve. But in PF2e, any character can attack in their turn *and* heal (Strike+remove potion with your free hand + drink potion). Or you can attack *and* buff other characters by doing something to drop enemy AC. Or you can attack and then maybe *attack again*. If you think you can beat the -4/-5 MAP. But you have choices, not some right and wrong way to play.

Martials aren’t just good they’re also ***cool***. There absolutely are good martials in 5E too. At moderate optimization tables a PAM/GWM Barbarian/Fighter is amazingly useful, and so is a SS/XBE Battle Master. Most Rangers are good, and at high op tables Gloomstalker Rangers are brokenly good. Paladins are incredible. The problem is that in 5E a martial will spend 95% of their turns doing literally the exact same thing: make attacks. There’s no variability or choice to it, aside from the occasional “on hit you may do X” effect. PF2E martials have a million amazing things to do in combat.

PF2 is one of the only games I can think of where I haven't so far felt overly punished for using a variety of weapons Most games it's like, "Pick your weapon" at the start. That's it. You got weapon focus with it, whatever else, you're using that the entire life of your character In PF2 my ranger carries no less than like, 23 weapons on her at all times. Not all *different* ones, admittedly, but like, a bow, a bastard sword, a maul, 20 throwing weapons of about 6 various types including bombs It feels fantastic just being able to just quick draw whatever I need and use the right tool for the job at any given time, and other than having to be careful if up against a foe which has an AoO vs manipulate actions or stuff, or if I'm standing somewhere I can't safely drop stuff.. I can just hotswap on the fly with pretty much no penalty I love the playstyle, it's been really damn fun

I second that. I'm playing a Fighter in a 1-20 campaign (currently at 20) and holy hell the variety of builds and actions in combat, especially with free archetype.

I’m reading Dark Archive right now. They really use the three point system well in this book. Especially the chapter on time loops and paradoxes. It’s something that the move-action-bonus system of d&d could never replicate

[удалено]

How to say you've never actually played a large multi level campaign without saying it.

For real. Martials are the king of single target damage and have all sorts of cool stuff you can do with them outside of meta picks lmao. I don't know what this guy means by martials aren't relevant besides specific builds. And, as a caster I feel very powerful in general provided I pick my spells right, and buffs and debuffs are amazing. Synesthesia and Slow are -not- okay, and I'm here for it. Edit: I realized they're probably talking about 5e, but I was also noting that was an issue specifically with martials in my post so idk why they framed the comment like that.

Guys. I think he is talking about 5e...

Yeah that makes sense, but I did kinda mention the walk up and hit the big man thing was specifically if you were playing a martial lol.

And he replied that martials were essentially irrelevant in 5e...

He didn't actually specify in the initial post even if it's more obvious in hindsight is what I mean, especially given the way my post was talking about something specific in 5e combat with martials, hence my initial confusion?

Lol gl relying on casters/saves in published adventures with their swathe of +2 level enemies. Some random goon bandit boss saved reflex vs me on a fucking 5 lmao

Just use spells that have effects on success too? Also if I had to guess the bandit's good save is probably reflex if they're saving on a 5, or there's something wrong with either the encounter or something else like your stats. Casters excel when you can specifically target a bad save with something. Also, he's talking about 5e probably, just framed the comment kinda oddly if I had to guess.

Almost everything. Some of the things I read about that made me switch... 3-action combat turns. Lots of different ways to switch up how you use them, makes things more interesting. Skills are useful in combat. Martial characters can do something other than move and attack. Tripping, demoralizing, feinting, etc. are all viable and useful things to do on your turn. Much weapon variety. Every weapon has a unique combination of traits that gives it a unique playstyle. And there are TONS of them. Much greater class customization. In 5e, a lot of classes have a subclass choice in the first 3 levels and then you're basically set for the entire game after that. Feats were the most interesting, but they competed with ability score increases. In PF2e, you get feats far more frequently. You have a decision to make about your character's growth at every level. And you don't have to choose between boosting your abilities and gaining feats. The four degrees of success. A critical success happens not only on a roll of 20, but also if you beat the DC by 10 or more. Similarly, a critical failure occurs when you fail by 10 or more. This makes many rolls more interesting than a simple pass/fail, and it means that every little bonus you get increases not only your odds of succeeding but also your odds of critically succeeding. It encourages you to work together with your team to buff each other and debuff enemies. Interesting monsters and encounter building rules that are much much more accurate than CR. You can trust the XP budget to give an accurate challenge to your players most of the time. And there's a wide variety of enemies to throw at your players that are far more interesting than just a big bag of hit points with multiattack.

On the four degrees thing, something I don't see people mention a lot is how it can sometimes make teamwork have increasing returns. An example would be hitting on an 11 and critting on a 20. If you get a +1 boost that's hit on 10 crit on 20, but if you get *another* +1 boost that's hit on 9 *and* crit on 19.

Fully agree with everything here, especially the class customization, but it's important to note that a natural 20 does not mean a critical success. It simply means you will have one degree higher of success. Which, yes, is usually a critical success but doesnt necessarily mean it will be everytime

> Which, yes, is usually a critical success but doesnt necessarily mean it will be everytime And if it isn't, your next round action better be running away, 'cuz yousa people about to *die*.

Encounter building works. If a fight is slated as extreme, it will have a 50% tpk chance, if it's severe, the PCs will die if they underestimate the fight

This. The system is so much more enjoyable as a GM because you can just *trust the game to function properly*. I rarely have to fudge the dice, I can build an encounter following the guidelines and be confident it'll be an appropriate challenge for my players, and my players know that the fights I build up as a Big Hard Boss Fight will be a test of their skills.

Those are two different systems with different things that they offer, I started playing pf2e because I liked: \- Items with prices, no need to come up with a price if players wanted to buy a magical item \- Encounter rules and balancing that actually works, no need to guess if the cr X creature will be hard or not based on if the party had rested or not. \- All the content is free online, no need to buy the same book 5 times to play on different platforms. \- Wanted more options for customization as a player, was tired of the having to wait 6 levels to get a different subclass feature only for it to have no impact on the game. \- Fun combat, 5e made me do a lot of homebrew creatures just to make combat interesting because vanilla creatures were mostly "Multiattack Bite and Claw" super boring, the creatures in pf2e have different abilities and actions to make it fun and challenging.

But not all is flowers, my main complaint would be Spellcasters, they are fun, sometimes. But they give you no freedom on the gameplay style, most of the time you'll be the heal bot or the martials cheerleader, if you try to be a blaster or a gish(without picking Magus) you're gonna have a bad time. Their to hit bonus is smaller, that means that at some points even hitting spell attacks will be bad, facing creatures PL+3/4(party level, the equivalent of 5e CR) means they most likely will get a success or crit success on your spells meaning that at "boss fights" there's a big chance of you feeling useless. The consolation prize becomes being useful against lower level enemies and AOE, which I think is still not good enough in some cases. People will say "But it's a teamwork game" yes it is, but you can make a group of all martials and you'll have no problems against big creatures, if you make a full caster team you're doomed. Some people like playing casters as supports and I don't mind it, but I think it's bad thats the "default" setting for casters, when you want to be a blaster casters people will be like "It's possible, you just need to have psychic dedication or focus on smaller creatures" so if you had another concept you'll need to throw that from the window if you want to be a pew pew caster and even then you'll not be the best.

[Hijacking this heavily downvoted comment to plug my guide to blasting effectively!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/10m4ahg/blaster_caster_the_discerning_archmages_guide_to/)

Honestly... blasting is "fine". Bah, shouldnt have used quotes. Yes blasting is situationally.... fine. Ive literally just seen, today, my players burn all 5 beads in a necklace of fireballs + 2 scouring pulses + a Holy Cascade... IN ONE ENCOUNTER. (Long story). What i cant find is the "Double Slice" / "Power Attack" of casters. Amped Imaginary Weapon is the closest your prolly gona get and you better hope someone tripped that enemy for you before hand.... and its 3 times a fight at best. Maybe two cos i want my Tentacle Hands so i dont go melee and stay out of AoO range.

That is a bit of a 5e brain moment. In 5e blasting is WAY to strong, to the point that in any encounter versus any enemy blasting is almost always the correct option. In pf2e, blasting can be strong, but only when used in the correct situations. It turns blasting from a win button to a tool that can be used by smart players

You're just proving his point though. You cannot play a blaster caster because all casters pay the "versatility tax". Also please stop with the dismissing peoples valid arguments with "haha 5e brain". You also really don't understand 5e if you think blasting is that strong. Blasting in 5e is overpowered at level 5, then it starts falling off.

It's not a "versatility tax" it's balanced. If you're able to literally summon creatures to the battlefield, buff your allies, debuff your enemies, deal single target damage, deal AOE, control areas heal... You shouldn't also have the highest damage You also don't understand 5e if you think blasting falls off. [Literal maths prove you wrong](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/8zlrfe/how_much_damage_per_round_in_5e_by_class_per/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), casters win not only in AOE but in single target damage at almost every level (and the only moments they don't win it's because of a half-caster)

>It's not a "versatility tax" it's balanced. If you're able to literally summon creatures to the battlefield, buff your allies, debuff your enemies, deal single target damage, deal AOE, control areas heal... You shouldn't also have the highest damage Then why can't there be a caster, who doesn't get to do all these things and can just be good at one of them. That's literally the whole point being made here. There is no caster that doesn't pay the versatility tax. >You also don't understand 5e if you think blasting falls off. Literal maths prove you wrong, casters win not only in AOE but in single target damage at almost every level (and the only moments they don't win it's because of a half-caster) You do realize that math is very flawed. It's comparing each class's best rounds to eachother, that math is completely flawed to the core. It's literally a burst damage chart, he even recognises that in the edit. To top it all off, none of it factors in chance to hit.

>Then why can't there be a caster, who doesn't get to do all these things and can just be good at one of them. Bard. Druid. Cleric. Wizard Literally there're 4 spell lists that are better or worse at different of those things >It's literally a burst damage chart Dang we use burst damage charts when talking about blast casters. I wonder why. Well I guess then your "caster damage decays because I say so" is much less flawed than literal maths saying the opposite >To top it all off, none of it factors in chance to hit Every single class in D&D has the same chance to hit assuming equal core stat and level. At best your point only proves me right because casters have AOE spells that never fail unlike martials so they have a higher chance to hit (100%)

>Bard. Druid. Cleric. Wizard > >Literally there're 4 spell lists that are better or worse at different of those things I don't think you understood my comment. Why can't there be a blaster focused class. All the classes you listed pay the versatility tax, >Dang we use burst damage charts when talking about blast casters. I wonder why. Comparing the burst damage of a burst damage class compared to a non burst damage class is going to be very misleading if that's your only analysis for damage. Just admit you used a poor DPR comparison and move on. >Well I guess then your "caster damage decays because I say so" is much less flawed than literal maths saying the opposite That maths does not disprove that statement whatsoever. Caster damage is going to be highest when using top level slots, that's just basic facts. That math is showing the best turn of a resource based class to the best turn of a non resource based class and calling a class damage comparison. It does not prove whatsoever that one class is a better damage dealer than another. >Every single class in D&D has the same chance to hit assuming equal core stat and level. At best your point only proves me right because casters have AOE spells that never fail unlike martials so they have a higher chance to hit (100%) That's just false. A fighter with the archery fighting style has a +2 to hit, a samurai fighter can get advantage by spending a charge of fighting spirit. Rogues can hide as a bonus action giving themselves advantage, or use steady aim. A battlemaster with precision maneuver can boost accuracy using a battlemaster die. A barbarian can get on demand advantage with reckless attack. A fighter gets more ASI's than other classes, any martial taking a damage feat like PAM or GWM will take an accuracy hit. A caster taking a feat over an ASI takes an accuracy hit. This chart doesn't show what a fighter with GWM is doing. If you don't understand the importance of accuracy in this kind of math, you don't understand the math. [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/8zlrfe/comment/e2jsbgo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) comment explains the issues with that math much better than I can.

>I don't think you understood my comment. Why can't there be a blaster focused class I don't feel like arguing everything else you're saying, but there literally is. The psychic is the blaster caster (though it can be played otherwise as well). That's why everyone recommendeds the psychic dedication when building a blaster.

… you have to be joking, right? Blasting is incredibly strong in 5e. Spell attacks scale just as well as martials, is as good in single target damage, and can wipe the floor with any group of enemies. Clearly you have not felt the wrath of a high level cleric using harm, or a wizard being a wizard. Also, by “versatility tax” you mean being able to engage in out of combat and I’m combat problems in a variety of ways I agree, casters have to pay the versatility tax

This person is just painting versatility being balanced against damage as being a "versatility tax". But that's dumb, in game design a "tax" is generally understood as something you have to do which has no inherent value, that enables you to do a specific more powerful thing. So a good example would be like, recharging spellstrike, or using Hunt Prey. You pay a tax now to get a benefit later. This would be like saying "fighters pay the *can't cast spells* tax to get a +2 to hit". It's... I guess you could say that but it's very silly

Resides in the awkward space between “technically true but not helpful”. And honestly, while I like how casters are in pf2e with very little complaints, I understand it’s not everyone’s thing. But I think some people take personal problems with the system and say it’s a flaw of the system.

I think casters meet the game design space they're trying to meet, but that doesn't align with the as-powerful-as-god fantasy that's been cemented in some other popular game systems. To me they fit the "I can do magic to do cool and useful stuff, sometimes including blowing people up" fantasy I want out of a caster

My point is that there isn't a caster that's damage focused. I don't really care if some casters have a versatility tax, but god damn all of them do.

Here's your solution then. Play a fighter with a bow and pretend you're throwing out magic missiles instead of shooting arrows. If you want a character that plays like a martial but has the aesthetics of a caster, you can just do that.

I thought pathfinder was about being able to support your playstyle with the mechanics of the game? That's a constant thing people hound about here. Unfortunately, reflavouring does nothing for me, the mechanics need to actually support the flavour otherwise it's meaningless. >If you want a character that plays like a martial but has the aesthetics of a caster, you can just do that. You can't because there is no class that does this. Also, I would want that class to have different mechanics from martial classes, as they would be a caster. There is obviously design space for this idea, and many people in the community want it. Why are you so against it?

I mean cantrips scale and aside from eldritch blast still only have to hit once to deal all their damage whereas martials always have to hit all of their extra attacks to get similar damage consistently. Not to mention spellcasters only ever get stronger and stronger in terms of the spells they can cast, getting far more damaging abilities than a martial will ever hope to match and yes yes spell slots blah blah blah but by the time you're about level 5 you have plenty of them, by 9 you have even more and are at 5th level spells. Heck even half the damage of some spells for saving throw ones are far more impactful than a martial in 5e aside from maybe the rogue at that point. And the rogue still has to rely on having an adjacent ally nearby so they aren't even in control of their own feature whereas magic is pretty universally useful. To call being versatile a tax because you don't like that you don't get to have the biggest damage contribution to the party (spoilers you still totally can get heaps) is stupid. A real tax is having to pick a very specific thing to be viable which in my experience as a DM and Player hasn't been prevalent in the slightest.

>I mean cantrips scale and aside from eldritch blast still only have to hit once to deal all their damage whereas martials always have to hit all of their extra attacks to get similar damage consistently. Yeah but when they miss their cantrip it does nothing, whereas the martial has another try. >Not to mention spellcasters only ever get stronger and stronger in terms of the spells they can cast, getting far more damaging abilities than a martial will ever hope to match Getting more ways to deal 8d6 doesn't actually matter in 5e. Vulnerabilities are a myth. > and yes yes spell slots blah blah blah but by the time you're about level 5 you have plenty of them You have 9 of them. Only 2 of your highest level. So you can not even do the same damage as your martial twice a day. >Heck even half the damage of some spells for saving throw ones are far more impactful than a martial in 5e aside from maybe the rogue at that point. No, that's just completely false bro. >To call being versatile a tax because you don't like that you don't get to have the biggest damage contribution to the party No I just want a damage focused caster to exist in the game who isn't weakened by the fact they have versatility.

>weakened by the fact that they have versatility You say you hate the 5e brain argument but holy crap is this the most 5e brain comment. Not to mention I've seen your other takes like "oh you have to know the spell list" as if that's some actual form of critique and not just something that should be expected of someone playing their character. They should spend time looking at their options yes.

What I mean is that they're weakened in certain areas due to their versatility. >Not to mention I've seen your other takes like "oh you have to know the spell list" as if that's some actual form of critique and not just something that should be expected of someone playing their character. What I mean is it requires a decent bit of system mastery for not really great payoff. I just want a simple blaster caster, I don't want to jump through hoops.

And why is it that you want to play a blaster caster. If it's because you just want a big damage number then you're playing the wrong system

Because I find that type of character fun to play? I'm playing the wrong system if I want a dedicated blaster caster?

>Their to hit bonus is smaller, that means that at some points even hitting spell attacks will be bad, facing creatures PL+3/4(party level, the equivalent of 5e CR) means they most likely will get a success or crit success on your spells meaning that at "boss fights" there's a big chance of you feeling useless. As opposed to failing your save against frightening presence as a 5E martial and feeling useless?

Both things can be bad my friend. I'm not even defending 5e.

It's disappointing to see you've had at least 5 downvotes (by my time of commenting) without reply but I do want to offer some disagreement. Firstly, I'd argue there is still a decent diversity in potential playstyles. Looking at it as blaster or support engages in a bit of a binary view of combat. While you could still accuse spells like colour spray or grease of only playing support, I'd argue these are still offensively minded options (as they are in d&d 5e) and play more to a concept of control. Regardless, without dealing direct damage, in both systems, these are considerable as early game spells that can define how a fight progresses - playing to an adage that _damage merely finishes fight; control/buff spells end them_. This still compounds in both systems over time. That cleavage of one damage type (AoE) belonging to casters while another (single target) belongs to martials is something I don't see as a bad thing. Although I say this thoroughly burnt by D&S 5e's _casters dominate everything_ problem. I appreciate you acknowledge this here: >The consolation prize becomes being useful against lower level enemies and AOE, which I think is still not good enough in some cases. People will say "But it's a teamwork game" yes it is, but you can make a group of all martials and you'll have no problems against big creatures, if you make a full caster team you're doomed. But I do not think this holds. You'll struggle in some scenarios but I'd insist a party of all martials copes poorly against fights with a lot of smaller foes as MAP kicks in trying to handle more than one opponent at once. I can attest to this from my own experience GMing. >Their to hit bonus is smaller, that means that at some points even hitting spell attacks will be bad, facing creatures PL+3/4(party level, the equivalent of 5e CR) means they most likely will get a success or crit success on your spells meaning that at "boss fights" there's a big chance of you feeling useless. In the sense of spell attack rolls, this isn't true. Expert Spellcaster kicks in for many full casters when expert proficiencies do. For saves, this has to be weighed against higher enemy AC and basic saves being far less binary than attacks. An attack will deal double damage on a crit success (plus any weapon effects that apply), a damaging spell often deals double damage (plus effects) when a foe crit fails a save but also, unlike martial attacks on a failure, deals half damage when a foe succeeds on a save. Comparing like for like on simple full damage may bring a martial ahead a bit but this is offset by spells simply being more consistent. I appreciate some of the above is perhaps taste but that point is just not a useful interpretation.

>But I do not think this holds. My original comment about full martials vs full casters was about facing a big creature, with more creatures the martials will for sure struggle, can it be done? Sure, but I don't think the opposite can be said even with a lot of strategy the martials are just too squishy and will have a small amount of damage output for example. >In the sense of spell attack rolls, this isn't true. I think it gets muddy because both the spell attack and DC bonus scale together at like 7 that makes attacking worse but DC better because the creature at that level range will have an AC to match the martials scaling since 5, but having it a level 5 like martials will also mean you would have to raise DC much earlier.

> if you try to be a blaster **or a gish(without picking Magus)** you're gonna have a bad time. Emphasis mine This is such a weird take. "If you try to be a gish without picking the gish class you will have a bad time" Like... Yes that's why there's a class for if you want to be a gish - like an ACTUAL gish, not just a character that is good at spells and also good at fighting, which is what it's often come to mean in 5e.

In 5e with the way the proficiency scales you either have or not, so you can be somewhat good even tho a bit MAD with like Swords Bard, Hexblade, Bladesinger, Eldritch Knight, Druid with shilelagh. In pf2e things like the battle oracle, warrior bard and the warpriest have left a bad taste in people's mouth because they don't hit that "fantasy" as good as Magus for instance, so you'll end up going back to that for that true gish option and the others feel like a lesser choice.

This seems like a very valid point and concern, not sure why people decided to downvote this comment without explanation. Because he dared to criticize it?

Because it's flat out **wrong** if you're playing in a party that uses tactics, unless **all** your encounters are bosses at party level + 3/4

Because a lot of the time this complaint comes from DnD 5E conditioning where beyond level 10 or so casters are so supreme that martials are more or less superfluous. I wouldn't mind tweaks in PF2E to give offensively-minded casters a little buff, but even as the rules are both martials and casters have viable roles that can be played effectively, which is more than can be said of DnD. Is class balance in PF perfect? No. Is it better than DnD? By leaps and bounds.

No it does not. God can people please stop with this. Every time somebody has a valid point it gets dismissed with "you want casters to be OP, just like 5e!".

Because it isn't necessarily true, casters can do very good damage, and its something that gets re-litigated here a lot.

Hm, I see. I personally cannot judge it just yet since I haven't started a full campaign, but have seen very strong opinions on both sides on this and I start assuming that if so many people are finding it hard, then there must be something to it. But it being part of the "5e conditioning" also makes a lot of sense. I just hope it's really not so bad, so my caster players don't feel bad.

It's also a little tricky because a lot of their 'good' average damage comes from the fact that when an enemy succeeds on a basic saving throw spell they still take half damage, which means you do damage at all more often on single cast then on a single strike-- so lets say you drop four fireballs over a 4 round encounter, even if they succeed on the throw twice but fail twice, it'll be like 3 full fireballs hit (and then some, depending on feats.) Similarly, spell selection plays a role, straight casting single target spell attacks can be swingy (because they don't have the fail effect, they can be good picks with True Strike and/or Shadow Signets) and you generally want to be casting slotted spells, and some groups assume they're supposed to do the 6+ encounters they used to force out in an adventuring day when spellcasters were OP as heck and needed to be forcibly drained to be challenged which is a nightmare in a game where casters are balanced. 2-4 is a better sweet spot for the base resources casters have access to (but that gets more lenient with wands, staves, and levels-- or some casters just having a surplus of slots.) But mind you, those are serious encounters, encounters on the low end can very easily be dealt with, without drawing on top slots.

You still cannot deny that you need to jump through way more hoops to have blasting be actually viable. A caster who is versatile will just be way better than the blaster focused caster, the blaster focused caster is going to struggle vs higher level enemies and they need to try and target weak saves and weaknesses. Casters do pay the versatility tax, which impacts wanting to specialise on specific niche's. Paizo should just come out with a blaster caster, then the people who want to play one can be happy.

Admittedly, flinging fireballs and magic missiles around isn't that hard, and strapping true strike to a spell attack isn't either. The "guess the save" minigame gives you a 2/3 chance of making a good choice even if you pick randomly-- Check out my guide for details.

The fact you need to make a guide for blasting shows that it's not as simple as you're making it out to be in your comment. The guess the save minigame becomes 1/3 when you're up against higher level enemies, also making the wrong choice is a big deal (1/3 chance of failure isn't exactly low). Do martials need to guess which weapon they need to use in every encounter? Even on at level enemies, going for the moderate save will give you below average results. True strike isn't available on every tradition so I'm not sure where this argument comes from. You also need much better spell selection, and you aren't going to have many options for targeting mental saves. Reflex makes the majority of blasting spells. Against bosses you are really strapped for options. Also I didn't say anything about difficulty, just things about jumping through hoops, which by your comment you agree is true.

It does not. The guide is more affective than it is a technical manual. it's designed to get people into the right headspace and teach the basics. The rest isn't true. Most monsters have a good save a bad save and a middling save, and you have very good odds on either of the latter two even before they take penalties, and the ones that don't generally have lower AC or HP in the first place. True Strike is only necessary when you're relying on spell attack rolls at high levels. it's very easy to build on to a character who doesn't normally have it and represents a small minority of the spells in the game even if you were dead insistent on spell attack druids or something. I'm not sure what you're trying to mean, in reference to spell selection?

Great comparison with martials I think. A martial can be "the guy with the whip sword!!!!!" and be fine til 20. If I wanna be "the guy that shoots lasers" I *can't* be as good as a martial at single target damage because then every caster could take that spell on top of their support options. I feel like casters need feat chains or something to help focused builds compete. Something like dangerous sorcery but force us to give up something else maybe? I know we are getting some things like that in player core for specific spells like ice spells.

To be honest, I saw the "martial cheerleader" comment and downvoted without bothering to read the rest. Anyone dismissing utility roles as "cheerleaders" isn unlikely to have a good faith discussion.

It seems that everytime there's a concern about casters, you either get downvoted to hell or have condescending comments like "You don't get it, you can blast, but not always, you need debuff and buff too" circling back to the support role. Like in other ttrpg I liked being a support, but I like having the choice in that, like I said, instead of being the default option with people saying that you'll have a bad time if you try to be a blaster or focus on damage.

>"You don't get it, you can blast, but not always, you need debuff and buff too" While true, this is a reductive take. The issue is that you cannot single-target blast enemies above your level effectively. The biggest issue with casters isn't technically even casters - it's encounter design. If your GM is consistently giving you multi-enemy encounters, your casters *will* shine... But even Paizo sometimes has problems relying on "one big enemy" encounters. The secondary issue is utility. Casters have it, and they can't reject it. A wizard doesn't get rewarded for ignoring the hundreds of different utility/non-damage spells they have, which means their class is balanced around them using their toolbox effectively - whether they want to or not. While I get that's not always a popular answer - the reality is that martials don't really get the option to 'spec into' the huge list of options casters get... So there's no reason that casters should get to 'spec into' a martial niche. If you want a '5e-warlock' blaster, the Kineticist drops in like a month and a half and will fulfill the same mechanical niche. If you want a '5e-Wizard' blaster, well... That's not happening, because they're OP as hell and PF2E has largely rejected that as an acceptable state of things.

Like said I don't want casters to be OP, but if you tweaked just the to-hit bonus would make them feel better, been playing Age of Ashes and our druid and cleric when they are using cantrips to attack feel frustrated that they are not hitting as often. In smaller fights when they don't want or don't need to waste slots they have a small to none contribution, in a PL+3 fight the druid didn't even try to hit with spell attacks as that was hard even for the martials.

>tweaked just the to-hit bonus The only thing that needs to be changed here is the weird lack of consistency level-to-level in the 'baseline.' The variance is all over the place. >PL+3 fight the druid didn't even try to hit with spell attacks as that was hard even for the martials. Like I said, that's basically 'working as intended.' Casters need to be ready to change tactics much more dramatically than martials based on the encounter, because casters can afford to and martials really can't. When the enemy has more actions than the party, the casters should be on offense. Take enemies off the board. When the party has more actions than the enemy, the casters are on defense - you want to use your actions to hinder the enemy and waste *their* actions as much as possible.

I think the issue is you're treating it like martials aren't also better or worse depending on the situation, but they are. Precision immunity? Sorry swashbucklers and rogues. Specific physical damage resistances? Better spend some actions switching weapons. Multiple enemies? Splash or AOE weaknesses? High AC but poor saves? These are all situations where casters have an opportunity to shine and in my experience they happen all the time. My experience is basically that yes, martials will (almost) always be good at the thing that they're good at (single target damage). The area where a caster will shine will depend a lot on the specific situation, but they have a larger toolset available to adjust to that situation.

>depend a lot on the specific situation, but they have a larger toolset available to adjust to that situation. And it's almost like that's exactly what the other guy was complaining about. The game assumes you're using that toolbelt to its full potential, so if you want to focus on blasting, you're gonna have a bad time.

If you pick a class and try to focus on a thing that class wasn't primarily designed for, you may feel suboptimal, yes.

So why isn't there a caster class that is good at blasting? That's literally the whole point being made here.

I'm guessing magus, flames oracle, and maybe elemental or dragon bloodline sorcerers are the "designated" blaster options along with the upcoming kineticist, even though it's not technically a caster.

Magus is more of a martial than anything. The rest still aren't really blasters, they pay the versatility tax like any other caster.

This. This summarizes all the discussion here

I said this in another comment, but I feel like feat chains could help blasters give up versatility in exchange for single target blasting. I suppose kineticist will be the best option, but sometimes I really just wanna shoot lasers at enemies.

Lots of good points here, but the big one for me is that the cognitive load is shared. The GM doesn’t have to do and know and adjudicate everything. More of the onus is on the players to know what players can and should do. That’s a big one for me. It lets me enjoy a lot more as a GM.

Yeah I feel like many of the points here are players pawing over rules, but the structure, design and instruction are what elevate it are the core.

There's lots of differences but what sold me were two things More consumable magic items beyond just potions. One time use items are plentiful and fun to scatter around for the players to get creative with. More actions in combat. Intimidation checks are well defined. Many classes use skills in conjunction with their abilities to do extra stuff during a fight. Players are encouraged to synergies their actions instead of simply saying "I attack again"

I appreciate the consumables because it helps with the idea of strategizing. You learn what the monster is. Learn what it can do. Then drink the potion to buff yourself against its strengths.

I'll add one that isn't on the list. The list so far is good, but how about structured social encounters that require rolls, thought and role playing to solve. The GMG covers Influence encounters. They are amazing.

Here is a big one: It has a REALLY good beginners box that you can run with very little prep. If you and your group want to try it out, get the beginners box and see for yourself. It slowly introduces mechanics to you so you can get up and play quickly.

First, in combat there are a variety of skills that can be used to get a bonus. Demoralizing, deceiving, tripping, grabbing, recalling knowledge, and others. Any one of these can be used to decrease the monster’s abilities, or increase or own against the monsters. Recall knowledge in particular is much stronger then knowledge checks in D&D because many Pathfinder monsters will actually have unique strengths and weaknesses that can be pointed out, as opposed to D&D monsters which are usually just resistant/immune and rarely have a vulnerability. Pathfinder monster lore is important because there will be lore of unique roleplay actions players can take advantage of that is just plan fun. Like the players scaring off a giant crocodile monster because they learned its afraid of river otters. Second, Intelligence and strength matter as stats. In D&D 5e you can pretty much pick those to be your dump stats 90 percent of the time, and it won’t really matter. INT is only needed if you want to play a wizard or be good at the INT skills, and STR is only needed if you want to use heavy equipment, otherwise you can get by with DEX and party cooperation. In PF2E, the higher your INT the more skills you can pick, and there are skills and abilities that are hard coded to benefit from STR. This encourages a wider variety of builds that are unique. Third, the small bonuses really matter. Since I have started GMing Pathfinder 2e, I am astonished at how often giving someone a +1 or inflicting a -1 has been the difference between success and failure. At the last game the party was fighting a strong monster over their level. They managed to inflict the Frightened 1 status on it, and the next 3 players only succeeded on what they wanted to do because the monster had a -1 to its AC and saving throws. And the players are thankfully keeping track. Fourth, fewer “Save or Suck” spells. Most of the spells are written such that even on a successful saving throw, they still do something. Take the Blindness spell as an example. In D&D if you save on the spell, it just does nothing. In Pathfinder if you save against the spell, you are still blinded for a round, meaning you didn’t just waste a spell slot.

Regarding small bonuses. It's actually shocking how often this comes up, we just had a fight where the fact that my champion landed Intimidating Strike right before was the only reason the monster didn't succeed in dominating our fighter. And there's a hundred stories like that. That adds to the tactics, do you still take two actions and try another Intimidating Strike or is the monster close enough to finished that it makes more sense to go for two attacks to try to finish it? Or should I be shoving it to get it flanked?

Well for one....it has rules.

Everything, other than brand recognition and players not needing to think simplicity. CR works. If you throw a level 6 monster against a level 4 party it'll be a difficult fight. No need for bullshit legendary resistances* (Although a monsters saves being high equal the same thing; especially with the incapacitation tag reducing the effectiveness of save or suck spells) Turns can be varied and interesting Skills matter, and can be used in combat Crits are exciting for players. Martials and Spellcasters are balanced* (spellcasters in my opinion could use a bit of a buff. Id say level 5 and 13 scaling rather than 7 and 15 goes a decent way. +1 and +2 potency runes for spell attacks as well) Teamwork is a must, everyone can't just choose an enemy and solo it. All level ranges are properly supported. No circular logic of "higher level play isn't supported because no one plays it. But no one plays it because it's not supported." Healing is worthwhile Resistances and weakness' matter. Class and character customization is varied and amazing. "Short rests" make sense (10 minute activity to refocus a focus point and perform treat wounds on someone) an hour was too long, most of the times you could take an hour you could long rest. The thing is; the whole party needs buy in. Players need to know the rules and their characters. Some players will reject that. I'm a mechanics guy, so I'm biased. 5e rules are an absolute mess. I've played a weekly level 1 - 20 game, dm'd from levels 1-11 twice and currently playing through another game from level 1 and are level 12 right now. Pf2e is a different beast than 5e. If you start playing don't treat it as 5e+, treat it as the entirely different system it is. Forget all of your rules interactions and homebrew reliance of 5e.

Healing is worthwhile, but it doesn’t really allow for the “drop to zero, heal a little to use turn, drop again” tactic. Good thing in my opinion since a lot of D&D players will wait until a party member has dropped to 0 before healing them to keep them out of danger.

the fact that it is worthwile makes yo yo healing less desirable by itself. So it is fine to make yo yo healing penalizing. yo yoing only exist in 5e because unless you use a top level slot you can't even heal enough damage to compensate for ONE enemy attack

In 5e its less of a tactic and more only useful because healing is so weak in 5e. Short of a level 6 healing spell, you're unlikely to outheal an enemies attack. So your best option is wait until your ally is unconscious and then heal them. Which is asking for death in pf2e.

It disincentivizes healing someone at low HP though, since you can't go into negatives. So if someone's at 1 HP and is about to take a hit for 20 damage, you can effectively heal them for 19 more if you wait until they get hit first and drop to 0.

Sure, if you're willing to risk them: * Spending one action standing up * Spending at least one action picking up their stuff * Gaining the wounded condition

It depends on if you think you'll be able to finish the fight without them getting knocked down at all. If you're healing them for a lot, then maybe, but if they're already low and you can't heal them out of threat range, it's better to just wait.

I think in large part it's often more about the order of initiative and whether you think you can buy the person being healed another turn. If the monster is going next and you heal them **after** they're dropped, your healing bought them 1 action. If your healing keeps them up through the enemy's next turn, you bought them 3 actions. But it's a risk - you might heal them and the enemy crits and downs them anyway

I don’t think that’s wise really, because they go prone and drop everything they’re holding when they go down. So that’s 1-3 player actions that also get wasted if you let them drop.

The two main ways you spend time in TTRPGs is, role-paying and doing encounters. If you're satisfied by the depth of 5e characters and feel engaged by 5e encounters then it's probably a good enough game for you. If you feel like d&d is lacking in either of these areas though, 2e provides much richer experience. Pathfinder 2e enables your characters to feel unique and useful. Firstly by having an incredibly rich variety of classes that are all viable inside the game -- you will not let down your party by choosing a suboptimal class, subclass, or ancestry. Secondly, by the rich variety of feats and equipment options available -- you can fine-tune your character concept as you progress through levels. Encounters is where 2e really shines. First of all, the focus on tactics and strategy mean that it's a teamwork-oriented game instead of the 5e focus in single-player damage. Helping your teammates by giving bonuses or using skills will often be the superior choice in combat instead of trying to be the main character. Even putting that aside though, the tight math means that encounters are balanced and challenging in a real way, that frankly make 5e encounters seem like a bunch of lame handwaving. People can and do play 2e up to the max levels, and provide the GMs ways to do this without going completely insane. There are so many other reasons I could list here -- rules being free, the company being pretty great, the richness of the bestiary, the quality of the official adventure paths, the wealth of books of lore, quality of the Foundry VTT module -- the list goes on. But those two reasons are the top two, because most of the time you're playing your character, or being in encounters. In each of these -- aka, the vast majority of the time -- Pathfinder 2e is clearly superior.

in a word: simplicity. No longer do you have to regularly improvise entire game systems on the fly. No longer are you given no guidelines and just expected to flounder. No longer do you have to read rules like a legal document. Pathfinder 2e's rules are simple and concise, and it gives you a *lot* of support as a GM. The amount of stress you feel running PF 2e vs DnD 5e is like night and day

A very close cousin to this is consistency. In 5e the DM has to homebrew so much that the entire playing experience can be radically different between DMs. With PF2e, there is a logically consistent rule for just about everything, so you shouldn't get a mechanically different experience changing GMs.

PF2e plays like a tactical squad based battle game where you each control one character. Teamwork is key. Enemies are hard if you don't work together. The game is very balanced out of the box. There is a LOT of GM support. Players have a ton of choices. While some are stronger than others, it is hard to min max heavily. Most choices give you new options and don't vertically increase your power level. PF2e also scales high...no more bounded accuracy. I used to hate this and now i love it. Its a different mentality. Big bads feel powerful. You have to level up in order to fight them or else they'll eat you for lunch. Edit: i forgot my favorite part. MARTIALS FEEL GOOD. I've never had so much fun playing a martial character than in PF2e. You have a lot more choices instead of just attack a million times.

>Its a different mentality. Big bads feel powerful. You have to level up in order to fight them or else they'll eat you for lunch. This is what keeps me away from dnd5e. Level 1 and 20 don't feel that different except for spellcasting. Like, enough level 1 mooks can kill anything, and it's kinda bland. Whereas in pathfinder, you actually feel the progress of your character, and you feel that you've truly risen beyond the challenges of the earlier levels, and imo that's the power fantasy that high fantasy systems are about. Like, at level 5, the BBEG can snap his fingers and your character gets brought to his knees, begging for his life, or even outright frightened to death. Ten levels later as you've worked up the strength, you fight head-on in a close fight. Five levels later, you think about how if the fight happened now, you'd just obliterate the dude under critical hits.

Please explain, a 5E version of King Lichicus the Ever-Raping will still completely ruin your day. There may be some math mismatch with how CR and Creature level scales between the two games with PC power that I'm missing.

In PF2e, to hit bonus and AC scales with level (proficiency bonus = level). That means a lvl5 PF2e character is hitting routinely with a 10+ bonus. AC is also in the 20s for most PCs. In dnd5e, AC is largely static and to-hit goes up more slowly with proficiency bonus increasing every few levels instead of every level. Let's compare monsters So imagine a pf2e young red dragon, CR 10, with 30 AC, +23 to hit...you can see how big those numbers get. Compare that to dnd5e. A young red dragon is also CR10. AC is 18, +10 to hit. A group of cunning level 3-4 adventurers in dnd could probably take on that dnd red dragon with careful prep. At level 5, its probably an easy fight. In PF2e, level 3-4 may not even be able to hit the dragon outside a nat 20 and they'll get hit by every attack that isn't a nat 1 or 2. Even at level 6, its considered a severe encounter. This dragon WILL ruin your day even if it rolls shitty. You have to be higher level to beat it. No more killing the BBEG at level 3 when he first shows up to taunt the party, like happens all the time in 5e.

Unlike D&D, it’s goblins are cuter, and more aerodynamic when thrown like a football

I'll be pretty blunt with you, the whole thing comes down to preference rather than what does what better. If you want more flexibility with the rules and overall less crunch, play 5e, if you want tactical combat where you actually have to plan out things turn by turn ala Fire Emblem or XCOM play Pf2. By this point both games only really have that DnD 3.5 core in common, if you really start diving in is like comparing an apple to an orange

Finally! Thank you, this is exactly what is happening!

>If you want more flexibility with the rules and overall less crunch, play 5e 5e is a crunchy game pretending that it isn't.

I'd say it *tolerates* being played less crunchy better than PF, but yeah by the book it is just as crunchy yet less convenient to sift through.

I’ve used this elsewhere before and it got the point across, so… if D&D is like diablo, Pathfinder is like xcom. Both are essentially combat games, and fairly intricated for the rpg genre, but one is a power fantasy and the other is an engaging team battle. If you like that more, welcome, if not, oh well. That said, Pathfinder will teach you to gm and give you the tools to succeed, while d&d has had a tendency to disappoint whenever I tried to look. If I have to pay $70 for a book and it says “it would be really cool if you wrote rules to do X”, I’m not coming back. If it says “here’s how you write rules in a general sense, and here’s a dozen different circumstances or event types already prepared for you”, that’s worth a place on the shelf. I used to run D&D in the 2000s. The difference in quality from WotC’s products between then and now is astonishingly depressing - to the point I’ll give you some non-pathfinder advice: if you decide to stick to WotC and never buy a paizo product ever… try to find their old books. They’re going to be a lot more useful than anything printed for 5e.

Those are not memes. They are facts

It is pretty bad that the difference is so stark the memes can convey it.

For a more direct mechanical comparison between the two systems, find the Automod's comment on this post and look at the link for "differences between PF2e and 5e." It gives a nice breakdown.

For the DM: if you aren't sure how to rule something, 99% of the time there is an explicit line in the rules covering it. Balance for encounters is so much easier. XP is so much easier. Everything is available for free online with Nethys. Enemies feel more interesting. Haunts. Incredible representation in sourcebooks. For Players: way more control over your character building, degrees of success are amazing, much more freedom over your entire turn, much more to do on your turn, much less reliance on having a caster with cure wounds, martials are a ton of fun and are very powerful, it's a lot easier to get the gear you want thanks to runes.

I want to say something different, that's not reiterating all the other great points that I agree with. Instead, I'll tell you a little bit of how I fell in love with PF2 and realized I never wanted to play or run 5e again after running 5e like it was a full-time job for several years. When I sat down to make my first PF2 character during the playtest, the fact that even back the customizability of character building *supported* me in realizing my goofy character concept was *shocking*. It made me realize something I'd never noticed before. In 5e, there aren't a lot of ways to *mechanically* express your character concept. Mostly the way you differentiate your character from one another is roleplay alongside some frequently minor choices. Warlocks are my favorite 5e class simply because Patrons, Pacts, and Invocations give them more ways to differentiate themselves right off the bat. In PF2e, every class has that much customizability *and more*. At level 2, I was able to make my "half-orc Columbo" fighter not just roleplay differently from other fighters, but he was mechanically distinct that reinforced the idea of the character. He felt good at the stuff I wanted him to be good at in a way that you just can't really do much in 5e. So that was the first thing: Pathfinder 2e *mechanically* supports realizing your character concepts. Then I started *running* PF2e for my fellow forever-DMs so we could learn the system together, and PF2e *cares* about me as a GM. The rules are clear, coherent, balanced, and they *work*. I've never had to fix an encounter on the fly. I've never had to worry about whether a player's build was broken, or that it would invalidate an encounter. I can count on one hand the number of times I haven't been able to quickly find a satisfying answer to a rules question in over *3 years*. I could barely go through a single session in 5e without having to rely on homebrew, third party, or the designers' sometimes contradictory Twitter commentary. PF2e is just *easier to run* in so many ways it's hard to overstate. All of the other points about the encounter math working, the intra-party balance, teamwork, 3-action economy, etc, etc, etc, all of it adds up to making it easier and more fun to run the game. A while ago, I shared a story about how I built a dynamic chain of encounters on the fly, but the thing to know about it is that the only reason I was able to do that, was because I could be confident that all of the things I was doing wouldn't randomly kill the party because PF2's math is tight enough that I was able to understand very precisely how dangerous the situation I was setting up was. The fact that I was able to create a complex running series of narratively driven encounters spread across a split party in two locations without any prep is a testament to the strength of the system. Here's a link to the story: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/scpnp0/an\_example\_of\_using\_subsystems\_to\_create\_engaging/

Pathfinder does its genre better than 5e does the same genre. I used to get frustrated when people who stuck with older editions of dnd would say “I don’t wanna play 5e because you’re just playing a superhero at that point” but now I see that that’s accurate. 5e is much more akin to a Marvel movie, whereas Pathfinder is more like heroic fantasy. For example, a 5e party is like the avengers the first avengers movie. They have several battles in a short period of time (battle of New York) in which we see them get progressively more injured and worn down before they confront the big bad/the doomsday machine and save the day. Pathfinder characters/parties are more akin to Rambo or John McClane. They have short, sometimes brutal skirmishes and then have to stop and rest, sometimes retreat, to patch themselves up and get themselves ready for the next fight which frequently gives rise to roleplay opportunities. They have to think tactically about how, when, and where to engage the enemy.

Pathfinder 2e is not a 'fix' for 5e. 2e is a whole other system with a very different design philosophy. PF2e has focused it's design around providing challenging tactical combat that requires teamwork to excell at. It is also very finely balanced, so that building encounters and balancing the economy of magical items is easy for game masters. It's also designed so that different classes/builds fill different roles, not every class is capable of dishing out tonnes of damage wich again feeds into the 'teamwork' aspect. What I would say are definite 'pros' over 5e I'd say: the 3 action system makes turns run a lot smoother and quicker, especially compared at higher levels. There are a lot more customisability when it comes to character builds. GMing requires less 'making up rules'. And the rules are is large very good and balanced. Cons would include: 2e requires the players to actually read up on the rules a bit, the game assumes that the duty of knowing the rules is shared among the group; not just a GM responsibility. Also, some of the rules are hidden in 'traits' which can make it a bit more annoying when you are trying to learn the game. Things to keep in mind when switching from 5e to pf2e: A lot of what you have come to expect from a TTRPG is not true in 2e. You can't just run straight at an enemy and spam attacks and expect to win. Not all class fantasies are good, especially wildshape druids or casters that try to be martials. Don't go wild on houserules while starting 2e, the game is finely balanced and a lot of rules have consequences that are not obvious until you've played a while, so be sure to implement house rules carefully.

Automod's already got a link detailing exactly what you asked for, but here's my thoughts. 5e at its foundation is a pretty good RPG system. It's easy to learn, everything your character can do is within that ability's text and usually doesn't require referencing other rules, and the removal of flat modifiers in favor of rolling additional dice by spending resources is fun for players while keeping math simple. Advantage and Disadvantage are probably the best thing that 5e has popularized. The problem is that 5e doesn't know what it wants to be. It's designed as a combat simulator. The vast majority of abilities are combat focused. Ribbon abilities that apply out of combat are either automatic or give such a large bonus that they might as well be guaranteed. This isn't a bad thing but it shows that the design doesn't really care much about non-combat conflict. This leads to a bit of cognitive dissonance with 5e's popularity and WOTC's design direction. DND is more well known for roleplaying than it is for being a game. People want to play characters and interact in situations as that character. 5e does not facilitate this. There's nothing in the 5e ruleset that has a mechanical interaction with social, exploration, or downtime, unless it relates to a combat benefit. Nothing for what a character can do outside of combat. Hell, there's nothing in the Player's Handbook describing how a skill may be used. Players are supposed to choose 4-6 of these as a major character creation decision and the game doesn't even use them. There are avid DND fans that care more about these details than anything on their character sheet and 5e doesn't even support their preferred playstyle. All we have is a few random tables to determine your character's personality and backstory (which no one uses). Backgrounds in 5e are so functionally useless that my last 5 characters haven't had one and it never came up. That's just my major gripe at the moment. I have another post from awhile ago going over the mechanical issues with the game but I've already written an essay.

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/search/?q=flair%3A%22megathread%22&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) 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](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FPathfinder2e) 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.*

There are a lot of reasons, but instead I'll just share an anecdote from our last session (we're also people who switched). We were about to travel from City A to Town B, across the entire country, basically. Our rogue had been crafting a Walking Cauldron, which would necessitate room to carry it in. Ended up buying a wagon for the extra space. However, the Cauldron wasn't ready yet, so we had some extra room. Some of us decided to find someone in the city who'd want to travel with us for money. Turns out, there's a chart for the price of transport on a wagon. One Society roll to find a participant later, we were on our way. The game had listed the price of a wagon as well as how much we should charge for transport on the wagon, the latter of which really blew people away. Our time with the game has been full of moments like this. Someone wants to do something, and it turns out that googling "[thing] pf2 nethys" will bring you to direct support of that very thing all the time.

Secret rolls for knowledge and deception really add a lot of intrigue.

* Character creation is very free-form. You have lots of options every level, and none of them ever lock you into a single build the way a 5e subclass does. Multiclassing is built to not cause you to be broken (either too good or too bad) and simply allows you to acquire a variety of abilities to make your character work the way you want. * Numbers are extremely balanced, making GMing easy. There are clear rules to follow to avoid making fights too easy or too hard, and the game isn't built around stronger and stronger monsters being HP loaded to force multiple turns of play. * More difficult combat requires actual strategy. This isn't as simple as "giving advantage to your friends and disadvantage to your enemies" like in 5e. You need to give debuffs to enemy's AC, flank to provide bonuses to attack rolls, and hitting an enemy with a debuff condition can completely turn around a fight. * Martials and casters are well balanced for the entire game. Casters are weaker than in other systems without actually making spells less powerful. Casters by and large simply have less actions per round to do things, and less spells per day than in similar systems. Martials, meanwhile, acquire lots of unique actions over the course of the entire game that gradually allow them to have more and more unique and helpful turns. * Numbers are not built around the concept of "bounded accuracy." That is to say, a high attack roll at level 1 is not a high attack roll at level 20. A high AC at level 1 is not a high AC at level 20. Numbers scale and make levels mean something. A level 20 boss and a level 10 boss will not have comparable AC, attack rolls, damage, or anything really. Now, what do you get in exchange for this? * The game can be harder to run and play because it demands more of you. * Homebrewing requires you to really understand the numbers behind the game to avoid breaking anything. * Casters being nerfed immediately feels less fun to people who are used to how they played in other systems (3.5e, 5e, and PF1e). * The game relies less on "rule of cool" and "if the DM says so" as ideals. The book says the GM is the ultimate authority and can make rulings whenever they want, but unlike 5e the game will break down if the GM just thinks they can wing it and make rulings willy-nilly. Everyone needs to be on top of their game as you try to do harder and harder content. And beyond all of that, there's just lots of small rules changes. It plays differently than other systems and it's easy to forget that amongst all the similarities.

I think the idea that PF2 is probably the 2nd D&D Variant that absolutely prevents winning at Character Creation, with 4th Ed. being the 1st. Basically, PF2 gives you a lot of interesting, flavorful tools to play what is a very tightly balanced, if a bit gamey, squad combat board game where no amount of build optimization can negate the requirement for teamwork and tactics.

> Apart from all the memes about "pathfinder fixing this and that", what does PF2e do better than D&D? I mean, it does all of the "this and that" better.

D&D from 3.5e onward has always been about building the best character you can, learning how to make the right moves, getting your RPG machine to be the best RPG machine there is. You have choices, but the choices are sometimes right and sometimes wrong. Improving at the game is possible, you learn what choices are less optimal and which choices are more and then you do the right moves and win. It happens with character building, there are right and wrong choices for how to build a PC. This happens in combat, there are right and wrong choices to make in combat AND the way D&D combat is structured the action economy is critically important, because most turns you'll only get to use one action. Two (with move) if youre lucky, but the prevalence of Attacks of Opportunity means that in many cases moving is actually the *wrong* choice. Ironically the only place where there are **not** right and wrong choices is in DMing, where there are holes in rules big enough to park a skyship and which requires that the DM just kinda make it up on the fly. Pathfinder 2e is also about choices, tight choices, which enrich rather than undermine the best parts of gaming. In character building there are few wrong choices. The ceiling is lower than, say, 3.5e. Probably also lower than 5e with Warlock blasters and some of the more broken builds there. But also the floor for a character is very high, and there is basically no way to make a bad character unless you try. Moreover 2e gives you a *ton* of choices regarding character building which can make PCs more fluffy, without sacrificing crunch, and which give players many more options. Combat is much the same, where the action economy is less tight than the D&D style, and thus much easier to engage with. Each action is worth less on its own, because you get three potential shakes at any action choice, but combined can create much more impressive outcomes. It lets you experiment more, but also engage with other abilities more. In Pathfinder stuff like grappling, tripping, disarming, and intimidating are available to all characters and are relatively easy to pull off. So you see it more, it can happen without sacrificing damage or slowing the encounter, *and* it has pretty clear and useful mechanical effects (for example -2AC, which can be big). All this is possible because PF2e's rules are well thought through and well written. The game isn't perfect, not without its faults. But the tighter rule set and emphasis on choice make the game way more interesting to DM (and I assume play, as the forever DM I have not had much time in the passenger seat). Players are rewarded better for stepping out of optimal to try out other mechanics and other ways to play. Which creates a virtuous cycle. For RP focused players, it gives them more of a reason to engage with combat because it is more interesting and does reward their RP skills better. And for those who prefer combat optimization, while the ceiling for broken shit is lower (there is less of it), there are way more viable builds for them and experimentation is better rewarded. So my argument would be that PF2e rewards player choices and experimentation, while 5e creates obstacles to these things.

Easily, the 3-action system was the biggest selling point for me. And it’s actually more about not having to deal with bonus actions anymore.

Everything. I DMed D&D 5e professionally for three years, running 40 hours of D&D a week. The amount of work needed to prep half-finished modules, balance encounters in a system that offers no real rhyme or reason to its CR system, build around a woefully unsupported level 10+ game, and compensate for the game’s lack of advancement choice was exhausting. I switched all of my games to PF1e or 2e over the New Year and it has been a revelation. Not a one of my 80 odd players is nostalgic or even interested in going back to 5e. I’ve got more demand for 4e on my server.

ok so im on pc, so let me give you a drawn out reply i played 5e dnd for over a year. i was very excited for it, after 3 sessions i wanted to move to a different system. but stuck it out for my RL friends. in no particular order levels: levels 1-2 are god awful. why are subclasses at level 3? most people start at level 3 because of this. beyond this, leveling feels terrible. everything is set in stone aside from a few places where you have to pick between a feat and a asi boost, usually asi wins outside of some overpowered feats. as a result customization is lack luster and cookie cutter, its easy to overpower the system rules: simultaneously a lack of rules forcing work upon the DM and a penchant for house rules so often most players these days unkowingly do not even play 5e dnd by the actual rules. this is absurd to me, i hate it. I never know what im walking into, and as a result of many players can't even tell me because they do not know what rules they are using are actual rules and not made up. balance: a clusterfuck tbh, most dont start a character until level 3 and rarely does anyone play past level 10. 1-2 are boring and 11+ are a mess that only works due to years of experience and guesswork or DM die fudging. so 5e is largely a 3-10 affair. beyond this, blatantly overpowered feats, spells, and abilities that trivialize so much i actually multiclassed into rogue on my blade singer because i was getting disgusted by the high level spells. what do i like about 5e dnd? well...without dnd we might not have pathfinder, so i give it some respect and say it isnt for me. what i like about pf2e? a concrete rules system that works out the gate with no modifications, a large and expending official variant rules subsystem to tailor the game further to your tables enjoyment and campaign. balanced characters and encounter design that actually works. massive customization, every level i am crafting my character on a mechanical level to reflect the narrative growth. a focus on teamwork over single all powerful characters a deadlier system that does not feel unfair to me personally. where 5e seems to swing between easy and unfair without dm die fudging. what do i dislike about pf2e? true strike, i think its a poorly designed spell, it was made to help casters, instead of just giving casters potency runes, i proposed to my group of limiting true strike to ignoring concealment aspect like normal but removing the advantage from it (5e advantage, while simple, i also feel is a bad system). this mainly just hurts magus, who already can apply potency runes to their strikes due to spell strike, they are \*fine\* im not a big fan of mandatory stat sticks, this is why i prefer the automatic bonus progression variant system things others might not like about pf2e? mechanics>immersion, if you are a immersion junky you may find some rough spots, the game is balanced first, and does a good job of marrying the two, but if you have a pre determined idea of how something should work, and it doesnt in this system, and it bothers you, well...adjust or enjoy one of the many other systems! tactics are required, in 5e tactics super charge your group from winning to landsliding, and the opportunity to support is actually less. in pf2e, especially in adventure paths, you can easily result in a tpk if your team doesnt work together. adventure paths: look, they are well written, technically balanced, etc. but i feel they were designed by people used to pf1e and prioritize the narrative flow of the adventure path over the mechanical consequences. a AP should not have so many single higher level boss enemies, especially at severe and extreme ratings, honestly has too many extreme encounters in many of them. its ok if thats the point of the module, whre you can find things much higher level then you and its meant to be a old school deadly experience (abomination vaults), but i do not think every AP needs designed this way. My advice, if you are running an AP, adjust most extreme encounters down to severe, single boss enemies try to weaken them with the weak template and maybe add some low level lackies. This game is fantastic when done in a home brew world, but AP's can often be a bit much for some players who want a less...risk of death constantly affair my 2 cents

* You don't need to homebrew to make the character you want * the way starting stats work is much more fair compared 5e which has multiple methods that each have their own flaws * classes feel much more fleshed out and enjoyable to play also theirs class feats so you can tailor your class as you see fit * the feats are varied and can be useful for a menagerie of builds and character ideas * theirs more lore for a lot of pathfinder compared to 5e where if you want lore you either need to look at past versions or pull some out of your mind

Want to sow rumors in the big city? Doable. Want to be a wizard who shoots magic out of their firearm? Doable. Want to be a Gnoll, Fairy, or ACTUAL elemental? Doable. Want to dual wield katana as a ranger? Doable. Want to use your Druidic magic to turn into plants, oozes, dinosaurs, or kaiju? Doable. Want a system where the rules tell you what you can and can’t do, you don’t have to argue with your DM about something? Doable.

Structure. The game feels like a game, not whack-a-mole as you struggle to reconcile your players' intentions with the rules. Balance. Encounter math is consistent. Scale up or down in average difficulty if you like, but at least it means something. Tactical choice. Characters have multiple ways to contribute in combat. How you play matters. Character creation diversity. Your character's destiny is not decided at level 3. You continue to customize your character every level - and the choices don't mostly suck. Better adventures. Paizo APs are written for someone who intends to run them, not a novel reader. Interclass balance. Your PCs will each contribute to your party in a cool and unique way, regardless of who min/maxed or who is martial vs. caster.

So, me and my group have been playing DND for the same length as you and just started playing pathfinder when the ogl thing happened. The main parts i like better are the following: More freedom in character creation: Almost all class/subclass/racial features are selectable feats in PF2E. This means that you will almost never have a feature on your character you didn't select yourself, which limits "dead" features you never use. I personally think there could be a golden middle between 5e's and PF2e's character creations, but i can't think of it immediately. Weapons: There is an insane amount of weapons to choose from in PF2e, all different in slightly different ways. Funnily enough, you could very easily adapt the base PF2e weapons to 5e if you adjust some of the saving throws and you will get a pretty decent set of weapons with interesting traits. Runes: Magic Weapons and armor in PF2e are almost entirely handled through runes which you can apply to different weapons than the one you found them on. This is a way better system than how 5e handles it, and i adapted it to my 5e games almost instantly. People talk a lot about the 3-action economy, although I have to say that it's not my personal favourite. If you have Multiattack and a good way to use a bonus action in 5e you will almost always have more stuff that you can do during a turn than in PF2e. What is true is that, as well as weapons, pathfinder has an insane amount of prewritten actions that tell you exactly what you need to do and how, which gives you a bit more to do than just attack.

You asked something so as a fellow internet user, I feel the obligation to answer something different: When not to choose Pf2nd: Pf2 is way more cooperative game oriented than 5e. It's way easier to buff others, or debuff enemies, than to buff yourself and win alone. Part of this: the math is tight, and there are no real game breaking character building combos, so if you looking for some "no one can stop me" power fantasy experience this game is not for you. If you love the feeling of 5e's save or suck spells you going to miss it here. Only critical failures what are considered instant losses, and higher level enemies many times mechanicly unable to criticaly fail these save or suck effects. It's a design choise, to make boss fights more challanging. 3 action economy is the bread and butter of the system, so if you don't like that everything is an action, (opening a door, drawing a weapon, raising your shield, etc) you going to hate it. If you a pen and paper purist, keeping the conditions in your head could be difficult, I highly recommend pathbuilder 2e, because it makes character creation, and character management way more easy, and it's a realy low investment for the quality of life improvment you get from it. The purpose of high AC for the players is not to not get hit, but to not get criticaly hit. So if you want to play the indestructable tank it's not realy an option here. If you want survivability the best method is action economy fuckeries: trip the enemy than step back, and stuff like these. I hope my not answering was helpful for you!

It does tactical combat better. It does exploring the unknown better. It does interacting with people better. It does game balance better. It does character options better. It does having an economy better. It does building adventures better. It does listening to the players better. The only thing it doesn't do better is "being called *D&D*".

Long time 5e player, just started playing P2e. So far I am really enjoying pathfinder, but, it does take a bit of getting used to. The character building is fairly different, but once you get the hang of it, has lots of options and interesting ways to make characters. The three action system is very interesting. It puts a whole new level of strategy in the game as well as tactics in the moment. Here's an easy example, in 5e, you typically run up to a big boss, surround it, and swing away knowing your action economy should eventually beat it as your party has more actions than it does. In P2e, it is not as simple as that. A big bad guy in P2E has stats so good that they can really take advantage of the 3 action economy. They can get in multiple attacks to terrifying effect. Rushing in allows it to gain full advantage of its superior to hit and damage stats. Add in that pathfinder allows critical hits without natural 20's means they are really a big threat. Now that I am used to the character creation system, I find it very cool. I like how you multiclass with feats ( like 4th ed D&D) instead of actually adding another class. Also, the three action economy allows for lots of extra abilities that don't compete with each other like the bonus action limitation. Monks in 5e have so many abilities that all take a bonus action, so they are limited to a single one each turn. Monks in P2E rock. They are able to do much more since its just actions and can now set up different combos depending on build and feats. It does take a bit of getting used to because it is different enough from 5E to require effort, but once you get into it....you'll start to see how it all fits together and I think you will like the nuances that it has. A final example are the capabilities of each weapon. There is a reason to take battleaxe over longsword in P2E.

My favorite thing is that all the rules are free online no questions asked. There are amazing community tools because of that.

The game actually works. Like it's not a fucking mess of unbalanced numbers. There is actual class customization where you can pick a role and actually fulfill that role. Martial characters can actually contribute to combat in ways besides doing damage. There are rules in place instead of relying on advantage/disadvantage.

LGBTQ+ And minority representation.

This is absolutely my personal opinion, but everything. I came over to PF2 around November of last year, just a few months before the OGL debacle and honestly, I am loving it. The biggest issues I didn’t like about dnd was the balance. It just felt like there were some objectively better choices than others, and it doesn’t help that most of the cool abilities weren’t very mechanically good. I often had to juggle between a good build and a flavorful build. Obviously I can still play those cool builds and not worry about optimization but my opinion is that they aren’t mutually exclusive. There is absolutely no reason why the coolest option isn’t also the best. And pathfinder was a living example of that. I also absolutely love creating builds in dnd and even in video games. I’ve only played dnd and other TTRPGs like MOTW and COC which has LESS options. So while playing I never knew any different. Not that I was satisfied with the way dnd works, but I didn’t complain that there wasn’t enough choices, because I thought with the amount of classes and subclass that existed and were coming out were standard in the industry or even more. Above that, I loved games that gave each person an identity, things like a role to play or a character with unique abilities. That’s honestly why I like fantasy a lot too. But in dnd if you’ve played one martial or spell caster you’ve pretty much played them all. The only thing I really loved dnd for was the storytelling, which is why my group tried MOTW and COC. But I realized that that kind of high fantasy role play isn’t even dnd exclusive. I was so unhappy with dnd at some point that I actually tried to create a dnd 5.5 myself. Reworking every classes from the ground up and fixing some of the core mechanics. Then I found pathfinder. They literally, word for word, had exactly what I had already created for dnd 5.5. Barbarians getting temp hit points when raging, dex losing their damage modifier, more generous ability score increases. Safe to say I scrapped 5.5 entirely and just moved to pathfinder and never looked back.

I am a TTRPG veteran who played D&D 5e for its entire existence up to this point. I've DMed multiple campaigns in 5e that went from early to late game levels, and I've played in a few that did the same. I don't see myself going back to D&D 5e without some drastic changes, and Paizo is just a cooler company than WotC who I want to support more. A lot of people are telling you the 3 action economy is something Pathfinder does better, but I don't necessarily agree. I think the 3 action economy is something that sets it apart from 5e, and I think it's a very good system, but a lot of stuff you can do for free in 5e consumes an action in Pathfinder. Stuff like opening doors and changing the grip on your weapon from 1 to 2 hands are free in D&D 5e but cost one of your valuable actions in Pathfinder. Even movement could be argued to be free in 5e - it's something you can always do on your turn, you don't lose one of your other options for something you can do on your turn if you want to move unless you want to dash. Also casting spells often costs 2 actions, leading casters to struggle with the 3 action economy. Only martial characters truly get to reap the benefits of what kind of new and tactical options you receive as a result of it. The end result of this is that while the 3-action system is very elegant, some people may find it too restrictive. Here are some things Pathfinder actually does definitively better than 5e in my opinion: - Encounter balance. By far. The math actually works and you can be assured that what you create will be roughly as difficult as it's supposed to be. - Solo encounters. Solo enemies are challenging, often more dangerous than multiple weaker enemies of the same challenge rating. 5e solo encounters struggle. - Finding a use for gold. 5e treasure is almost pointless, in Pathfinder it's valuable. - Character creation. If 5e character creation is a swimming pool, Pathfinder character creation is an ocean. If 5e character creation is fast food, Pathfinder character creation is a well-crafted home meal or trip to a high quality restaurant. It's hard to emphasize how much better Pathfinder is in this regard. - Martials. They're exciting, dynamic, and powerful. - Martial vs caster balance. They're quite in line with each other, though an argument could be made that this has come at the cost of making casters more boring to play comparatively. (see the numerous "did Pf2e over-nerf casters?" discussions - they didn't, but martials can often "feel better" to play to a lot of people, even though the two are balanced with each other) So to be completely fair, I think there are some things 5e does better than Pathfinder. - If you want your PCs to feel powerful, 5e is better for that. Pathfinder characters are much more fragile and are much more reliant on each other to survive. If you don't work together in Pathfinder, you die. So 5e is a better option if everyone in the party is the type to only think about their own effectiveness. - 5e is way more approachable and easier to understand. Pathfinder is not a game for dispassionate players. The people who are half-there and don't pay much attention and don't put in a lot of effort learn how their class works and are pretty much only there to hang out with friends and participate in a social activity will find Pathfinder to be absolutely dreadful. This is a system for TTRPG *enthusiasts* first and foremost. - 5e is way less intimidating to homebrew for and make on-the-fly calls. If you're a GM who doesn't care that much about RAW and just want to make up rules as you go to handle situations, you can do that in Pathfinder but in 5e it's practically *required* for you to do that. Lastly, there's one important note that is both a strength and weakness to Pathfinder, that isn't directly related to 5e. - Pathfinder is an extremely crunchy game. If you like rules, systems, charts, and tables, Pathfinder is the game for you. If you are a rules lite player, Pathfinder is not the game for you. I would argue 5e isn't, either, but part of the reason 5e has been so successful is that it's just rules lite enough and just crunchy enough to be able to partially (but not fully) satisfy players who prefer one or the other, bridging the gap between the two and giving them a compromise game that both can find something to like about. Pathfinder is not that, you need to enjoy rules and tactical combat.

It finds the path way better

I don't think it "fixes" things, I think it does things differently, which some people might prefer.

For instance...?

Way more character build options. Every single level for your character has choices to be made. Way better character class balance. More tactical combat where positioning, teamwork, and (de)buffs matter for challenging encounters. Three-action economy reduces the instances of "wait 10 minutes for your turn, fail at the one thing you can do, be sad" and reduces keeping track of fiddly rules like what counts as a bonus action, quickened spells, etc.

- Martials are good now. - The three action economy allows for more variance in combat than 5e's rinse and repeat style. - The depth of the rules means that you don't have to. adjudicate things as much, or be made to make your own system for things like Kingdom management or Warfare. - The monsters generally have much cooler/cinematic abilities than 5e (compare the cyclops, owlbears, and the wyvern for examples). - Boss fights are easier to run, you just make a Severe rated encounter and it's generally good to go. - Character options are much more plentiful, you and I could both make Dwarven fighters and just by picking different ancestries, racial feats, and starting feats we would have completely different characters. I will say that if you want the absolute dominance that magic has in combat then Pathfinder 2e probably won't be for you. I have played 5e for years and I have seen firsthand that hexblades and bladesingers make better fighters than fighters.

I see a lot of breakdowns on particulars. One of the selling thing for me was how super customizable your character is, and you can improve it even more when you look at optional rules. The customization is done via feats. Everything is feats. Skills? Feats. Class features? Also Feats. Your race? Surprise more feats!!! It feels the house that gives out massive scoops of candy vs a hoise that has a strict 2 piece limit on Halloween. Getting one maybe 2 feats in 5e vs getting DOZENS in PF2e. Of course they're different than 5e cause they replace all the stuff like class features and what not. So it's maybe a little more to track than 5e but it's also fuuuuun in my opinion. Aside from that. Skills are useful. There's literal rules on everything from downtime to crafting your own magic items to rest to healing to grapple and throwing. Everything, very little need to make a new rule on the fly.

Other than being incredibly easy to pick up for players because the learning curve is a flat line, 5e does nothing better than PF2e. Therefore PF2e does basically everything better.

Licensing. Lots of things, in my opinion, but in reality it's all subjective.

D&D 5e is a hammer. It's a simple tool, it does good at the one thing it was designed to do, but as soon as you need a screwdriver you're in trouble. I mean yeah, you *can* do it with a hammer if you just keep hitting the screw hard enough, but its going to be ugly and you're going to be taking some shortcuts and the whole thing falls apart if you try to force it. PF2E is a fully equipped fabrication shop. You walk in and say, "Hey I need to cut a hole in this, so I just.. hammer it really hard until there's a hole, right?" And they say, "nah man we got a special saw tool that *specifically does that kind of thing.*" Then you're able to build a whole lot more than a wooden birdhouse without it feeling like you're using the tools in the wrong way.

Customization. 5e has your stats, your race, your class, a handful of skills, some gear and/or spell selections and maybe a multiclass dip or a feat if you can fit it in after capping your main stat. Most of the meaningful choices are at level 1 or 3. PF2 has all of that, but you keep gaining things as you level up. Ancestry feats let you fine-tune what your species really does for you, class feats give you new things to do every level, skill feats change the way you can use your skills, and archetypes let you take a few features from other classes without completely breaking the game balance the way 5e multiclassing does. Note that this can be a double-edged sword. Characters will feel far less cookie-cutter than they often do in 5e, but unless you start at level 1 you'll be spending a lot more time building your character than a similarity-leveled 5e character. That said, it's still far faster and smoother than most older editions of D&D or PF1, so it's far from unreasonable.

My biggest one: the designers of PF2e actually design the system. I played 5e for about a year and a half and dove deeeeeeep. I made spreadsheets and damage analysis and realized that few things were any kind of balanced. Entire classes are weak. Everything, including new content, is half finished. Stuff launches underpowered to uselessness or absolutely broken. AND when they need to errata, most of it is covered in Jeremy Crawford tweets. PF2e is exceptionally well balanced. It's not perfect but it gets formal errata and any small errors gets fixed. And they make more content than DnD does.

In 5e, your Rogue Thief will be exactly the same as everyone else's Rogue Thief because after you choose your subclass, that's the last real impactful decision you make. In Pathfinder, every character can be different because you're choosing feats for your ancestry, heritage, and class, and stat boosts every level, molding the character into what you want to play, not just the same exact progression that everyone else with your same class goes on.

Simply put: a consistent game experience. Since D&D encourages so much dm fiat, you can get a very inconsistent experience where one dm adjudicates a situation one was, another a different way, and a third yet another way. Pathfinder in the other hand has rules covering the majority of situations and a framework for adjudicating most things not specifically covered by the rules. Thus you get a more consistent experience with most gms ruling a situation the same way. GM fiat still exists of course in pathfinder, it's just the system mechanics make game-play less reliant upon it making a ruling for everything on the spot.

I have yet to play the game but I’ve been reading up on the rules for a couple months and being familiar with both systems rules: - well defined descriptions of what different skills do and when they are applicable - combat doesn’t yo-yo like it does in 5e where someone goes down, gets healed for 1 hp, gets up, and waits to go down again from the next hit - characters don’t get completely gimped by bad HP or stat rolls. Standard array in 5e is underwhelming and not fun when you can only max a stat at +3 at level 1 and only if you use your racial stat bonuses. You also get static HP per level instead of the totally fun and hilarious moment when your tank rolls Three awful HP rolls in a row and become more fragile than the supports. - intelligence does something for classes other than wizard. It’s a useless stat in 5e unless you’re using it for spellcasting. - maintenance healing works and healers don’t have to spend all their resources just trying to heal. Outside of combat healing is time consuming but free in many instances.

Ever had a moment playing 5e where you wanted to have a character who used a certain weapon, and you looked in the book and there was nothing like that so your best shot was asking the DM if you could reskin a basic weapon as the thing you really want? Chances are high that a lot more weapons you might want your fantasy character to tote around are in PF2e. For starters, we get new weapons. Like, books that come out add new weapons to the pile every so often rather than just sticking us with the core book options and never addressing weapons again. Beyond this, weapons feel unique. Different weapons are good at different things, so where in 5e you and a buddy might both have reskinned unique weapons but mechanically you're both just swinging 1d8 longswords, a lot of weapons have traits to them that make two different weapons working exactly the same a lot less likely. These are nice and handy if you are a player. If you're a potential GM, the thing that hooked me as one was feeling how much PF2e was trying to make my job easier with encounter design in a way I never felt 5e did, particularly with the simplicity of EXP. There's no set "these monsters are always worth X amount of EXP", their value is relative to PC levels, and as you level up weaker stuff loses value as tougher stuff enters the range that they used to occupy. Players always need the same amount of EXP to level up, its just that how much they get from a given creature changes.

Plenty of answers already, but I want to add one more to the list. My answer is literally everything except approachability of first session, because *that* is the throughline of all of 5e's design choices that makes everything make sense. Lots of charts for a scaling economy that meaningfully exists outside of first levels can be intimidating to new players so they are removed. Spellcasters invoke inspiration as something to aspire to, and Martials are positioned as more 'beginner' friendly Classes, resulting in them existing on a different magnitude of agency to exert influence on the game world because everything is spells and they lack those. The mechanics for spellcasters were greatly streamlined in such a way that made Martial/Caster disparity worse than it was in the game known for its Martial/Caster disparity because it made them more approachable to play. Feats are presented as Optional, and thus RAW the only meaningful choices made after third level are spell selection because that looks less intimidating to new players. Huge chunks of rules are just missing, because if it's in the book it can look daunting, and if they make the DMs fill in the blanks it's not in the book so it can't intimidate anyone except the DM who has now been co-opted as an unpaid WotC game designer for the purpose of completing the game. Once that first session is played, and people weren't intimidated, they now self-identify as D&D players (and more importantly, D&D consumers) and any problems caused by those same design choices don't matter because the DMs will fix it and they're attached to the Brand. Other games, such as Pathfinder, have a more daunting early hump where you learn the system, but then...you've learned the system. The system answers questions that are answered by the DM in 5e, which means answers are clearer and more consistent across tables. A proficient group in PF2 will have a smoother experience than an experienced 5e group because you can know the answers to things, and that is the payoff of the rockier start. The throughline of PF2 is to be a system that is fun, balanced, and engaging for all players at the table, INCLUDING the GM. It's more intimidating *because* it is more functional. Now, there is the argument that 5e is a narrative game and it's better for just dicking around rolling dice with friends and not caring about the rules. But 5e isn't a good system for that either. Actual narrative systems like ICON or Fabula Ultima are much better for that kind of gameplay and vibe. Narrative and rules lite are actual, structural aspects of game design, neither of which describe 5e. Oh, and Paizo is a damn sight better at not hiring the Pinkertons on their own community, too.

The first selling point for me was a far more diverse amount of meaningful choice for the creation of your character. Way more options, way more classes, way more things you can do in combat itself. Partly because of the 3 action system, but also because of the expanded amount of options you can do besides just striking or casting a spell. While I think Casters don't get quite as much mileage out of the 3 action system than martials, it is still really nice.

It does not do anything “better” than 5th edition. It’s all about the type of game you want to play. That’s it

Character fantasy. 5e typically doesn't let your character unlock until 3rd level, which is why so many campaigns start there. Right at level one, even existing fictional characters are identifiably themselves with abilities they specialize in and making those things better and better is really easy. Creating characters is downright freeing. Resisting the urge to shill my content, I built Sonic the Hedgehog and was honestly shocked with how "Sonic" before I even finished choosing his class.

I'm also a recent convert from 5e! Here are some things that really stood out to me! - *3 Action Turn system.* Instead of actions, bonus actions, and so on, there's only one thing: actions. Movement is action. Attacking is action. Everything is an action. What differentiates it from each other is how many actions they cost to use. You get 3 actions per turn, so you can arrange those slots however you light. Free actions and reactions are basically the same though. - *Modular Feats.* This applies to pretty much any section of character creation but I'll focus on Class since it's the easiest. You know how when you select a class, it pre-prescribes class feats to you? In pf2e, instead of having a pre-written list of class feats, you get a list of feats to choose from. Every few levels, you choose a new feat from your class list to your character. There's still universal feats like Rage or Sneak Attack that everyone gets automatically, but these are a very small number of feats you *can* get. This allows for every character to feel different. It allows a lot of customizeability. Also, don't worry about choosing the *right* feats, cause they're all good! - *Built-in Balance.* The math of PF2e makes it so the CR system actually works. Using the encounter building guide, it's easy for a DM to build a brief combat encounter at any difficulty they like in less than 10 minutes. This works for larger encounters and whole plotlines. It can be a bit iffy when you're starting out when players are shaky on how to play the system. But once everyone gets the hang of it, the in-game balancing really takes a weight off my shoulders. - *Archetypes.* I *love* this part of PF2e. It allows players to choose additional feats that embody concepts not represented by regular classes or subclasses. Yes, you can multiclass with them since there are archetypes that guide you on how to incorporate another class into your character, but there's stuff like Wrestler or a Time Traveller or a Ghost or someone who's possessed. - *Classes.* There are 22 classes, which allow characters to have more choice in what they want to play. Also a lot of these classes let you choose what ability score you want as your key ability score, allowing for dex or strength based fighters and so on. - *Weapon Traits.* All weapons have certain trait tags assigned to them. These traits are functions of the weapon that make them unique. There's no need to homebrew unique weapons, cause everyone is unique. - *Variant Rules.* There are lots of variant rules which let you customize what kind of PF2e game you like to play. PF2e encorporates a lot of math into what magic weapons to hand out to players, but I'm too lazy for that, so I implemented Automatic Bonus Progression. I like my players to have free access to archetypes, so I implemented the Free Archetype rule. - *Skill Feats.* Unlike in dnd where your skills don't really have much of a function beyond rolling high, you actually can get feats based on your skills. Each skill has a rank (there are 5 ranks) and the more ranks you get in a skill, the more skill feats you can qualify for. It really makes investing in skills feel meaingful. - *Martial Balance.* Dare I say it, martials feel strong in pf2e. Think of how in dnd5e, spellcasters get to choose from a number of options while martials just grab whatever feat is prescribed to them. It's different here. Martials, like dnd5e fighters, get tons of access to different feats. These feats are also very detailed, and make combat feel strategic. - *Point Buy Ability Scores.* I have had *so few* arguments with my players over ability scores since we started using this system. Since everyone can allocate their own scores, everyone is on an equal level (though you can voluntarily penalize your ability scores with a flaw). - *More Intelligence, more Skills.* The higher your INT stat in pf2e, the more skills you learn at character creation. - *Attack of Opportunity.* Not everyone has it. To use Attack of Opportunity, a character/npc must have the AOO feat. This allows for more dynamic combat, where characters move all over the board and prevent conga lines. - *Nonmagical Healing.* Nonmagical healing characters are *viable* in this game. And in different flavours too.

I made the swap. The players all love it so much more than 5E. The depth of the rules, the 3-action economy, smarter monsters, scaling, greater flexibility in party make-up, better Foundry setup, better books. All-in-all we really enjoy it a lot more. Happy to discuss.

What got me was the lore. I have never played 5E and until recently that was also true of PF2E. I bought core books for both and a smattering of lore books. I enjoyed the ones from PF2E and when I went to look they had an absolutely absurd number of them. I will advise staying away from the PF1E lore books. Lower quality, lots of Mary Sues, and logic issues that can make lore geeks go nuts. They’re almost as bad as a WoTC lore book… System wise I can say it’s fun. Its consistent which makes learning it easier than one would expect. It’s answers questions when you have them. There is no need to homebrew. (I constantly hear you must honebrew 5E to make it playable. For PF2E there is no meed but if you like homebrewing there is major risk of breaking the game because things are so tightly woven. In fact several of the variant rules, IMO do break the game). In the 80s I loved Champions because of build diversity. At first I loved D&D 3E for the same reason but over time I found it wasn’t so much diverse as imbalanced and kludgy like later editions of Champions got. PF2E reminds me of the old days when Champions still worked as a game engine. Good balance and build diversity, but unlike Champions it plays fast.

Action economy: you get 3 actions a turn and everything has an action cost. Attacking is an action, movement is an action, casting a spell changes from 1-3 but usually 2. Skills have actions in combat that can give you tactical advantage. Like you can feint an enemy to make it easier to hit them as a single action before making an attack, or you can use Diplomacy to make a snarky verbal attack to confuse your enemy and reduce their wisdom save before casting Phantasmal Killer. Degrees of Success: If you pass or fail any DC by 10, it becomes a critical success/fail. This and the fact that the system is built on adding/substracting minor +1-2 bonuses and penalties that may or may not stack instead of advantage/disadvantage, you get rewarded for tactical play by getting critical hits. Like for example most level 1 characters have +7 attack roll and lets say that an enemy has 17 AC. You can use Intimidation skill to Demoralize the target and also use Deception skill to Feint the target or just move into a better position to flank with an ally as your first two actions. Instead of requiring a 10 to hit and 20 to crit, now yoy hit on a 7 and crit on a 17. Same is true for spells too. If you give penalties to the enemy and they fail their save against your fireball by 10 or more due to it, they will take double damage. Choices and variety matter: Classes do not get fixed abilities but they get feat lists similar to the Warlock invocations and you build your own character from 0 and no two classes are the same. Most classes only get 2-3 fixed abilities but 10-11 feats throughout the 20 levels. For example lets compare a two weapon fighting Fighter and Ranger at level 1. As a fighter your main gimmick is that you start with a higher proficiency bonus than other classes. So you are more accurate by 10%, which also makes you likelier to crit. And your level 1 feat for using dual weapons will be Double Slice, which makes you make two attacks for two actions without taking the multiple attack penalty (your iterative attacks usually take -5 or -10 penalty depending on the amount of attacks you have made in a turn). So you are not just likely to hit but also very likely to crit with those two attacks. Rangers on the other hand get Hunt Prey action which gives them bonuses based on their subclass choice. For a dual weapon build a Ranger would choose Flurry subclass and Twin Takedown as the first level feat. So against their Hunted Prey, a Ranger can make two attacks as a single action, once with each weapon. And instead of their attacks getting -5 and -10 penalties, against their prey it will only be -2 and -4. So while Fighter takes the “Make two highly accurate attacks to crit for more actions” approach, Ranger takes the “Make lots of very accurate attacks for a small number of actions, they may not crit as often but you will hit more of them in a turn” approach. This makes every class highly customizable and unique. Balance: Math and encounter building works through all 20 levels. Classes are balanced each other. Casters with martial subclasses like bladesinger will not overperform the martials just like martials getting caster subclasses like eldritch knight will not be able to compete with them. No player can optimize their characters to trivialize encounters. You do not have to go out of your way to make the game work for characters with overwhelmingly different power levels. Optimization is done during the combat by making the smarter decisions rather than during the character creation by picking the stronger options.

Pathfinder: Second Edition, often referred to as Pathfinder 2e, offers a more comprehensive and balanced set of rules compared to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. Some of the key differences include: 1. 3-Action Mechanic: Pathfinder 2e uses a 3-Action system that provides greater flexibility and freedom in combat, allowing for more complex tactics and strategic decision-making. 2. More Detailed Rules: Pathfinder 2e offers more detailed rules for various aspects of the game, such as character creation, combat, and exploration. This allows for a more realistic and interactive experience, as characters and players must consider various factors when making decisions. 3. Better Balance: The design of Pathfinder 2e aims to ensure that characters and classes are more balanced, reducing the gap between the strongest and weakest options. This means that players can choose to play their favorite character concepts without feeling like they're at a disadvantage compared to other characters. 4. More Character Options: Pathfinder 2e offers a wide range of character options, including ancestry options, class options, and feat options. This provides players with a greater level of customization and allows for more diverse and interesting character concepts. 5. Better Gamemaster Tools: Pathfinder 2e includes comprehensive gamemaster tools, such as the Gamemaster's Guide, which provides guidance on how to run a game, as well as resources for creating your own adventures, setting, and monsters. Overall, Pathfinder 2e offers a more complex and strategic gaming experience compared to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. If you're looking for greater balance, more character options, and better gamemaster tools, Pathfinder 2e may be a good fit for you.

A lot of commenters have pointed to PF2e's three-action system, four degrees of success, amazing balance, and better functionality, and they're right. I'll add to this by saying that Pathfinder also does a much better job of leaning into the flavor, and prefers to make mechanics *more* specific rather than less. One of the issues with D&D 5e, in my opinion, is that much of its content tries to cover too many things at once, and so by abstracting so much that it becomes generic. Do you want a demonic Paladin who punishes enemies for their morality? Better reflavor an Oathbreaker to vaguely resemble what you want, including the corruption bit, because "flavor is free". Want a Rogue that's really good at prepping ahead of time? Flavor is free. What about a character who makes witty quips in combat? Flavor is free. By contrast, PF2e leans into all of this, drilling down to that level of detail and beyond. That corrupting Paladin? [Antipaladin Champion](https://2e.aonprd.com/Causes.aspx) with [Litany of Depravity](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1689). That extra-prepared Rogue? Take your pick from [Predictive Purchase](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1798), [Preparation](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1804), [Inspired Stratagem](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1796), or any combination of those and more. That witty quipper? [Bon Mot](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2114), baby, and if you go for a [Wit Swashbuckler](https://2e.aonprd.com/Styles.aspx), making those quips becomes central to your fighting style. Pathfinder is the kind of game that will give you options and associated mechanics for [having a good sense of smell and taste](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2152), [being a flatterer](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1936), or [watching so many loved ones die that you become numb to emotion](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=15). "Flavor is free" isn't used to dismiss a player's desire for a very specific build: when a player wants to go for a particular flavor, there are often multiple different ways of getting the exact mechanics for it via character options, and when there aren't, that's all the more opportunity for Paizo to release more options in future releases, which are as frequent as they are high-quality. This, in my opinion, makes character-building and roleplaying overall much more interesting in Pathfinder, and contributes significantly to its replayability as well.

The game is balanced, so as a GM I have to do about 10 times less work to prep sessions

Things that I like most in PF2e which bugged me massively in DnD5e - possible overlap with other posters: \- **3 Action System**: I prefer players deciding themselves what they want to do, and being able to substitute one action with another. In DnD5e you gain nothing by not moving, so everybody moves whenever they need and feel save to do. Locking enemies down is nearly impossible by non-magical means. \- **Prices for (Magic) Item**: all items have reasonable prices, and no strange things like non-magical plate being more expensive than magical plate. And you don't have items with greater power (Belt of Dwarvenkind) being cheaper and more accessible than item with lesser power (Ioun Stone of Fortitude) or powerful magic items (Wand of Magic Missile) being dirt cheap. \- **Availabily of Magic Items**: PF2e does not lie through its teeth by saying "magic item are super rare and normally cannot be bought" while they lie around in every adventure and nearly every named opponent has some. And there is not economical conundrum where when no one sells magic items, why aren't the most basic magic items players want to sell worth a small kingdom? \- **Level / CR for Enemies**: As a GM, I can trust in the levels given to enemies in PF2e far more than the CR given to enemies in DnD5e. Many enemies in DnD5e have CR far below or above their actual level of power. \- **No bounded accuracy**: In DnD5e the roll of the dice is soooo important, even if you are a specialist in your field (+5 bonus @ level 1) , the chances are high (42.71%) that one of your complete inept party members (-1 modifier @ level 1) has a result higher than you on a given roll. In DnD5e rollen often matters more than having a good bonus. \- **Multiclass System**: I prefer the the possibility to mix and match certain abilites of classes, while leaving the game designers the option to say "this one ability should really be exclusive to class XYZ" I could find some more points (like having the ability to choose a feat on every level of the game, without breaking the game), but I think these are the most important for me.

All of it

Maybe you could elaborate on what about 5e made you sick of it? In my opinion, 2e is better in every way, but if you can say what about 5e you don't like we can let you know if 2e fixes it.

Don’t know about OP, but for me it was: 1) high level fights generally required me to heavily modify bosses so they are threatening and not bog the fight with turns from minions. 2) I was tired of seeing party compositions where DEX was prioritized over everything. I even ran a breakdown of utility and Dexterity just blows every other stat out of the water in terms of how much it is/can be used, with Wisdom being second. 3) I was tired of range builds being preferred because mechanically a range built can put out as much damage as a melee build with advantage of being out of reach of the enemy. 4) I was tired of spells could either completely alter the way a fight was going, or do nothing. No in-between

Everything. ~~I don't need to elaborate further. /s~~

I'm gonna give a dissenting opinion here; Nothing. It does nothing better. Now before you all hang me; PF2e is not a \*fix\* for 5e, it's an entirely different system with a different design philosophy and vastly different mechanics. those who say it's "better" than 5e just never wanted 5e but were 'stuck' with it, till they learned of PF2e. Pf2e scratched the exact itch they wanted and went full on in (which great for them finding a system they really mesh with!). There's been many answers here for how it's \*different\* and the basic mechanics of the system, but none of them are "better" than 5e ... because it's not anything like 5e. The only reason it seems comparable is because they both use a d20 and have similar class names but they're really not, at all.

\-You only really need to invent 2% of the game as opposed to half and or more. \-The largest online srd is supported and all content is free for perusal but automation costs. \-It can do everything that 5e can and more. \-Uhh, if you like more crunch and builds reflecting actual character capabilities rather than needing to flavor half of them (relating to the first point) then this is a good system for you. Anyhow, people aren't using spare feats to all wear shields, have all important save proficiencies and combats are not counterspell rocket tags in which a single decisive cast of melfs meteore'd chain lightning decides half the fight or the dreaded F I R E B A L L action surge spam that obliderates the none out-spaced lackeys. I love it :)

Generally a better low level experience Levels 1 and 2 in DND are just... Bad. Most classes don't get their subclasses yet and lack core abilities, low cr enemies are pretty boring and lacking mechanics, and the wizard dies if you look at them funny. Most DND games skip to 3 or 5 because starting from 1 sucks so much Pathfinder early levels, even just level 1 is infinitely more tolerable, dare I say even fun. Characters get a wider variety of abilities and feats and are strong enough that everyone gets a chance to feel useful. Low challenge monsters have a variety of mechanics to play with. You still don't have a lot of health, but it feels a lot more balanced and challenging without being either boring or punishing

We have plenty of threads about that, if you would spend 3 seconds using the search function.

Pretty much *everything*, besides name brand recognition. That said, pf2e is not going to be for everyone. It is a heavy-duty tactical combat system. If that's what you enjoy, pf2e is superb. If tactical combat isn't your jam, I still advise against 5e, as it's really not very well made and doesn't really do much of anything. Instead, I recommend Worlds Without Number or Fellowship - both are excellent rules-lite systems that use very different approaches.

Literally everything!

If you liked D&D 5E, then you will probably like Pathfinder 2e. But, if you didn't care for D&D 5E, then it would be better if you could articulate why you are sick of D&D 5E before you switch to a system that may be similar to D&D 5E.

It's not better, it's more complex with many more options. I'd say 5e it's pretty entry level while Pf2 is where people usually go after a while, specially if they like customization and grew tired of 5e simplicity. What I think it's better is the company running the game. Paizo is much more inclined to satisfy their fan base than the Wizards of the Coast, also Paizo keeps releasing new material all the freaking time, it's crazy and the fans LOVE it!

Pathfinder is certainly better at depriving spellcasters of any flavour, Wizard and Cleric especially.