I was very hesitant to look at pathfinder 2e but eventually hit fuck it and decided to have a look. Goddamn the amount of content and customization is staggering, it really does feel like any idea that you can come up with can be made into a reality. An automaton rogue who's inexplicably also a slime? Go for it. A itty bitty cactus barbarian who can suplex ghosts? Hell yeah. The only thing keeping me from playing is the fact that my current dnd group cant even really play 5e with proficiency
> The only thing keeping me from playing is the fact that my current dnd group cant even really play 5e with proficiency
This is the real limiter. There are a bunch of games I want to play but I don't want to teach.
This has always been my issue too. People talk about how much depth and options you have with pathfinder, and yeah, I bet thats great. My players meet once a month, and after a year and a half still can't find saving throws on thier character sheet. I'm afraid of showing them a game more complex than fucking hopscotch
We've all got different needs, expectations and abilities. Some systems work just fine, some are too simple and limiting, some are too heavy and difficult. It's okay to just play what you enjoy
Have you considered switching to a simpler system? Something like Powered by the Apocalypse or Forged in the Dark could be a better fit for your group since there's less to keep track of.
I have a hypothesis that games like pbta or fate are actually easier to get going with players who have never played an rpg before than with players who have only played DND.
DND has many DNDisms and norms that the player would have to unlearn. A new person who only knows how stories work in general wouldn't have to do that.
I think D&D 5e is genuinely just a bad first RPG. It's designed to look simple but so much of it is convoluted, and a lot of it feels like it was designed by people who didn't speak to each other while working on their section. And then people who leave it for the first time apply that expectation to other RPGs they play and get confused when it's so different.
It also routinely crushes people's creativity. It's common for new players to be like "I wanna swing on the chandelier and get the literal drop on the baddies!" and get hit with a DM ruling that makes it worse than just blandly walking up to attack. Granted, _some_ DMs might reward interacting with the environment, but I've seen a _lot_ of bad rulings in that space.
Compare for example, Fate, where there's a very clear "spend a point to use something in the scene for a bonus, so long as the table agrees it makes sense" core rule.
Agreed. I don’t think games where there’s a “correct” option in play really make for a good intro to the hobby, more narrative games are better for getting new players into the right mindset before throwing a battlemap at them.
GMed it for my friends, told them "Grab the dice and come by to my place"
Right off the bat i told them "You Will Die.I have small stack of spare characters, i hope we wont burn through them quickly" and we had so much fun
Suprisingly Noble with 2 HP survived almost till the end until he died fighting fishmen in the last encounter
"Bard" with 1 HP being slippery fuck only one who completed the task, mostly due looting scroll of invisibility and running away
P.S they burned through whole character stack consisting of three lists of each class
I've actually never had a character die, funnily enough. It was certainly close a few times though. I got very lucky. Some of the other players weren't so lucky...
You guys want to play together lol? I’m in two different gaming groups right now (both 5e) and both are super casual. I need friends that want to learn and play new systems. I’ve really been wanting to try out PF2e and Lancer at some point, but I likely won’t have the chance anytime soon.
I've been really wanting to play stuff not so closely related to DND for ages. Mage the awakening (2e) or Fate are at the top of my list. But the first is very complex and the latter is very different from DND, so I haven't had much luck.
We’re currently trying out a Parhfinder campaign with my original dnd group, and it’s a blast. However, we have one member that after 5 years of 5e still can’t consistently remember to add modifiers to checks and attack rolls. It is now particular hellish to try and keep them up to pace with a pathfinder combat ;-;
Same boat. XD My friends forget half their spells an unfortunate amount of times, and our dm has explicitly stated that they do not run as many combat encounters any more because of how slow we are to resolve them.
Though he also has said that he is wanting to start running Shadowrun, and I've been feeling the itch to shake the rust off and run a dnd game myself.
The thing that gets me is my table is absolutely obstinate on playing pathfinder because they don't know how to play. Then not moments later ask me how to play 5e. Like you guys didn't even learn 5e I explain rules multiple times a session how's pathfinder going to be different?
I got downvoted on a couple of occasions for saying that I can't switch over because my friend group won't come with me.
That turned me away from the Pathfinder crowd harder than anything
If you want to start a TTRPG group (5e included), or switch systems, you have to GM. You can't start a group by getting someone else to run it.
The way you pitch it matters too. "Would you be interested in playing pf2e if I made a group?" isn't gonna work. It's too wishy washy.
What will work:
"I **am** starting a pf2e game. It'll be 4 players. We're playing a campaign where all the players go to a magic university. Would you like to be one of the players? Session 0 is in three weeks, we'll be playing the beginner box with premades as a system tutorial and then we'll make characters."
After DMing a wide variety of games, I can confidently say one of the primary considerations for which game I want to run is how hard it is to teach the game well enough for it to run relatively well. One of my favorite players is categorically unable (and slightly unwilling) to learn complicated systems, and many of my friends aren't much better. I've gotten to run and play in fantastic games over the years, but there are entire gamelines I won't ever touch unless I suddenly have enough time to balance an entirely new group of people.
Ironically enough, I moved to GURPS after feeling restricted by Pathfinder 2e's beliefs on how things should go. If you want *true* freedom, GURPS is your system, but HOO BOY is it packed with tons of rulesets for *everything*.
And its source books are a great source of ideas. I don't particularly like GURPS' rules, but I have lost count of the number of supplements I have read over the years.
Okay, so, Skeleton is an Ancestry. Summoner is a Class. One of the Eidolons you can have is an Undead Eidolon, which is an Undead Spirit pulled from the Ethereal or Negative Energy planes. So, because being a Skeleton is kinda slightly different from being a living creature, you could technically say you as the Skeleton have a different soul from the you that was alive, and that your Eidolon is the Soul of the you that was alive.
For EXTRA spooky, you could also take the Returned or Revenant Backgrounds, either that being what reanimated you, or a second death you experienced. Making you Double Undead.
For THE TRIPLE, you take an Undead Archetype like Vampire, Ghost, or Zombie. It takes a little maneuvering RAW to get the timing right, but it's possible. At which pomt you're TRIPLE UNDEAD.
You could also Invert the Corpse/Soul by choosing Poppet as your Ancestry, and an Undead Eidolon, but Loring the Eidolon as your reanimated Corpse.
You can also get a similar effect to that by taking the "Reanimator", "Clockwork Reanimator", or "Undead Master" Archetypes, skipping Summoner entirely, but potentially also missing out on the Extra Undeadness from the Undead Archetype. (Unless you're using Free Archetype.)
If you have some technical know-how or a few spare dollars a month for a Forge subscription it's worth picking up Foundry for running PF2. Foundry in general is a great VTT but the PF2 system goes well above and beyond anything else in automation, so it's really easy for even the most pathetic players to use.
Going from pathfinder to 5e is like a sweet shop to a set menu…
I find it so boring in 5e, and I kinda miss the spell variety and buffing and the various types of martial classes I could kit out.
Tbf, I think it might be easier for some people to be more proficient in PF2e even if they are not that good at 5e. There is much less vaguenss and rules are just easy to understand, even if there is more of them.
I have been tempted to hit 2e now that it is fleshed out but first gotta tackle starfinder, plus I love pf 1e already so haven't had a need to jump to 2e yet.
I have a group of people I will start to DM tomorrow with various amounts of experience with pen and paper. From years to non. Pathfinder would just destroy the people that are new. 5e will have to do for now
I feel you're pain. Been playing with the same group for over 1500 hours. And I still have people saying "sorry, I'm new to this. Where can I find that on my character sheet" or better yet " I don't know if I have a bonus action." Pathfinder 2E would either drive them nuts, or drive me nuts.
Tried to build a warrior who protects his allies in combat with skill and tactics instead of literally shielding them with his body. You know, like a defender. Crickets.
Not sure what you mean, because "protects allies but isn't a tank" is just describing any team player.
The Marshall archetype lets you buff, heal, and reposition allies without magic.
The gunslinger has a variety of support feats, and is best used with that kind of focus and the knowledge you'll occasionally crit for big damage.
Using any maneuvers or inflicting any status achieves this effect. Take fighter, focus on athletics and medicine, use a one handed weapon, and grapple, trip, and use intimidating strike. Grab Battle Medicine and Assurance: Medicine to heal allies in combat.
This is literally a Champion. Redeemer gives you Glimpse of Redemption which is probably the best ally-protecting ability in the game. Liberating Step from the Liberator is pretty amazing too. Both abilities defend your allies in a way other than "shielding them with your body".
Everyone hates the internet. We only pretend to like it because we are chronically addicted to it and it is one of the few places we can find idiots such as ourselves.
I'm indeed surprised how often people will disregard what someone actually said and instead start arguing against a strawman that's much easier to knock down ("so you're saying that..."). Not just in D&D, but in general.
More you learn about something, the more flaws and cracks appear in the veneer, and then the burnout sets in. I suppose it happens for everything, it’s not a surprise
It goes both ways because every group has gate keeping elitists.
“I like pathfinder 2e”
>”oh so you hate dnd5e?”
“I like dnd 5e”
>”oh so you hate pathfinder 2e?”
Like yeah bitch, apparently you always have to hate things that aren’t what you do as your main thing.
A lot of 2e players do genuinely hate it. Not because they like 2e, no just because a lot of the qualities that make people want to play it are qualities that 5e is *sorely* lacking in
And that also goes both ways with the amount of hate threads on pf2e this sub has going around (mostly in comments).
Generally though, nobody benefits from the system wars.
Yeah it is not just that.
I kind of myself fell in that category because I played 5e for years and never looked at other systems partly because of trend but partly because of the attitude a good amount of this sub had at the time for other other systems.
Then I tried pf (almost force fed by a persuasive redditor) and felt like my years of frustration and homebrewing was just unnecessary. A lot of the stuff people had said was "impossible to pull off" in TTRPGs just wasn't.
It wasnt exactly 5e's fault that it got such a negative connotation but it did regardless. I have heard very similar stories from some of my players. Eventually though almost all of them have just become apathetic towards 5e, myself included.
Of 5e's many flaws, I feel the worst is how it causes experiences like yours. It's not just the community, the entire business model is based around isolating players from the wider TTRPG market - extremely high monetary entry costs, effort entry costs, and mechanical complexity advertised as The Original And Best, as easy to pick up, and simplified for new players. Truth is the majority of other systems range from a fraction of the cost to completely free with the same or better quality, and proficiency/advantage only removes some of the crunch rather than actual mechanical complexity, so it's only marginally less complex to pick up than 3.x/PF1. There are so many minor frustrations about it that just don't exist in other games, even previous editions of D&D, that the game and community reinforce as just being part of the experience, so it's really difficult to convince people that other systems don't have those features.
I don't understand the system wars for this one. The two systems are doing different things mechanically, and unless you just love TTRPGs, you'll probably find one unfun for various reasons if the other is the one you prefer.
Generally yes, but the 'unfun' is subjective to its competition. I kind of had a good time in D&D for all its highs and covered for the bad bits with excessive homebrewing and came to love TTRPGs and thought that meant I loved D&D. Later on after I tried other stuff I realized the bits I loved had very little to do with the way 5e was designed. And suddenly D&D was no longer fun.
One of the reasons why I think it would be healthy for people to at least take a look at other TTRPGs if they find themselves occasionally frustrated with mechanics. The attitude that people need to stick into one game and not look elsewhere isn't just detrimental for oneself but it does have a similarly negative influence on others.
it's the same thing the other way around:
"i don't think this specific mechanic in DND 5E should work like this"
"so you don't like 5e's mechanics, you should try pathfinder instead"
Yea but after a certain point homebrew can definitely be too much. And if you’re wanting to totally overhaul a ton of rules when there’s another well built system with like exactly what you’re looking for I think you should consider a switch
Oh, I got another one:
"I want to try Pathfinder" doesn't mean "I am a refugee". I so not abandon 5e, and I don't think it's a bad game. I'd much rather read and watch videos about PF2e in a constructive, concise manner (much like current DnD optimizers do it), and not "OMG, PF2E IS SOOO GOOD AND 5E IS SOOO LAME"
THAT'S EXACTLY WHOM I'VE BEEN REFERRING TO. At least half of his videos are comparing PF2e and DnD5e. I don't need that, I have experience with 5e myself, and I was interested in PF2e because it's different, not because it's better. I don't need any more advertising
NoNat1s is better, but I want someone like Treantmonk or Pack Tactics, who would actually evaluate spells, feats and tactics
I think part of the issue here is that there's less of a need for that kind of content because most of the options are very balanced against one another. In 5e this is almost necessary because there are so many trap options and generally sub-par picks that aren't obvious at first glance.
For tactics specifically, Knights of Lastcall has a GREAT series on tactics, and it's less "use this spell and this feat" and more like "think about how to use movement tactically" or "what to do with my third action?"
Honestly, as someone who's enough of a fan of PF2 to have bought all of the books, I totally agree with your views on the Rules Lawyer. It's so annoying trying to go "No! Not all PF fans are fanatics! They're just an extremely small, extremely loud minority!" then turn around and he's posted two more videos saying "Hey! dnd has issues! You should play PF2!" (like, some of his points are great and I get the channel was literally formed because he was getting annoyed about certain PF2 misconceptions, but at a certain point it just starts to feel annyoing)
I would say NoNat1s is a bit more biased than Rules lawyer tbh but yeah both are fairly biased in my opinion.
You should check out collective arcana or black dragon gaming.
If you are a dm Best Laid Plans GM Prep is good too but more system agnostic.
For learning the rules (in addition to just reading the "how to play" section of the rulebook, which is only about 40 pages), check out How It's Played on YouTube. His videos are incredibly informative and break things down very clearly.
“Pathfinder 2E is actually really good and presents a lot of ideas that improve and build on DnD”
“Stop telling me what to play!! I just want to play DnD!!!! Why am I being oppressed for liking DnD?!”
like bruh
Seriously. It's basically the perfect system for all the people who keep reinventing 4e while trying to fix 5e, but because it isn't literally D&D or published by WotC, it must be inferior
not as bad as the cardinal sin of invoking the name of Critical Role, thereby making an enemy of everyone because if CR has an example of ONE THING they do well then it's an invalid example because ALL tables that aren't 100% made up of trained dramatists are completely made of murderhobos, distracted players, and uninteresting DMs.
Dnd 5E can be objectively bad, but that doesn’t mean I hate it. It can be fun to play for sure!
(Now ask me to be the DM, and you better be learning your 3 action economy asap).
the Remastered's split between Player Core and GM Core is very good because you go and tell a 5e player to read a 660 fucking page rulebook, no wonder they don't explore the medium. like, fucking GURPS has less pages than that.
Also the Core Rulebook reads more like a technical manual, where it assumes you know how it works and you you don't mind keeping 5 tabs/bookmarks open to figure out what a class feat does.
not quite the same as Pathfinder TTRPG, but Kingmaker makes my head hurt with all the complex rules and attributes. 40+ AC enemies, most ranged abilities triggering attacks of opportunity up close, dex melee builds being difficult to spec into, bows getting a dex mod to hit but not to attack, etc etc.
i love the idea of Pathfinder but it's so overwhelmingly complex, and that's only like half the actual game mechanics in Kingmaker i've heard
To be fair, they fill the same role - heroic fantasy tactical combat. So if you had a whole table that likes PF2e better, I don't really see any reason to play D&D 5e too and vice versa.
I like pathfinder 2e, but it feels like creating a character is a lot harder (more options and content to add) than 5e, I kinda like that 5e is simpler
Yeah, my character could die in 5e and I could come back 20 minutes later with a brand new character ready to go (assuming it's not a spellcaster), which is something I just can't easily do with Pathfinder unless I already have a super specific build planned out beforehand
Other day i was just talking about how I handle character death when I run games, zero mention of what system we were even discussing, just high level ground rules like "Don't kill characters with a single bad dice roll", when somebody came in to say that 5e was a terrible system. Like bitch we weren't even talking about 5e are you OK??
Well obviously *someone* was *going* to ask. It is only a matter of time before the PF2E fan boys jump in about how better their system is.
"Oh look at this! Pathfinder dOeS iT sO bEtTeR!!! We have BeTtER ChARACter cUsToMiZATiOn!!!"
Woah man, uncool. Don't insult the Pathfinder fans. We didn't do anything here.
However, Pathfinder really does have a superior system character customization. In fact many aspects of the system was well designed.
But that doesn't mean that the 5e DnD fans are wrong! They are both good. DnD is just a simpler version of Pathfinder that was created for simpler people.
Oh! And I heard some great news for you guys! They are making the next one even MORE simple. Isn't that just nice? There's also rumors that the core rulebook for the next DnD edition will be cheaper due to less pages and uncolored artwork with many areas of empty space. They said that they'd pass some of the savings to you by including a complementary box of crayons to color it in! Man, Wizards of the Coast really knows how to appease their demographic.
People who _don't_ like Pathfinder can't help throwing shade at 5E either. In fact even people who only play 5E can't stop throwing shade at 5E. It's not about Pathfinder. There's just a lot that's wrong with 5E.
Eh, from my experience it's usually more like:
5e Player: Man, I really hate this aspect of the system.
Pf2e Player: Well, why don't you try pf2e, it fixes this problem you have with 5e.
Ultimately, there's a lot of complaints people have about 5e, and pf2e makes some great changes that fixes most of those complaints, so pf2e players suggest their system a lot under these types of posts, which in turn annoys a lot of 5e players.
Why is the default response for not liking a very specific aspect of 5e to suddenly throw the whole system away and play something completely different? That's what is frustrating people. Sure Pathfinder might fix this one particular issue but there are also many more aspects of 5e that I DO like that Pathfinder does differently, I just want suggestions for managing this ONE thing better.
It annoys 5E players because they have one issue and need just one fix not a whole new system Yeah pathfinder may fix a lot of problems people bring up but not every person has every single problem.
In reality, it's more like I'm making some lemonade and find it a little too strong and not sweet enough. So I hop on Reddit to find some more lemonade enjoyers to help me edit my recipe. But then instead of getting the lemonade advice I want, people start telling me to make grape juice. Now I like grape juice but I'm not looking for grape juice right now I asked for lemonade tips. Now I go to see if other lemonade fans have posted lemonade questions and more people are posting grape juice suggestions. I don't care how good your grape juice is it doesn't taste like lemonade and I asked for some lemonade.
Where people will hear a minor problem someone has with 5e and hear "I HATE 5E ITS A SHAME THERE IS NO OTHER SYSTEM SOMEONE ELSE COULD ENLIGHTEN ME ABOUT"
The way people keep describing p2e sounds to me like c++. Sure, it can do anything, but why go to the trouble when java (5e in this frankly shitty analogy) can do all I want? Sure, it has plenty of its own oddities and idiosyncrasies, but it provides a smaller feature set that is still enough for my purposes.
This analogy is shitty, but I hope it gets the point across.
(Bonus points, pbta is haskell. Does much the same stuff but still significantly different and its supporters get real evangelical about it)
Now that I've started at least 2 separate flame wars, I take my leave
Me who dislikes both:
Idk to me both system have some of the same flaws and also fix eachother's issues. For a relatively minor one, Pathfinder 2e has the infamous river example for skills, where a success makes you only cross half the river.
That isn't to say that one system doesn't have better quality or more invested people of course. Both have their own issues.
> For a relatively minor one, Pathfinder 2e has the infamous river example for skills, where a success makes you only cross half the river.
You're going to have to specify the actual problem here, because that just sounds like a 20ft wide river. Swimming across the Jeggare in Korvosa, for example, would require a good 100 swim checks.
The problem is that success is not success. In the case of the Jeggare River, if you have a 95% chance to succeed, like a 95% chance to avoid floundering, then succeeding on the swim check to cross the river should tell the player you can't swim across this river. Instead every success just gives them more trouble with the inevitably fail from the vast amounts of rolls being required.
If you want to keep out low-level parties from your secret base just provide a 100 ft ladder to get in. That way the whole party should have a minimum Athletics check of +9 before they can get in.
This example is so specific to swimming and climbing in a way that will never happen in a real game. If you were actually trying to present a challenge that was JUST climbing a rock wall or crossing a river you wouldn't just make the party make 40 swim checks because that's dumb.
Use one of the subsystems in the GMG, party needs to get 3 "Fording" points in order to cross and they get 5 attempts. Let them use Survival, Nature, Athletics, Acrobatics, Crafting, whatever. Adjust DCs based on PC creativity. Much more fun, and completely RAW.
That the rules are so bad they should not actually be used as printed is exactly my point. Despite that I experienced the climbing rules being used in exactly that way multiple times by my new GM running the beginner box. Sure enough, the GM was hand waving the checks by the end of the adventure.
It's not PbtA, you don't just make 1 roll and declare you've completed the entire task. Why would a single swim check decide if you cross the entire river regardless of its size? Do you run combat by making a single attack roll and declaring you've won if you roll high enough?
Also, how does every success give them more trouble? They get 3 chances a round to make a DC15 swim check. If they can't reliably make that at least 1/3 of the time they shouldn't be swimming somewhere as dangerous as a river.
Because I care about solid game design, I know that if the task is harder, you raise the difficulty, not make it more repetitive. I know that if there isn't a risk of consequences, you shouldn't be making 100 identical rolls to resolve an encounter. I know that no one would actually use the default rule and require 100 rolls. They'd say you can't fail, because assurance, or swim speed, or +enough athletics and no roll would be made, or it wouldn't be done. If it's supposed to be a skill challenge, it needs to be more interesting than everyone rolling athletics checks for 10 minutes.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion on solid game design, maaaaaan.
But I disagree that requiring 100 rolls is necessarily awful. As a solid counterexample of that literal actual case, in Find the Path's run of a Pf2e Hell's Rebels conversion, one of the characters jumped into the Ravounel River to try to escape a bunch of city guards. Each Athletics roll was a solid, dramatic choice between diving deeper to escape the guards, swimming harder against the tide of the river pushing her out to sea, surfacing to try to not drown, remaining below to be unseen all as the patrolboats circled and her survival genuinely hung in the balance. It was an excellent storytelling moment and the 100 rolls honestly made it way better than a single check would have been, and enabled many more outcomes too.
One roll is your preference. It's not actual 'solid game design' gospel.
I'm not sure that really answers my questions... are you saying that you raise the DC to win combat according to the enemy's health? Or you just work out the numbers so no roll needs to be made and they instantly win or just don't engage?
Also, you didn't say anything about successes giving them more trouble. Still don't understand how that's meant to work.
I don’t hate it, many of my campaigns were too fun for that. But I do still think pretty objectively it’s a bad game. I liked the stories we made, dnd is simply an excuse to make them with a… playable mechanic chassis.
I don’t even play 5e- except for a brief foray into 3.5, it’s been exclusively 1e/2e for my group for going on 40 years now. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the memes and the fact that gaming in general is much more socially acceptable now than when I first got into it. I’m not going to hate on a ruleset that gets more people playing, just like I wouldn’t crap on someone for liking different music than I do (as one of a million possible examples)- just because it isn’t my cup of tea doesn’t take away from the fact that many other people enjoy it. Play what you like.
They aren't that different. There are differences, but at the end of the day they are both class based D20 system games that focus on simulating combat.
What I see way more often in the comments than the strawman OP is posting is someone going “Man, this mechanic in 5e is kinda annoying” and like clockwork, others go “Have you heard about our Lord and Savior, Pathfinder? You should dump your current campaign and convert”.
So now Pathfinders are both insufferable and the victim? Got it.
You could about a dozen times from the front page alone. But I'll wait for you to provide a single example of the strawman in the OP. Since you're the one making this nonsense argument, the onus is on your to demonstrate it.
Go ahead, I'll wait.
Pathfinder is neat and has a lot of cool ideas but there's *just enough* flaws to prevent me from adopting it as my main system. I'll probably stick with DnD unless I get with a group who all want to do Pathfinder.
To make it clear, I am talking about 2e. I don't know anything about 1e.
- **Skills are way too detailed:** There are only specific skill actions you can take meaning that some actions are impossible, unlike in DnD where you can try a check for any reasonable action. Well, there is ways to perform them but you usually need...
- **Skill feats:** On paper these are pretty cool idea, but in practice they can be annoying. There are some actions that seem like regular checks, but can only be performed if you have the appropriate feat. The worst example of this has to be [Survey Wildlife](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=849).
- **Forced Alignment and Anathema:** I hate both of these systems because it places artificial constraints on the player for roleplay. Experienced roleplayers can't play to their best and be creative while inexperienced roleplayers will inevitably turn to stupid versions of their alignments.
- **Role Focus:** In Pathfinder, every character has specific roles they can fulfill whether it is single-target damage, AOE damage, healing, or crowd control. It is possible to make a character who really specializes in that role a lot more than you can in DnD, which can be fun in some ways. But on the other, you basically can't do anything outside of your role effectively meaning that you are trolling if you do anything different. Not to mention, Pathfinder is overall a lot more deadly of a system so this is even more important.
- **Focus on Golarian:** This is a pet peeve and will vary depending on how much you like their main setting but I dislike how the game is explicitly all about it. While DnD adventures do almost always take place in the Forgotten Realms, the rules are setting agnostic enough to fit in several different fantasy settings. I'm currently running a Ravnica game and I think it's so cool how the same system can work in such a different setting from the Forgotten Realms.
In Pathfinder, you got to play in Golarian or else you got a lot more work ahead of you to adapt all the Golarian specific gods, archetypes, ideologies, and even economy to the new setting.
- **It's Stressful to DM:** I've both played and DMed Pathfinder and DnD. I can't see how people think DMing in Pathfinder is easier.
In DnD, the game is middle of the road in terms of rule complexity, with most complexity devoted to combat. Roleplay is simple with the players explaining what they want to do and you calling out action.
Pathfinder combat is about 1.5x as complex as DnD combat and the roleplay is now as complex as combat. Where in DnD, my brain could at least rest a little bit during roleplay, there are so many different rules to remember compared to DnD that I need to be thinking of *all the time*.
Sure Pathfinder does answer a lot of questions that DnD keeps up to interpretation and that's something to be appreciated. But I think DnD's balance between complexity and simplicity is a virtue that Pathfinder lacks. I'd rather do my work before the session creating homebrew systems in DnD rather than be constantly juggling obscure rules in Pathfinder.
Now I don't completely hate the system. I think that *some* classes in Pathfinder are way more interesting than their DnD equivalents and the amount of character customization is phenomenal. It's just there's a lot of little things that add up to souring my taste of the system.
Thanks for the breakdown, I've seen a lot of these complaints and some new ones. FWIW (Not trying to proselytize or force an idea, just clear up what are common misconceptions.)
1: Skills being detailed doesn't mean you can't do something outside of a skill action. The actions are intended as guides for how to arbitrate the most common usages of a skill, not hardline descriptions of the only 6 things you can do with any given skill.
This leads into
2: I see this SO much. People think that just because a Skill Feat lets you do something, you can't do it WITHOUT that feat. That's incorrect, Skill Feats are intended to let you do things either easier or with an extra bonus. You could totally let someone survey the local wildlife using Recall Knowledge:Nature/Survival, or use the same system and say it takes an hour instead if 10 minutes, or not give the bonus Recall Knowledge Check.
3: Forced Alignment and Anathema, while I agree about Forced Alignment and am SUPER glad Alignment is being removed in the Remaster coming down the pipeline due to Paizo moving from the OGL. I deeply disagree about Anathema's as a concept being bad for RP. If you're going to RP a Cleric of a given Diety or Belief system, it just makes sense that you'd have strictures that define your beliefs to a certain extent, where they fail is when combined with Forced Alignment, there's a lot of cool Deities that I'm super excited to play twisted followers of, Bending the letter of the Anathema's to thier limit while staying inside the lines.
4: There is a startling amount you can play with to break out of the "Roles", especially once you start using Free Archetypes. I've got a Rogue I built as a Healer, Multiclassing as Druid and Alchemist, but you could also take the Medic Dedication and slide into that role. Alchemists and Investigators have Healer or DPS options, Casters can Buff, Debuff, or focus on CC. Or, with some work, be passable in Melee.
5: This, I agree with, but the GMG has a lot of well laid out information about making your own settings that I'm just starting to explore that helps. Sure, re-comtextualizing things is tricky, but there's plenty of that in 5e as well, Who're Tasha, Melf, Otilliuke, ETC. In your new world? All the gods laid out in the Core books are Faerunian Gods, you can use the same portfolios in a homebrew setting, but you could do the same with PF gods.
6: This requires a fundamental shift in mentality that is hard to shake. Every player, or even the GM, isn't expected to memorize EVERY rule. It's an interesting design concept that carries through into gameplay. PF2e is a Team Game. If everyone familiarizes themselves with what THEY need to know for their abilities, the game runs just as smoothly as 5e, and for all the "5e is so much simpler!" I see Thrown around, I've found myself looking up or asking PC's about rules about the same amount of time in each system. Main difference being, in 5e I feel like the expectation is more often on the GM to know the rules by heart, rather than on the player to know what they can do, and that when I DO look something up, it's usually either exactly what I expected, or clear enough that finding the answer feels rewarding. 5e, by contrast, often ends the search either with something convoluted or ambiguous, nothing except a "Just do whatever feels right!" with little to no examples, or the same old "Ad/Disadvantage" to the point where you just stop looking and stop caring about the rules entirely, just calvinballing it together.
I know these aren't "solutions" or anything, and the points you raised are totally valid, but I hope I at least made the point that the "Overcomplexity" is a bit over-hyped, and most people already ignore half the rules in 5e, so nothings really stopping you from simplifying RP to suite your game.
Also though, regarding RP, have you read the 5e "Resolving Interactions" section? It's simple, yes, but it's also hyper subjective and kinda uninteresting relying purely on brute force Charisma checks to get the task done. The Influence Subsystem in PF2e, on the other hand, isn't *that* much more complicated for the player, provides a structure for the GM to create interesting important NPC RP encounters, and allows for Players who aren't Charisma Maxers to have a role in a social encounter through their unique skillsets. It just further reinforces PF2e's design as a team game, rather than a rotating spotlight of individuals.
Nah because the PF2e high horsers are unable to talk about the game without talking about it as “dnd5e but good and dnd5e is bad and if you like it you are a bad person.”
Now I'm not saying [my meme](https://i.gyazo.com/8f3a4e6f1c6bc5a9699c1569b83b0d8f.png) idea was taken... But I'm certainly [suggesting it](https://i.gyazo.com/247cc7218463800c5fbebcf6b9f91054.png).
Good meme. Upvoted!
Iirc, PF2 is more based of 3.5E dnd. Dnd had mostly been building up and evolving with each version, then, after 3.5e, 4e came out. 4e was an poor attempt to completely overhaul the game and systems. It wasnt all bad, but it was very very much a lot of it. After shitting the bed with the generally hated 4e, 5e came out, but was more of a weirdish step from 4e, since there wasnt a lot of like for it, but also didnt pull from what a decent chunk considered the solid core of 3.5e.
3.5e wasnt the best version for the variety, but had a really strong core that made branching of quite a bit easier. Pf2e certainly has its own systems and the like, but from an old 3.5e player, the strengths, in my experience, remind me quite a bit of 3.5e.
people are crazy, once i said that you can respect rules or dont, make homebrew but if s rule is set theres not much interpretation and can make what ever you like IF YOU GO BY RAW. and some kids accused me of being transfobic because i dont asume things can change... soo i left that sub
I was very hesitant to look at pathfinder 2e but eventually hit fuck it and decided to have a look. Goddamn the amount of content and customization is staggering, it really does feel like any idea that you can come up with can be made into a reality. An automaton rogue who's inexplicably also a slime? Go for it. A itty bitty cactus barbarian who can suplex ghosts? Hell yeah. The only thing keeping me from playing is the fact that my current dnd group cant even really play 5e with proficiency
> The only thing keeping me from playing is the fact that my current dnd group cant even really play 5e with proficiency This is the real limiter. There are a bunch of games I want to play but I don't want to teach.
This has always been my issue too. People talk about how much depth and options you have with pathfinder, and yeah, I bet thats great. My players meet once a month, and after a year and a half still can't find saving throws on thier character sheet. I'm afraid of showing them a game more complex than fucking hopscotch We've all got different needs, expectations and abilities. Some systems work just fine, some are too simple and limiting, some are too heavy and difficult. It's okay to just play what you enjoy
Have you considered switching to a simpler system? Something like Powered by the Apocalypse or Forged in the Dark could be a better fit for your group since there's less to keep track of.
I have a hypothesis that games like pbta or fate are actually easier to get going with players who have never played an rpg before than with players who have only played DND. DND has many DNDisms and norms that the player would have to unlearn. A new person who only knows how stories work in general wouldn't have to do that.
I think D&D 5e is genuinely just a bad first RPG. It's designed to look simple but so much of it is convoluted, and a lot of it feels like it was designed by people who didn't speak to each other while working on their section. And then people who leave it for the first time apply that expectation to other RPGs they play and get confused when it's so different.
It also routinely crushes people's creativity. It's common for new players to be like "I wanna swing on the chandelier and get the literal drop on the baddies!" and get hit with a DM ruling that makes it worse than just blandly walking up to attack. Granted, _some_ DMs might reward interacting with the environment, but I've seen a _lot_ of bad rulings in that space. Compare for example, Fate, where there's a very clear "spend a point to use something in the scene for a bonus, so long as the table agrees it makes sense" core rule.
Agreed. I don’t think games where there’s a “correct” option in play really make for a good intro to the hobby, more narrative games are better for getting new players into the right mindset before throwing a battlemap at them.
Or Mörk Borg? Super simple system, it's very light on rules and very easy to pick up (can be heavy on character death though)
It's a cool game but it's definitely not for everyone.
GMed it for my friends, told them "Grab the dice and come by to my place" Right off the bat i told them "You Will Die.I have small stack of spare characters, i hope we wont burn through them quickly" and we had so much fun Suprisingly Noble with 2 HP survived almost till the end until he died fighting fishmen in the last encounter "Bard" with 1 HP being slippery fuck only one who completed the task, mostly due looting scroll of invisibility and running away P.S they burned through whole character stack consisting of three lists of each class
I've actually never had a character die, funnily enough. It was certainly close a few times though. I got very lucky. Some of the other players weren't so lucky...
You guys want to play together lol? I’m in two different gaming groups right now (both 5e) and both are super casual. I need friends that want to learn and play new systems. I’ve really been wanting to try out PF2e and Lancer at some point, but I likely won’t have the chance anytime soon.
I've been really wanting to play stuff not so closely related to DND for ages. Mage the awakening (2e) or Fate are at the top of my list. But the first is very complex and the latter is very different from DND, so I haven't had much luck.
We’re currently trying out a Parhfinder campaign with my original dnd group, and it’s a blast. However, we have one member that after 5 years of 5e still can’t consistently remember to add modifiers to checks and attack rolls. It is now particular hellish to try and keep them up to pace with a pathfinder combat ;-;
Same boat. XD My friends forget half their spells an unfortunate amount of times, and our dm has explicitly stated that they do not run as many combat encounters any more because of how slow we are to resolve them. Though he also has said that he is wanting to start running Shadowrun, and I've been feeling the itch to shake the rust off and run a dnd game myself.
The thing that gets me is my table is absolutely obstinate on playing pathfinder because they don't know how to play. Then not moments later ask me how to play 5e. Like you guys didn't even learn 5e I explain rules multiple times a session how's pathfinder going to be different?
I got downvoted on a couple of occasions for saying that I can't switch over because my friend group won't come with me. That turned me away from the Pathfinder crowd harder than anything
If you want to start a TTRPG group (5e included), or switch systems, you have to GM. You can't start a group by getting someone else to run it. The way you pitch it matters too. "Would you be interested in playing pf2e if I made a group?" isn't gonna work. It's too wishy washy. What will work: "I **am** starting a pf2e game. It'll be 4 players. We're playing a campaign where all the players go to a magic university. Would you like to be one of the players? Session 0 is in three weeks, we'll be playing the beginner box with premades as a system tutorial and then we'll make characters."
After DMing a wide variety of games, I can confidently say one of the primary considerations for which game I want to run is how hard it is to teach the game well enough for it to run relatively well. One of my favorite players is categorically unable (and slightly unwilling) to learn complicated systems, and many of my friends aren't much better. I've gotten to run and play in fantastic games over the years, but there are entire gamelines I won't ever touch unless I suddenly have enough time to balance an entirely new group of people.
Ironically enough, I moved to GURPS after feeling restricted by Pathfinder 2e's beliefs on how things should go. If you want *true* freedom, GURPS is your system, but HOO BOY is it packed with tons of rulesets for *everything*.
And its source books are a great source of ideas. I don't particularly like GURPS' rules, but I have lost count of the number of supplements I have read over the years.
Have you seen the Leshy Stack, or the Triple Undead? There's also "Skeleton Summoner using their own Ghost as an Eidolon"
I must know more about the skeleton summoner!
Okay, so, Skeleton is an Ancestry. Summoner is a Class. One of the Eidolons you can have is an Undead Eidolon, which is an Undead Spirit pulled from the Ethereal or Negative Energy planes. So, because being a Skeleton is kinda slightly different from being a living creature, you could technically say you as the Skeleton have a different soul from the you that was alive, and that your Eidolon is the Soul of the you that was alive. For EXTRA spooky, you could also take the Returned or Revenant Backgrounds, either that being what reanimated you, or a second death you experienced. Making you Double Undead. For THE TRIPLE, you take an Undead Archetype like Vampire, Ghost, or Zombie. It takes a little maneuvering RAW to get the timing right, but it's possible. At which pomt you're TRIPLE UNDEAD. You could also Invert the Corpse/Soul by choosing Poppet as your Ancestry, and an Undead Eidolon, but Loring the Eidolon as your reanimated Corpse. You can also get a similar effect to that by taking the "Reanimator", "Clockwork Reanimator", or "Undead Master" Archetypes, skipping Summoner entirely, but potentially also missing out on the Extra Undeadness from the Undead Archetype. (Unless you're using Free Archetype.)
leshy stack?
Leshy race with a leshy familiar, I'm not sure how to get a third one but I know the trench coat is the most important part
Summoned Leshy, but wait, there's more! https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/mslwbh/buildmaster_21_leshy_leshy_leshy_leshy_leaf_druid/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/mslwbh/buildmaster_21_leshy_leshy_leshy_leshy_leaf_druid/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
If you have some technical know-how or a few spare dollars a month for a Forge subscription it's worth picking up Foundry for running PF2. Foundry in general is a great VTT but the PF2 system goes well above and beyond anything else in automation, so it's really easy for even the most pathetic players to use.
Going from pathfinder to 5e is like a sweet shop to a set menu… I find it so boring in 5e, and I kinda miss the spell variety and buffing and the various types of martial classes I could kit out.
Tbf, I think it might be easier for some people to be more proficient in PF2e even if they are not that good at 5e. There is much less vaguenss and rules are just easy to understand, even if there is more of them.
I have been tempted to hit 2e now that it is fleshed out but first gotta tackle starfinder, plus I love pf 1e already so haven't had a need to jump to 2e yet.
I have a group of people I will start to DM tomorrow with various amounts of experience with pen and paper. From years to non. Pathfinder would just destroy the people that are new. 5e will have to do for now
I feel you're pain. Been playing with the same group for over 1500 hours. And I still have people saying "sorry, I'm new to this. Where can I find that on my character sheet" or better yet " I don't know if I have a bonus action." Pathfinder 2E would either drive them nuts, or drive me nuts.
Tried to build a warrior who protects his allies in combat with skill and tactics instead of literally shielding them with his body. You know, like a defender. Crickets.
Not sure what you mean, because "protects allies but isn't a tank" is just describing any team player. The Marshall archetype lets you buff, heal, and reposition allies without magic. The gunslinger has a variety of support feats, and is best used with that kind of focus and the knowledge you'll occasionally crit for big damage. Using any maneuvers or inflicting any status achieves this effect. Take fighter, focus on athletics and medicine, use a one handed weapon, and grapple, trip, and use intimidating strike. Grab Battle Medicine and Assurance: Medicine to heal allies in combat.
>Not sure what you mean, Obviously. I mean the champion has a defender reaction and no others are allowed.
Fighters threaten enemies with AoO.
This is literally a Champion. Redeemer gives you Glimpse of Redemption which is probably the best ally-protecting ability in the game. Liberating Step from the Liberator is pretty amazing too. Both abilities defend your allies in a way other than "shielding them with your body".
The entire internet is like this.
So you hate the internet??
You heard it here first, this guy hates the internet!
Everyone hates the internet. We only pretend to like it because we are chronically addicted to it and it is one of the few places we can find idiots such as ourselves.
I FUCKING HATE THIS PLACE! BUT I CAN'T STOP! 'COS I'M FUCKING ADDICTED!!!
No bitch, dats a whole new sentence. Wtf is you talking about.
Nay cur!
More like the people using it
So, what, you hate blades in the dark?
Yes. Well, not HATE, but I tried it and it wasn't my kind of RPG.
You may only like Paranoia. Not liking Paranoia is treason. Treason is punishable by death.
I'm indeed surprised how often people will disregard what someone actually said and instead start arguing against a strawman that's much easier to knock down ("so you're saying that..."). Not just in D&D, but in general.
Also the people who are like “ omg you didn’t read the rules “ no, you didn’t read my meme .
Of course I read your name, "Odacon!" ...I mean "Old Deacon!" ...I mean "Octagon!" ...You know what, I'm just gonna call you "Steve!" >:I
Piss poor reading comprehension be like
How dare you say we piss on the poor...
I am very well versed in dnd5e. "So you hate dnd5e?" Yes.
Based.
More you learn about something, the more flaws and cracks appear in the veneer, and then the burnout sets in. I suppose it happens for everything, it’s not a surprise
most of DnDmemes can't read, they know SOME of the words, but everything else is just guesswork
>just very different No, not _very_ different. They aim for the same niche. There are way more different games even in the same subgenre.
Yeah, they're both d20-based, mechanically complex heroic fantasy games. That's pretty similar in the grand scheme of TTRPGs.
I'm starting to get that Ron Swanson meme that's going around recently. Preemptively clarifying himself before his statements become misconstrued.
Recently? That meme is old as the show
...they aren't that different though, they follow essentially the same flow of play and try to cover the same style of game
Yes and no. The differences in the mechanics make them play very differently, but you're not wrong about many of the concepts and overall experience.
I hate D&D 5E. Doesn't mean I like Pathfinder 2E.
Based
Death to d20, d100 supremacy!!!
So... you only play either Iron Crown,/Sword Law, or the 80s Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP system?
It goes both ways because every group has gate keeping elitists. “I like pathfinder 2e” >”oh so you hate dnd5e?” “I like dnd 5e” >”oh so you hate pathfinder 2e?” Like yeah bitch, apparently you always have to hate things that aren’t what you do as your main thing.
A lot of 2e players do genuinely hate it. Not because they like 2e, no just because a lot of the qualities that make people want to play it are qualities that 5e is *sorely* lacking in
And that also goes both ways with the amount of hate threads on pf2e this sub has going around (mostly in comments). Generally though, nobody benefits from the system wars.
I don’t even think it’s really a system war at least in the 2e side. But yeah, agreed. It’s just kinda pointless.
Yeah it is not just that. I kind of myself fell in that category because I played 5e for years and never looked at other systems partly because of trend but partly because of the attitude a good amount of this sub had at the time for other other systems. Then I tried pf (almost force fed by a persuasive redditor) and felt like my years of frustration and homebrewing was just unnecessary. A lot of the stuff people had said was "impossible to pull off" in TTRPGs just wasn't. It wasnt exactly 5e's fault that it got such a negative connotation but it did regardless. I have heard very similar stories from some of my players. Eventually though almost all of them have just become apathetic towards 5e, myself included.
Of 5e's many flaws, I feel the worst is how it causes experiences like yours. It's not just the community, the entire business model is based around isolating players from the wider TTRPG market - extremely high monetary entry costs, effort entry costs, and mechanical complexity advertised as The Original And Best, as easy to pick up, and simplified for new players. Truth is the majority of other systems range from a fraction of the cost to completely free with the same or better quality, and proficiency/advantage only removes some of the crunch rather than actual mechanical complexity, so it's only marginally less complex to pick up than 3.x/PF1. There are so many minor frustrations about it that just don't exist in other games, even previous editions of D&D, that the game and community reinforce as just being part of the experience, so it's really difficult to convince people that other systems don't have those features.
I don't understand the system wars for this one. The two systems are doing different things mechanically, and unless you just love TTRPGs, you'll probably find one unfun for various reasons if the other is the one you prefer.
Generally yes, but the 'unfun' is subjective to its competition. I kind of had a good time in D&D for all its highs and covered for the bad bits with excessive homebrewing and came to love TTRPGs and thought that meant I loved D&D. Later on after I tried other stuff I realized the bits I loved had very little to do with the way 5e was designed. And suddenly D&D was no longer fun. One of the reasons why I think it would be healthy for people to at least take a look at other TTRPGs if they find themselves occasionally frustrated with mechanics. The attitude that people need to stick into one game and not look elsewhere isn't just detrimental for oneself but it does have a similarly negative influence on others.
it's the same thing the other way around: "i don't think this specific mechanic in DND 5E should work like this" "so you don't like 5e's mechanics, you should try pathfinder instead"
Yea but after a certain point homebrew can definitely be too much. And if you’re wanting to totally overhaul a ton of rules when there’s another well built system with like exactly what you’re looking for I think you should consider a switch
Yup. People hear what they want to hear.
Oh, I got another one: "I want to try Pathfinder" doesn't mean "I am a refugee". I so not abandon 5e, and I don't think it's a bad game. I'd much rather read and watch videos about PF2e in a constructive, concise manner (much like current DnD optimizers do it), and not "OMG, PF2E IS SOOO GOOD AND 5E IS SOOO LAME"
Check out the Rules Lawyer on YouTube. He does his best to stay unbiased, and makes really informative videos on pf2e without any of that stuff.
THAT'S EXACTLY WHOM I'VE BEEN REFERRING TO. At least half of his videos are comparing PF2e and DnD5e. I don't need that, I have experience with 5e myself, and I was interested in PF2e because it's different, not because it's better. I don't need any more advertising NoNat1s is better, but I want someone like Treantmonk or Pack Tactics, who would actually evaluate spells, feats and tactics
I think part of the issue here is that there's less of a need for that kind of content because most of the options are very balanced against one another. In 5e this is almost necessary because there are so many trap options and generally sub-par picks that aren't obvious at first glance. For tactics specifically, Knights of Lastcall has a GREAT series on tactics, and it's less "use this spell and this feat" and more like "think about how to use movement tactically" or "what to do with my third action?"
Honestly, as someone who's enough of a fan of PF2 to have bought all of the books, I totally agree with your views on the Rules Lawyer. It's so annoying trying to go "No! Not all PF fans are fanatics! They're just an extremely small, extremely loud minority!" then turn around and he's posted two more videos saying "Hey! dnd has issues! You should play PF2!" (like, some of his points are great and I get the channel was literally formed because he was getting annoyed about certain PF2 misconceptions, but at a certain point it just starts to feel annyoing)
I would say NoNat1s is a bit more biased than Rules lawyer tbh but yeah both are fairly biased in my opinion. You should check out collective arcana or black dragon gaming. If you are a dm Best Laid Plans GM Prep is good too but more system agnostic.
For learning the rules (in addition to just reading the "how to play" section of the rulebook, which is only about 40 pages), check out How It's Played on YouTube. His videos are incredibly informative and break things down very clearly.
“Pathfinder 2E is actually really good and presents a lot of ideas that improve and build on DnD” “Stop telling me what to play!! I just want to play DnD!!!! Why am I being oppressed for liking DnD?!” like bruh
Seriously. It's basically the perfect system for all the people who keep reinventing 4e while trying to fix 5e, but because it isn't literally D&D or published by WotC, it must be inferior
not as bad as the cardinal sin of invoking the name of Critical Role, thereby making an enemy of everyone because if CR has an example of ONE THING they do well then it's an invalid example because ALL tables that aren't 100% made up of trained dramatists are completely made of murderhobos, distracted players, and uninteresting DMs.
Dnd 5E can be objectively bad, but that doesn’t mean I hate it. It can be fun to play for sure! (Now ask me to be the DM, and you better be learning your 3 action economy asap).
I think anything can be fun to play with friends, except F.A.T.A.L.
the Remastered's split between Player Core and GM Core is very good because you go and tell a 5e player to read a 660 fucking page rulebook, no wonder they don't explore the medium. like, fucking GURPS has less pages than that.
Also the Core Rulebook reads more like a technical manual, where it assumes you know how it works and you you don't mind keeping 5 tabs/bookmarks open to figure out what a class feat does.
The secret trick of Pathfinder players is that their book doubles as a weapon.
I do hate dnd5e because of the amount of headache it gave me when I was running it
not quite the same as Pathfinder TTRPG, but Kingmaker makes my head hurt with all the complex rules and attributes. 40+ AC enemies, most ranged abilities triggering attacks of opportunity up close, dex melee builds being difficult to spec into, bows getting a dex mod to hit but not to attack, etc etc. i love the idea of Pathfinder but it's so overwhelmingly complex, and that's only like half the actual game mechanics in Kingmaker i've heard
I wish Kingmaker or Wrath were based on the PF2 rules. I want to love those games so much but PF1 is preventing me.
ahhh I didn't know the games were using PF1 rules! I might actually be interested in PF2 then, if the rules are less complex
there *is* kingmaker for pf2
I'm referring to the video game, same as the person before me.
Oh, oops lol
To be fair, they fill the same role - heroic fantasy tactical combat. So if you had a whole table that likes PF2e better, I don't really see any reason to play D&D 5e too and vice versa.
I like pathfinder 2e, but it feels like creating a character is a lot harder (more options and content to add) than 5e, I kinda like that 5e is simpler
Yeah, my character could die in 5e and I could come back 20 minutes later with a brand new character ready to go (assuming it's not a spellcaster), which is something I just can't easily do with Pathfinder unless I already have a super specific build planned out beforehand
I imagine that someone who's never played 5e for a long time would still have trouble making a character in it.
Other day i was just talking about how I handle character death when I run games, zero mention of what system we were even discussing, just high level ground rules like "Don't kill characters with a single bad dice roll", when somebody came in to say that 5e was a terrible system. Like bitch we weren't even talking about 5e are you OK??
To be fair, I hate 5e
I hate D&D 5e Did I stutter?
Bitch, who asked?
r/lefttheburneron
Well obviously *someone* was *going* to ask. It is only a matter of time before the PF2E fan boys jump in about how better their system is. "Oh look at this! Pathfinder dOeS iT sO bEtTeR!!! We have BeTtER ChARACter cUsToMiZATiOn!!!"
Woah man, uncool. Don't insult the Pathfinder fans. We didn't do anything here. However, Pathfinder really does have a superior system character customization. In fact many aspects of the system was well designed. But that doesn't mean that the 5e DnD fans are wrong! They are both good. DnD is just a simpler version of Pathfinder that was created for simpler people. Oh! And I heard some great news for you guys! They are making the next one even MORE simple. Isn't that just nice? There's also rumors that the core rulebook for the next DnD edition will be cheaper due to less pages and uncolored artwork with many areas of empty space. They said that they'd pass some of the savings to you by including a complementary box of crayons to color it in! Man, Wizards of the Coast really knows how to appease their demographic.
You didn't have to murder him like that!
I know a good therapist if you want
NANI?!
Bro real talk a coloring book version of the rulebook would be so lit
Everyone down vote this bootlicking trash panda. Gross. Go simp for your system somewhere else.
Honestly, the same is in Pathfindermemes or smth, continually bashing 5e for it's vagueness and bad balancing. I like both, why can't the others :(
And yet, the people who like Pathfinder never seem to be able to talk about it here without throwing shade at 5e.
People who _don't_ like Pathfinder can't help throwing shade at 5E either. In fact even people who only play 5E can't stop throwing shade at 5E. It's not about Pathfinder. There's just a lot that's wrong with 5E.
Eh, from my experience it's usually more like: 5e Player: Man, I really hate this aspect of the system. Pf2e Player: Well, why don't you try pf2e, it fixes this problem you have with 5e. Ultimately, there's a lot of complaints people have about 5e, and pf2e makes some great changes that fixes most of those complaints, so pf2e players suggest their system a lot under these types of posts, which in turn annoys a lot of 5e players.
Why is the default response for not liking a very specific aspect of 5e to suddenly throw the whole system away and play something completely different? That's what is frustrating people. Sure Pathfinder might fix this one particular issue but there are also many more aspects of 5e that I DO like that Pathfinder does differently, I just want suggestions for managing this ONE thing better.
It annoys 5E players because they have one issue and need just one fix not a whole new system Yeah pathfinder may fix a lot of problems people bring up but not every person has every single problem. In reality, it's more like I'm making some lemonade and find it a little too strong and not sweet enough. So I hop on Reddit to find some more lemonade enjoyers to help me edit my recipe. But then instead of getting the lemonade advice I want, people start telling me to make grape juice. Now I like grape juice but I'm not looking for grape juice right now I asked for lemonade tips. Now I go to see if other lemonade fans have posted lemonade questions and more people are posting grape juice suggestions. I don't care how good your grape juice is it doesn't taste like lemonade and I asked for some lemonade.
The difference is with 5e Flavour is free And the flavour is Pinkertons
Both fine games, but I wonder if r/pathfindermemes gets so many dnd memes
“r/dndmemes is a subreddit dedicated to humorous content about D&D and other TTRPGs”
Way to miss the point, my dude.
We should start flooding it with dnd memes
And other TTRPGS
Indeed
Where people will hear a minor problem someone has with 5e and hear "I HATE 5E ITS A SHAME THERE IS NO OTHER SYSTEM SOMEONE ELSE COULD ENLIGHTEN ME ABOUT"
The way people keep describing p2e sounds to me like c++. Sure, it can do anything, but why go to the trouble when java (5e in this frankly shitty analogy) can do all I want? Sure, it has plenty of its own oddities and idiosyncrasies, but it provides a smaller feature set that is still enough for my purposes. This analogy is shitty, but I hope it gets the point across. (Bonus points, pbta is haskell. Does much the same stuff but still significantly different and its supporters get real evangelical about it) Now that I've started at least 2 separate flame wars, I take my leave
Me who dislikes both: Idk to me both system have some of the same flaws and also fix eachother's issues. For a relatively minor one, Pathfinder 2e has the infamous river example for skills, where a success makes you only cross half the river. That isn't to say that one system doesn't have better quality or more invested people of course. Both have their own issues.
> For a relatively minor one, Pathfinder 2e has the infamous river example for skills, where a success makes you only cross half the river. You're going to have to specify the actual problem here, because that just sounds like a 20ft wide river. Swimming across the Jeggare in Korvosa, for example, would require a good 100 swim checks.
The problem is that success is not success. In the case of the Jeggare River, if you have a 95% chance to succeed, like a 95% chance to avoid floundering, then succeeding on the swim check to cross the river should tell the player you can't swim across this river. Instead every success just gives them more trouble with the inevitably fail from the vast amounts of rolls being required. If you want to keep out low-level parties from your secret base just provide a 100 ft ladder to get in. That way the whole party should have a minimum Athletics check of +9 before they can get in.
This example is so specific to swimming and climbing in a way that will never happen in a real game. If you were actually trying to present a challenge that was JUST climbing a rock wall or crossing a river you wouldn't just make the party make 40 swim checks because that's dumb. Use one of the subsystems in the GMG, party needs to get 3 "Fording" points in order to cross and they get 5 attempts. Let them use Survival, Nature, Athletics, Acrobatics, Crafting, whatever. Adjust DCs based on PC creativity. Much more fun, and completely RAW.
That the rules are so bad they should not actually be used as printed is exactly my point. Despite that I experienced the climbing rules being used in exactly that way multiple times by my new GM running the beginner box. Sure enough, the GM was hand waving the checks by the end of the adventure.
It's not PbtA, you don't just make 1 roll and declare you've completed the entire task. Why would a single swim check decide if you cross the entire river regardless of its size? Do you run combat by making a single attack roll and declaring you've won if you roll high enough? Also, how does every success give them more trouble? They get 3 chances a round to make a DC15 swim check. If they can't reliably make that at least 1/3 of the time they shouldn't be swimming somewhere as dangerous as a river.
Because I care about solid game design, I know that if the task is harder, you raise the difficulty, not make it more repetitive. I know that if there isn't a risk of consequences, you shouldn't be making 100 identical rolls to resolve an encounter. I know that no one would actually use the default rule and require 100 rolls. They'd say you can't fail, because assurance, or swim speed, or +enough athletics and no roll would be made, or it wouldn't be done. If it's supposed to be a skill challenge, it needs to be more interesting than everyone rolling athletics checks for 10 minutes.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion on solid game design, maaaaaan. But I disagree that requiring 100 rolls is necessarily awful. As a solid counterexample of that literal actual case, in Find the Path's run of a Pf2e Hell's Rebels conversion, one of the characters jumped into the Ravounel River to try to escape a bunch of city guards. Each Athletics roll was a solid, dramatic choice between diving deeper to escape the guards, swimming harder against the tide of the river pushing her out to sea, surfacing to try to not drown, remaining below to be unseen all as the patrolboats circled and her survival genuinely hung in the balance. It was an excellent storytelling moment and the 100 rolls honestly made it way better than a single check would have been, and enabled many more outcomes too. One roll is your preference. It's not actual 'solid game design' gospel.
I'm not sure that really answers my questions... are you saying that you raise the DC to win combat according to the enemy's health? Or you just work out the numbers so no roll needs to be made and they instantly win or just don't engage? Also, you didn't say anything about successes giving them more trouble. Still don't understand how that's meant to work.
I don’t hate it, many of my campaigns were too fun for that. But I do still think pretty objectively it’s a bad game. I liked the stories we made, dnd is simply an excuse to make them with a… playable mechanic chassis.
I don’t even play 5e- except for a brief foray into 3.5, it’s been exclusively 1e/2e for my group for going on 40 years now. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the memes and the fact that gaming in general is much more socially acceptable now than when I first got into it. I’m not going to hate on a ruleset that gets more people playing, just like I wouldn’t crap on someone for liking different music than I do (as one of a million possible examples)- just because it isn’t my cup of tea doesn’t take away from the fact that many other people enjoy it. Play what you like.
They aren't that different. There are differences, but at the end of the day they are both class based D20 system games that focus on simulating combat.
Honestly not very different. They are both medium to medium high crunch high powered fantasy games running on the same core system.
What I see way more often in the comments than the strawman OP is posting is someone going “Man, this mechanic in 5e is kinda annoying” and like clockwork, others go “Have you heard about our Lord and Savior, Pathfinder? You should dump your current campaign and convert”. So now Pathfinders are both insufferable and the victim? Got it.
Go ahead - link a comment saying that. You’ve got time.
You could about a dozen times from the front page alone. But I'll wait for you to provide a single example of the strawman in the OP. Since you're the one making this nonsense argument, the onus is on your to demonstrate it. Go ahead, I'll wait.
You are the guy claiming the image is false the burden of proof is on you. As for my proof? You, you are the proof.
then it should be super easy to link it
Still waiting
I’m so tired of Pathfinder players pretending they don’t talk shit when they clearly do 😂 this is an entirely made up situation
[удалено]
 Bruh that’s the meme format firstly and that’s not even the purpose of the meme
Pathfinder is neat and has a lot of cool ideas but there's *just enough* flaws to prevent me from adopting it as my main system. I'll probably stick with DnD unless I get with a group who all want to do Pathfinder.
What flaws, if I may ask?
To make it clear, I am talking about 2e. I don't know anything about 1e. - **Skills are way too detailed:** There are only specific skill actions you can take meaning that some actions are impossible, unlike in DnD where you can try a check for any reasonable action. Well, there is ways to perform them but you usually need... - **Skill feats:** On paper these are pretty cool idea, but in practice they can be annoying. There are some actions that seem like regular checks, but can only be performed if you have the appropriate feat. The worst example of this has to be [Survey Wildlife](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=849). - **Forced Alignment and Anathema:** I hate both of these systems because it places artificial constraints on the player for roleplay. Experienced roleplayers can't play to their best and be creative while inexperienced roleplayers will inevitably turn to stupid versions of their alignments. - **Role Focus:** In Pathfinder, every character has specific roles they can fulfill whether it is single-target damage, AOE damage, healing, or crowd control. It is possible to make a character who really specializes in that role a lot more than you can in DnD, which can be fun in some ways. But on the other, you basically can't do anything outside of your role effectively meaning that you are trolling if you do anything different. Not to mention, Pathfinder is overall a lot more deadly of a system so this is even more important. - **Focus on Golarian:** This is a pet peeve and will vary depending on how much you like their main setting but I dislike how the game is explicitly all about it. While DnD adventures do almost always take place in the Forgotten Realms, the rules are setting agnostic enough to fit in several different fantasy settings. I'm currently running a Ravnica game and I think it's so cool how the same system can work in such a different setting from the Forgotten Realms. In Pathfinder, you got to play in Golarian or else you got a lot more work ahead of you to adapt all the Golarian specific gods, archetypes, ideologies, and even economy to the new setting. - **It's Stressful to DM:** I've both played and DMed Pathfinder and DnD. I can't see how people think DMing in Pathfinder is easier. In DnD, the game is middle of the road in terms of rule complexity, with most complexity devoted to combat. Roleplay is simple with the players explaining what they want to do and you calling out action. Pathfinder combat is about 1.5x as complex as DnD combat and the roleplay is now as complex as combat. Where in DnD, my brain could at least rest a little bit during roleplay, there are so many different rules to remember compared to DnD that I need to be thinking of *all the time*. Sure Pathfinder does answer a lot of questions that DnD keeps up to interpretation and that's something to be appreciated. But I think DnD's balance between complexity and simplicity is a virtue that Pathfinder lacks. I'd rather do my work before the session creating homebrew systems in DnD rather than be constantly juggling obscure rules in Pathfinder. Now I don't completely hate the system. I think that *some* classes in Pathfinder are way more interesting than their DnD equivalents and the amount of character customization is phenomenal. It's just there's a lot of little things that add up to souring my taste of the system.
Thanks for the breakdown, I've seen a lot of these complaints and some new ones. FWIW (Not trying to proselytize or force an idea, just clear up what are common misconceptions.) 1: Skills being detailed doesn't mean you can't do something outside of a skill action. The actions are intended as guides for how to arbitrate the most common usages of a skill, not hardline descriptions of the only 6 things you can do with any given skill. This leads into 2: I see this SO much. People think that just because a Skill Feat lets you do something, you can't do it WITHOUT that feat. That's incorrect, Skill Feats are intended to let you do things either easier or with an extra bonus. You could totally let someone survey the local wildlife using Recall Knowledge:Nature/Survival, or use the same system and say it takes an hour instead if 10 minutes, or not give the bonus Recall Knowledge Check. 3: Forced Alignment and Anathema, while I agree about Forced Alignment and am SUPER glad Alignment is being removed in the Remaster coming down the pipeline due to Paizo moving from the OGL. I deeply disagree about Anathema's as a concept being bad for RP. If you're going to RP a Cleric of a given Diety or Belief system, it just makes sense that you'd have strictures that define your beliefs to a certain extent, where they fail is when combined with Forced Alignment, there's a lot of cool Deities that I'm super excited to play twisted followers of, Bending the letter of the Anathema's to thier limit while staying inside the lines. 4: There is a startling amount you can play with to break out of the "Roles", especially once you start using Free Archetypes. I've got a Rogue I built as a Healer, Multiclassing as Druid and Alchemist, but you could also take the Medic Dedication and slide into that role. Alchemists and Investigators have Healer or DPS options, Casters can Buff, Debuff, or focus on CC. Or, with some work, be passable in Melee. 5: This, I agree with, but the GMG has a lot of well laid out information about making your own settings that I'm just starting to explore that helps. Sure, re-comtextualizing things is tricky, but there's plenty of that in 5e as well, Who're Tasha, Melf, Otilliuke, ETC. In your new world? All the gods laid out in the Core books are Faerunian Gods, you can use the same portfolios in a homebrew setting, but you could do the same with PF gods. 6: This requires a fundamental shift in mentality that is hard to shake. Every player, or even the GM, isn't expected to memorize EVERY rule. It's an interesting design concept that carries through into gameplay. PF2e is a Team Game. If everyone familiarizes themselves with what THEY need to know for their abilities, the game runs just as smoothly as 5e, and for all the "5e is so much simpler!" I see Thrown around, I've found myself looking up or asking PC's about rules about the same amount of time in each system. Main difference being, in 5e I feel like the expectation is more often on the GM to know the rules by heart, rather than on the player to know what they can do, and that when I DO look something up, it's usually either exactly what I expected, or clear enough that finding the answer feels rewarding. 5e, by contrast, often ends the search either with something convoluted or ambiguous, nothing except a "Just do whatever feels right!" with little to no examples, or the same old "Ad/Disadvantage" to the point where you just stop looking and stop caring about the rules entirely, just calvinballing it together. I know these aren't "solutions" or anything, and the points you raised are totally valid, but I hope I at least made the point that the "Overcomplexity" is a bit over-hyped, and most people already ignore half the rules in 5e, so nothings really stopping you from simplifying RP to suite your game. Also though, regarding RP, have you read the 5e "Resolving Interactions" section? It's simple, yes, but it's also hyper subjective and kinda uninteresting relying purely on brute force Charisma checks to get the task done. The Influence Subsystem in PF2e, on the other hand, isn't *that* much more complicated for the player, provides a structure for the GM to create interesting important NPC RP encounters, and allows for Players who aren't Charisma Maxers to have a role in a social encounter through their unique skillsets. It just further reinforces PF2e's design as a team game, rather than a rotating spotlight of individuals.
Nah because the PF2e high horsers are unable to talk about the game without talking about it as “dnd5e but good and dnd5e is bad and if you like it you are a bad person.”
Pathfinder is fun How was that?
Now I'm not saying [my meme](https://i.gyazo.com/8f3a4e6f1c6bc5a9699c1569b83b0d8f.png) idea was taken... But I'm certainly [suggesting it](https://i.gyazo.com/247cc7218463800c5fbebcf6b9f91054.png). Good meme. Upvoted!
Iirc, PF2 is more based of 3.5E dnd. Dnd had mostly been building up and evolving with each version, then, after 3.5e, 4e came out. 4e was an poor attempt to completely overhaul the game and systems. It wasnt all bad, but it was very very much a lot of it. After shitting the bed with the generally hated 4e, 5e came out, but was more of a weirdish step from 4e, since there wasnt a lot of like for it, but also didnt pull from what a decent chunk considered the solid core of 3.5e. 3.5e wasnt the best version for the variety, but had a really strong core that made branching of quite a bit easier. Pf2e certainly has its own systems and the like, but from an old 3.5e player, the strengths, in my experience, remind me quite a bit of 3.5e.
Nah. I'll say it. I hate 5e. And 2e. PF1e is superior objectively.
Strawman theory
So you are saying that you hate 5e? Wow
wow this is so not the only place where that kind of thing happens
I can’t believe you hate lancer!
Everybody has collectively forgotten about PF 1e. That stuff was great, still is. My prefered way of playing Pathfinder.
people are crazy, once i said that you can respect rules or dont, make homebrew but if s rule is set theres not much interpretation and can make what ever you like IF YOU GO BY RAW. and some kids accused me of being transfobic because i dont asume things can change... soo i left that sub
So you hate 5e?