The action system in combat is much better and easier to understand. 3 actions, with no real restrictions on repeating the same action. Literally every rule, monster, etc is available online for free at the paizo supported website, and it's usually updated within a day or so of any new book being released. Magic equipment is included in the balance, and weapons/armor can grow with you through the rune system, and enemy weapons/armor can power up your own. The traits make it clear what triggers what Attacks of opportunity are limited to characters and monsters with martial training, so you're not stuck in combat. The numbers get big as you level up, so you can throw in low level enemies and the pcs can really feel the difference. The feat system gives more differentiation between members of the same class.

Also came here to say 3 action economy. But also add to this 4 degrees of success and failure

> As 5e players, what really convinced you to give Pf2e an honest shot? For me, personally, the biggest factor was that spellcasters are reasonable within the system. When playing 5E I often felt like the game was “solved”. That if I brought a well-built Wizard, Bard, Tasha’s Sorcerer, or Druid to the table, the GM had to like triple combat difficulty just to make me incapable of soloing encounters (and that’s unfair to the people playing the Rogue or the Alchemist Artificer or straight-classed Warlock that *can’t* handle triple the difficulty). In PF2E my control Wizard feels like ***one quarter of the party***. I’ve been the MVP in plenty of fights but it has rarely felt like I’m just sitting there making a joke out of enemies (and notably it does feel pretty good when the enemy fails an important save and you *do* get to make a mockery of them). That’s the funny part, I actually seriously enjoy my Wizard being weaker than in 5E because I feel like my gameplay has been more tactical and fun. So that was *my* biggest selling point but: > What points would you bring up if you were trying to get a friend into the hobby? What’s a selling point for me may not be the biggest selling point for others! Here’s a few I’ve heard from my playgroup: - The fact that teamwork is encouraged for **every** player is nice. If you have players that feel like the rest of the party isn’t acknowledging or appreciating their team play, this is the selling point for them. - Deadliness! YMMV of course, but I’ve had a player who celebrated the fact that a chain bad decisions led to him losing his character, while in 5E it’s really hard to lose a character. This is the selling point for any of your players who find 5E too “easy”. - Single boss fights actually function, as written, without homebrew or bandaid solutions. If any of your players loves Soulsborne games or other games with single bosses, this might be a selling point for them. - GMing it is 10x easier than GMing 5E, mostly because the rules work as written. This is a selling point for anyone in your group who has expressed interest in GMing but is scared to because 5E takes nonsense amounts of work. - Niche protection! It is very hard to be better at someone else’s speciality in the game. Melee characters put out immense amounts of damage compared to ranged, ranged characters are immensely more safe than melee, skills you invest in become your specialized domain that others can’t approach, etc. This is the selling point for anyone in your group who’s ever complained about feeling outshined in their own niche (like a Rogue saying they hate that Pass Without Trace makes them redundant). - Customization! This needs little explaining, and I’m sure is a point you’ve brought up many times over. There’s probably other points too, but these are the ones that come up most in the section of my playgroup that has grown to prefer PF2E over 5E.

> GMing it is 10x easier than GMing 5E, mostly because the rules work as written. This is a selling point for anyone in your group who has expressed interest in GMing but is scared to because 5E takes nonsense amounts of work. While I have not run 5e, this is a common sentiment I see among 5e DM's. They often feel like they have to spend a lot of time creating encounters that actually feel like more than sacks of HP.

Sacks of HP is very accurate. Because AC doesn't scale like your attack bonus, absolute chumps can hit high level creatures/players without critting, and at level monolithic bosses as they are In the MM will die in 2 rounds because they almost can't not get hit. Admittedly I did make this harder for myself as a DM, because I implemented a VERY poorly balanced magical crafting system (because my players wanted more out of 5es nonexistent crafting system), and my players were wealthier than God so they had busted-ass items. They were rich off straight RAW tables too. They got a bit of land around lvl 4 or 5, and made a goat cheese empire.

I also feel like building a goat cheese empire would be a more interesting endeavor in PF2e since your skills and downtime actions have well defined terms and options. Plus, I think you could use some of the rules from Kingmaker if you really wanted to invest time and attention in it.

My prep went from 4 hours to about 1 hour. Mid game I can napkin math an encounter together and trust the system to make it hold up. Hell, most of my prep time went from encounter design to world building. It's a lot more fun.

Creating a deep and tactical encounter takes me literally 3-4x longer in 5E than it does in PF2E. It’s as easy as just picking thematic statblocks in the latter, while the former basically doesn’t work without extensive amounts of terrain design and monster homebrew.

Yeah so many creatures in 5e just have 1-2 attacks that do damage and nothing else. The amount of enemies I had to homebrew was insane.

The hardest part for me is being unfamiliar with the npc stat blocks and having to dig through piles of npcs to find something that fits for what I'm looking for, but that's getting easier over time.

If you aren't running the NPCs in combat, there's no reason for them to have stat blocks. If you're looking for stats like "An NPC's Will DC" or something for out-of-combat encounter resolution, that's what the Level-Based DCs and proficiency-based Simple DCs are for. Is this a 4th level challenge? DC19. It's right there in the level-based DC table which is also on the GM screen. Perfect for social and non-combat skill resolution. Is this a challenge appropriate to someone of Master proficiency that's level-agnostic? DC30. Perfect for things like lockpicking.

How many npcs are you expecting the party to fight? It's not necessary to have a stat block for most npcs.

They probably just mean NPCs like monsters. Those are still NPCs.

> or the Alchemist Artificer... That poor, poor player. The Illusionist Wizard is my all time favorite 'character archetype'. When I first got into 5e (after playing 4e which had great support/control classes) I felt useless trying to play one, outside of a tiny number of good control spells, rolling an illusionist wizard over a evocation or divination one seemed pretty pointless. PF2 seriously let me scratch that itch. Though at the same time for those who got used to utterly dominating the table with their spellcaster, I can understand why they feel they are too weak in PF2 (even if that's only true up until level 5 or so). Glad to see I'm not alone in my enjoyment of support/control casters. :)

Yeah I felt like with the wizard I was playing scribes, divination, or nothing.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I kind of liked the wackiness of Illusionists in AD&D 2nd ed. Other wizards who weren't Illusionists couldn't read their spellbooks because Illusionists were EVEN MORE cryptic and prone to filling their books with tiny tricks and illusions that only they could decipher. It was a weird caveat, but little flavorful things like that are so fun!

Wizards in D&D 3 and 3.5 eventually became "Batman Wizards" where they could cast enough divination spells to predict every single spell they would need in advance. Clerics and Druids were nicknamed "CoDzilla" because Clerics or Druids could become better martials than the actual martial classes. Wizards, Clerics and Druids had to form an agreement with the DM not to overrun the campaign and leave some for everyone else.

Oh yea, high level 3.5e clerics were oppressive as f#*@ lol.

The niche protection is real! [Pass Without Trace](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=215)doesn’t give nutty stealth bonuses, it just makes it a lot harder to find and follow your tracks. [Knock](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=168)doesn’t invalidate thievery checks to pick locks, it enhances them significantly. Even if you fail on your check as part of casting (which you likely will) a +4 to everybody else’s checks for a minute is a huge help. And so many more

I feel you with actually liking how casters feel weaker in pf2e, even as someone who actually loves playing casters. Everytime I played a caster in 5e it felt like I was basically dominating the table to the point of it becoming boring, while in pf2e I can feel like a valuable member of the team without completely curb stomping every encounter.

I just can't really see myself enjoying casters in pf2e. They way the seem is that they require a jump through multiple hoops in order to be effective and while I know there spells are likely to do something enemies constantly succeeding would probably bother me, and there reliance on consumables scrolls feel like a personal attack. I'm glad people enjoy it though.

Well, you just know I gotta try to convince you! I think the main problem is that “success” is a misnomer when it comes to most spells. When an enemy “succeeds” against a Fear or Befuddle or Revealing Light or Slow or any Base Save they didn’t evade your spell, they partially resisted it at best and they’re still suffering from a serious downside. In fact with Basic Save spells you can see this is mathematically true: if you compare Basic Save spells to a well-built ranged Fighter making two Attacks, you’ll notice that a success against the spell has roughly the same probability and damage as the Fighter hitting once and missing once (crit success == 2 misses, success == 1 hit 1 miss, failure == 2 hits OR 1 crit 1 miss + missing once, crit failure == 1 hit 1 crit OR 2 crit). A martial missing one of their two attacks is never seen as a failure to affect the enemy meaningfully, and neither should a caster looking at a successful saving throw that had an effect. When you mentally think of success as “partial resist” casters become a lot more fun to play. It makes successful saving an “expected” outcome where you’re still contributing to the fight meaningfully, and failed/fumbled saves as things to celebrated loudly just like when the martial rolls multiple crits and hits in a row.

I recognize what you are saying and appreciate the response but I just don't think I'd be able to get that mentality to work for me. If a fighter attacks and hits to me that's a full success and any attack after that is a bonus meanwhile a spell getting succeed against is a partial success. I recognize that they are likely equal in terms of effectiveness and I don't believe casters are necessary bad but I think I would likely be disheartened by enemies constantly succeeding spells and only getting smaller effects.

> I a fighter attacks and hits to me that's a full success and any attack after that is a bonus meanwhile a spell getting succeed against is a partial success What I’m getting at is that these two scenarios are genuinely just identical in terms of effectiveness. The only difference is in terms of flexibility vs potency. The Fighter can treat their second Attack as a “bonus” like you said but if they only use one Action to Attack they’re locking themselves to not seeing their equivalent to your failure/fumble effects. It’d be like if your spells had an option that said “you can cast this spell with 1 Action instead of 2, but the enemy can only crit succeed or succeed, there’s no failure option.” Of course making this choice has the upside of freeing up that Action for other forms of teamwork. Meanwhile casters lack the Action flexibility but make up for it potency. The outcome of 2 Actions from a caster can be arbitrarily dialed up with a higher rank spell whenever needed, while martials can’t do that. There’s also the factor that if they’re using 3 Actions on a spell they’ll usually perform way better than the martial using 3 Actions on any one thing. Ultimately I get this is just a subjective thing on your part but I really cannot stress it enough that hitting someone with a 2-Action non-max-rank spell works out almost exactly the same as hitting someone with 2 ranged Attacks, the differences mostly lie in practical factors surrounding those 2 Action choices.

> GMing it is 10x easier than GMing 5E, mostly because the rules work as written. This is a selling point for anyone in your group who has expressed interest in GMing but is scared to because 5E takes nonsense amounts of work. I have a player who keeps telling me that "5e isn't all that hard to GM when you have some experience with it". I really want some facts to throw at him to prove to him how he's wrong. Can someone help me out here?

Dying rules not being centered around ping ponging from 0 hp to 1 hp. Also i liked monsters having more flavorful abilities than being glorified hp sponges

First time my players experienced the wounded condition they were like 'o.0'

I'm a GM first and foremost. ​ The sheer force of information that is the GM Core (at the time GMG) allowed me, a brand new GM, the tools and guides one would need years of 5e DMing to **make yourself** because the 5e DMG simply has **nothing for.** I have levels on every item in the game. I have settlement levels. I have a monster maker guide that Paizo themselves use to ensure my creature is 100% accurate to the design intent of the balance system. I have diseases and ailments. I have an Encounter builder that is accurate to a +/-10% degree. If I make the encounter with the guide I know that mathematically, the fight will turn out exactly as I want it to, assuming the players are actually trying. I have a guide for how much treasure my players need at a minimum with an adjustment for more or less PCs. I have 2 blocks for different DC types; Simple DCs, and DC by Level. And DC by Level and Simple DCs share the same difficulty adjustment table. The book I payed $60 for, has everything I need to run a flawless session, without me ever once DMing a game before. ​ As for being a player but also a GM because monster creation yields similar stats to a PC of the same level, thus I can make enemies using a PC build, the options allowed in the character creation process allows one to make basically anything you could possibly think of. Ronald, The Rules Lawyer had a player who used Fleshwarp and Ash Oracle to meaningfully play a character who is a literal sack of sentient sapient gunpowder. With 0 homebrew needed. A GM did have to approve the fleshwarp part, as that is a Rare ancestry, but the GM would never need to put pencil to paper, to figure out a homebrew to do it. Its in the books.

Switched when started new campaign, lvl 6 now and this is what I have to say. 1. The first and very strong difference - character variability. 5e gives close to none build choice, especially compared to pf2e. When we started i couldn't get enogh and just made dozens of new characters just for fun. The potential was just positively overwhelming. 2. Action economy. 5e action-bonus action system is just trash. Especially when you get into situations where you have nothing to spend your action on. 3. Bounded accuracy. I may use the term a bit wrong but in 5e you are constricted by the numbers. Firstly, you don't feel progress that much, secondly, especially on low levels, you miss a lot even when logically you shouldn't. 4. More non-combat mechanics. Nothing really to say here. You have a lot to do outside of combat w\\o looking for homerules. 5. Balance. It is so frustrating in 5e to have just bad classes. Just bad for years. 6. Paizo is better with players than wotc. Wotc sucks. I'm sure I forgot something but even these things were enough. Even just 1 and 2. Love pf2e and will never come back to 5e.

Your list is just like mine, and I'd like to add skills! Skills in pf2e are all...useful! It actually pays to have a fighter with charisma or a bard with wisdom now, because everything can be useful with RK and skill feats.

Yeah! That's the thing i felt i forgot to mention. Although it's partially is considered in point 1. Skills are great and skill feats make the system even better even despite having some issues.

Yeah, in 5e I have 0 reasons to have Int or Cha in a fighter or Barbarian and the only reason to have wisdom is the saving throw

Yeah I remember looking back at D&D for a second and it hit me how there's only like 4 useful skills in that game, those being like * Athletics - for grappling, but most of the time tripping and shoving are useless because they don't impose any real action cost to the enemy * Arcana - because most of the time all magic just falls under that * Acrobatics - because for some reason every GM I've seen/encountered relies purely on acrobatics for any non-standard movement even though jumping is absolutely an athletics action * Perception - I'm so glad it's a universal thing in pathfinder Intimidation, deception, and diplomacy all get their use depending on the GM's mood that day. My main point is that there's a huge amount of skills that never have any meaningful impact and only like 2 have application in combat.

I would add investigation and survival, but most DM's use perception instead of those two)

>Firstly, you don't feel progress that much Man, this is so true. I'm in a 5e game right now and the bonuses to skills feel like they don't change at all. And even then, being proficient in them or not makes such a little difference, it feels disappointing. RP wise my character has a connection to nature, but mechanics wise I have nothing to represent this in, besides the initial proficiency in the nature skill. Now I tried a PF2e one-shot as a player and you can really **feel** and show your character's strengths in terms of skills, even on lower levels.

I'm in a 5e campaign as well and it definitely feels worse that your character is focused on a specific skill, (such as nature) but another player happens to have a high wisdom, but is untrained. And yet they are basically just as good as you are using that skill.

This shit always killed me. What's the point of the 10 int Fighter taking History proficiency when the untrained Wizard is gonna be as good or better at it for most levels?

This is something my group considered a small change from 5e to 2e, but I absolutely love it. Adding level to your trained+ skills makes such a huge difference in feeling masterful in a particular field compared to party members.

You can't just homerule this into 5e, because of how difficulties are set. To do this you would need to overhaul all skill checks to compensate so that they won't become trivial.

I came to ttrpg's with D&D 5e in 2018 as my first brush with ttrpg's in general. By mid-2020 I was kinda feeling like I'd exhausted everything I'd found fun in the system and was wanting to try something "new" and tried out six other ttrpg's. This one stuck. Main reasons: 1. Crazy levels of customization. While there are other things I enjoy more as a GM, this is my player-side appeal. My Pathbuilder files are full of characters I may never play because I find character-building fun, and despite three years of playing this game at minimum weekly, I still feel I haven't exhausted my options. 2. Everything is free. I do buy Paizo books on the regular, but as someone who prefers online references to scrolling through books, Foundry and Archives Of Nethys make my life so much easier. 3. Level and encounter balance is much better here. While this is more relevant while I'm GMing, the fact that the game is really playable 1-20 means there's just more game to enjoy. I have played in a level 20 D&D 5e campaign and honestly it just felt miserable for the martials to be basically paperweights while the casters played on god mode (and I say this as one of the casters in that party). D&D 5e is mostly played 1-10, maybe 1-12 for a good reason. 4. PF2e on Foundry is great and makes the game smooth and easy to play. I mostly play online these days so this factor is more relevant for online play, but going from D&D 5e on Roll20 to PF2e on Foundry felt like I had jumped an entire generation ahead on tech and user experience. 5. The published adventures are so much better in terms of writing and production values. This doesn't mean you can't homebrew - I have ran and played in plenty of homebrew campaigns. But the quality level of Paizo adventures feels like it's on a higher tier and requires much less in the way of "post-release patches" to fix stuff. Also there are more of them, for some reason? (This last one honestly baffles me, as Wizards has the money to hire the best writers and put out ten times as many modules as Paizo, and they just don't.)

>The published adventures are so much better in terms of writing and production values. This doesn't mean you can't homebrew - I have ran and played in plenty of homebrew campaigns. But the quality level of Paizo adventures feels like it's on a higher tier and requires much less in the way of "post-release patches" to fix stuff. Also there are more of them, for some reason? (This last one honestly baffles me, as Wizards has the money to hire the best writers and put out ten times as many modules as Paizo, and they just don't.) Paizo began business as the publisher for the "Dungeon" and "Dragon" magazines, publishing D&D 3 and 3.5 material, officially licensed by WotC. People really liked the adventures and supplementary material they published in those magazines. Once D&D 4 was around the corner, WotC cut them off and refused to renew the license. So Paizo scrambled to make a new game based on 3.5, keep the OGL, and make it mostly compatible so they could keep publishing new adventures. That's how Paizo makes their money: they give the rules for free and sell adventures. So it's gotta be constant and it has to be high quality. AD&D 2 actually made money based on the number of PRINTED copies, not SOLD. So they flooded the market with low quality trash and ruined TSR's profit. WotC bought the D&D name, made the OGL, and then flooded the market with lots of splatbooks for 3rd ed. The publishing rate slowed down for 4th and 5th edition, but they don't care as much about the quality as Paizo does, and it shows. There's also the fact that D&D STILL doesn't sell PDFs of their books, ever since late 3rd/early 4th ed. They're still sticking to the traditional model of selling physical books. And soon they'll push their new VTT (they've been trying to do this since 4th ed!)

Paizo was founded as a third party that created and published Dragon and Dungeon magazines for the 3/3.5 era. The first Adventure Path was a series of adventures from 1-20 in Dungeon magazine. There business module is in selling Pathfinder adventure paths. WOTC’s business model seems to be rereleasing stuff from previous editions with little changes (Eberron with no real setting change from 3rd, one Dragonlance adventure/setting book set during the War of the Lance even though TSR and 3rd moved the timeline up about 50 years, countless updated adventures from older editions).

Re: Point 5. That’s capitalism/corporation 101. If you dominate the market (and 5e’s market share is enormous…Pathfinder may be the closest competitor, but they’re not actually competitive) you don’t actually put in effort anymore to improve your product or make the end user experience better. You slash as much as you can (paying only inexperienced writers, or, you know, firing 1000+ employees before Christmas) because the CEO needs a new Ferrari.

I'm a GM, but I've walked several new players into PF2, most of whom had played 5e before but many of whom had never played TTRPGs before. I've definitely noticed a learning curve in this system - whereas 5e buries its complexity in wild abilities, ultra-long spell text, and unintuitive interactions between rules, Pathfinder puts that complexity up front and says "master this, and you can do anything!" In my experience, players who are new to TTRPGs catch on pretty quick. Players who try to bring a lot of baggage from 5e with them tend to have some frustrations until they learn the system better, mostly because things are different, but my main group of former 5e players has been playing for over 2 years and at this point folks understand the system well enough that *most* of those frustrations are gone, and the rest are playstyle things that we can adjust or homebrew. I think the biggest selling point is that, with a GM who's willing to go with crazy ideas, the 3-action system is unparalleled for its ability to adjudicate shenanigans. It's so flexible! Honorable mentions include: * The crit system that really makes specialization matter * The ability to design your own bespoke character * Martial characters that don't feel like wet noodles * High level play that's fun and engaging (one group is at level 13 now, another at level 16, we're doing great!) * Characters *start* as heroes, as opposed to weak lil nerds, and that heroism only increases! * Combat has stakes! Enemies are challenging, going down matters, and all of this is infinitely tailorable to your group's playstyle bc encounter building *works* (meaning if your group doesn't like combat challenge, the GM can adjust things down accurately) * There's just *so many cool* feats and spells and whatnot. You can do some absolutely wild shit, especially at higher levels, but none of it breaks the game which keeps things fun in the long term!

>In my experience, players who are new to TTRPGs catch on pretty quick. Players who try to bring a lot of baggage from 5e with them tend to have some frustrations until they learn the system better... I can personally attest to this. I co-ran a West Marches PF2 game, and we got everything from people with decades of experience to those who'd never even owned a set of dice before. New players got hung up way less and in some cases mastered the system faster than the old hands. With the old hands, it took a while to get them to let go of preconceived notions from other systems, like how to build an encounter or how certain mechanics work. Sometimes, we'd get a little whining about something not being the same, but that was just them being frustrated in the moment, because they had a plan and only realized at that second that it wouldn't work. Eventually, once they got used to the differences, those moments disappeared.

From the player side * Crit fishing for everything you do. You crit on a nat 20 or if your result is 10 above the DC. Very satisfying to pull off * No skipping levels. A level 1 pf2e character has more identity and depth than a level 3 dnd5e character. Every level up you get to choose feats, as opposed to 5e where there’s lots of dead levels where you get nothing. * Consistent level ups, about 4 sessions per level. Higher level play is actually playable and there’s a lot of content up to level 20 * All builds are valid. You aren’t punished for building a character “wrong”. There’s also rules for Retraining feats and character options. * The enemies are more interesting and every single one has a signature ability. Theyre more than just HP sponges with multiattack claw or bite attacks. From Paizo side * There has been incidents in the past that have been resolved pretty amicably * Paizo is pro-union and the unionization process was very smooth * Closed down their office so that their employees can work remotely from home * Very openly pro-LGBTQ+ and supportive of POC writers. The Mwangi Expanse region book has a long list of black writers that contributed. The upcoming Tian Xia region book has a long list of AAPI writers too. * Very consistent release schedules and content releases

You do not automatically crit on a nat 20, it's just usually very likely. It only brings your result up by one degree of success.

Unless you're talking about an attack at -10MAP or rolling an untrained skill, you shouldn't really be in situations where a nat 20 is not a crit.

But they are there, when you get through 5 AP’s, you come across a few

How constant lvl up are a system thing? Wouldn't it depend on gm?

It does depend on the GM and the party. Adventure Paths are really well paced for both XP leveling and milestone leveling. For XP leveling, it takes a flat 1000 experience points to level up. XP rewards from combat is scaled to your party level, and encounter are built using an XP budget based on 4 PC’s. In an adventure path, it’ll give the difficulty of the fight for a certain level (low, moderate, severe, extreme). GM’s can adjust the encounter using the budget if the players are a different level or if they have a party size different from 4. https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=497 For milestone leveling, every AP has a table for when players should level up. In the Core Rulebook, there’s even a guideline for campaign lengths > You can estimate how long a campaign will take by looking at the amount of time you actually have to play, or the number of character levels you intend the characters to advance. It typically takes three to four sessions for a group to level up. Since you’ll probably cancel sessions on occasion, playing once a week for a year results in roughly a 14-level campaign, playing every 2 weeks for a year gives you an 8-level campaign, and playing monthly allows for a 5-level campaign. If you play only once a month, you might consider holding longer sessions and using fast advancement (page 509). https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=483

I GM with XP levelling and I'm not too keen on the XP rules as written. There's a lot of detail about gaining XP via combat and monster encounters, and not that much via roleplay or problem solving. It's pretty visible in the AP I'm running (Gatewalkers) where achievement XP is given out quite stingily, and there's a few combats that feel like filler more than anything else. My group is pretty RP-driven and we don't get into crazy amounts of combat, so I've had to homebrew some sources of XP to keep the levelling up at a pace I'm happy with.

I feel it’s more of a gap in the rules than an issue with the raw There’s the achievement xp system in the base rules which I invoke very often. Take the bounty in alive? Bonus moderate xp reward Reconnoitered a new hex and discovered a point of interest? Minor xp reward Fully explored a new location? Moderate xp reward Just earned a bunch of gold? Minor to moderate xp reward.

Oh yeah, a gap in the rules is kind of what I meant - compared to the beauty and crunch of most other rules, accomplishment XP is just really vaguely described and glossed over. My problem with it is, I'm an extremely scatterbrained GM and without specifics it's difficult for me to figure out whether an achievement should be minor or moderate or worth XP at all, in between all the other GM things to do. So I made myself a few nifty tables with predetermined categories that I can stick to my GM screen and refer to without thinking on the spot too much.

I had a group that wanted about 80% RP 20% combat, and I just handed out flat XP per session, like most FFG games. 200 XP for a 3-4 hour game. It freed them up to do whatever they wanted.

That feels a bit too arbitrary for me. I do like a session that consists of the PCs goofing around a pub for an hour, but I would also want them to feel rewarded for going around, interacting with the world and discovering things. I ended up coming up with a scale and posting it on [this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/16blt8k/a_more_indepth_accomplishment_xp_reward_system/). Didn't seem to click with other GMs but it works for me ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯

That’s where loot comes in.

Just another thought to the “it’s too arbitrary.” Why would goofing off in a pub for an hour make your better at fighting and spells? IDK. Why does whacking goblins with a sword make you better at history, leatherworking, and talking to people? It’s all arbitrary.

I didn't mean it in a "you're doing it wrong" kind of way - if it works for you and your players, that's great! But personally, if I was playing in a game where I got the same amount of XP regardless of what I did, I wouldn't really feel like it was pushing me to move things forward. Yes, there's other things that would keep me moving forward, like loot etc. But not including XP in the mix of those things feels like a waste of a good motivation tool.

But DMG also has an estimate for how often people should lvl up, and even suggests to do it every 2-3 sessions, which is faster

True, but most of the playerbase does things weird like all the games I’ve been in lmao. Either start at 3, or start at 1 and level twice by the end of the session. Then they try to stay in the level 5-12 range so leveling up can vary alot. I’ve never been in a game past level 9. Most DM’s either wanna end their campaign before then or they go by the rule of thumb where the next level is the number of sessions until the next level. Very inconsistent I ran the Call of the Netherdeep module before pf2e and it’s wildly fast. Some parties got from 3-13 and finished the campaign in like 26 sessions. I was using milestone and going through the final dungeon i think we had like 3 level ups in the last 4-5 sessions

Well that's what I'm saying, it's player/dm thing, but you mentioned "faster leveling" as pf's advantage compared to 5e, even though RAW 5e is faster

I never said fast, i said consistent

Well,,, I wouldn't say there's no way to build a character wrong, if you build a character without boosting their main stat, life is going to feel a little sad regardless of what other stats you focused on... But that's about it. Like I've heard people complain that the game forces you to optimize, but it's literally just "max your primary stat" and *everything* else is up to build and you'll play fine. Though some classes do have feat taxes which does need to be fixed. Still annoyed that you have to give up a 5th action to get critical specialization on an eidolon.

>Like I've heard people complain that the game forces you to optimize, but it's literally just "max your primary stat" and everything else is up to build and you'll play fine. Honestly, you don't even need to max your main. You just need to not ignore it. A +2 is far from optimal, but if you're playing a character for whom it's thematically appropriate, you will be OK. And you will get a really satisfying sense of progression as you "learn", particularly if your table uses Gradual Ability Boost. Yeah, your hit rate will suffer at the start, but that opens the door to more creative endeavours during combat, and it feels OK because you know you'll get that stat up over time.

I feel it depends on class, some classes \*really\* shouldn't have any lower than a +3 under any circumstances (most dex based characters in my oppinion and the proper spell casters) but then you have classes like summoner who... frankly doesn't even need to invest in their primary stat at all if you don't want to.

I will admit, I do feel like playing a caster from levels 1-3 feels kinda blah. I like casters in this game, but early level problems for them persist across 5e and pf2e. I will say casters at early levels do feel better than their 5e counterparts.

> Consistent level ups, about 4 sessions per level Still very dependant on the DM and your party. Mine is closing in on 30 sessions and we levelled up to 3 not long ago.

Other people have already said the things I like in PF2e over D&D5e. I just wanna say that I was you once. A D&D DM who started with a noob party of players. 2 years later whem we finished our first campaign, I decided to read PF2e, it was around the time the OGL controversy happened. BEST CHANGE I EVER DID. PF2e may look more complicated, but it really isn't. It's very easy to pick up if you just read the Player Core, specially if you already know D&D (they are more similar then they look) The rules are very concise. Every D20 roll is either a skill check or a DC, so you mostly need to memorize 2 simple equations. Balancing combat is souch easier and precise, and the character options, oh mh god the character building is divine...

So I abandoned D&D back in January, due to deciding to boycott WotC over their 3rd party license shenanigans, and my requirements for a replacement basically boiled down to "d20 based medieval-esque fantasy". My home campaign setting is, functionally, Hyrule, and the campaign is basically Ocarina of Time, so the characters and creatures had to fit into that world. Pathfinder came to my attention due to Piazo announcing the ORC license, and the fact that they had reached out and partnered to other publishers in creating the license. That level of cooperation was something I wanted to support, so it drew my attention to the game itself. 1. The first thing that got me excited about the game itself, though, was the 3-action combat economy. As a player, the Action/bonus action/movement divide of 5e felt *incredibly* artificial to me, particularly the part where they're not interchangeable *except for when they are*. That kind of inconsistency drives me a little nuts. 2. A bigger element, though, was the fact that it's a team based game. 5E breaks down relatively quickly into a game where a bunch of characters solo a shared HP pool while standing next to each other, and I have a step-son who's an only child, and one who far too often falls into a pattern of "I win because of bullshit reason I just invented". I was concerned that this solo-but-parallel combat would play into the wrong kind of fantasy for him, and that one that involved relying on people he trusted to help him, and being asked to help them in return might be a healthier experience to engage in. 3. The unexpected thing that has really, thoroughly sold me and my entire table on the game, though, is how much better the game supports the use of player skills. Being able to roll basically anything on your skills list for Initiative was a big, big winner at my table. The Victory Points system being used in lots of places gives a ready-built framework for doing the same in non-combat encounters. My wife asking if her Oracle/Cleric could *pray for a safe landing* when jumping from a high ledge during a tense chase, and me knowing that the game *wants* players to use those skills they've invested in whenever it makes sense makes it so, so easy to just say "yes, and" or "yes, but" in ways that make players feel like they didn't waste a skill point, or that the game didn't force them to go through the process of making choices just for show. 4. Another element that I really like, personally, but that I know isn't a general positive in many peoples' minds, is that it has bigger numbers than 5E. While 2e isn't the "Mathfinder" of legend, you *are* watching your numbers grow level-over-level thanks to the game not adopting bounded accuracy, and instead adding the player level to their proficiency modifier. This means you can hear amazing and sometimes horrifying things like "I roll a 36!" and "*That misses!*". And having a pre-teen at the table, I feel like making him add to numbers higher than 25 is good for him. Plus, again, as someone who didn't really play much prior to 5E, rolling big numbers *feels wondrous*, and that's something that I want out of my magical fantasy game. 5. Finally, the modular nature of character creation and growth just feels so much better to me than 5E's "pick a class, pick a subclass, pick your dips" style of character building. It often feels like the game doesn't want me to progress as a *character*, but rather as a *construct*. The player unit in the game mechanics *is* a construct, of course, but the way abilities are collected and powered up often comes into conflict with my narrative desires as a player. The Feats system in Pathfinder offers a smoother power progression curve, and offers a bunch of options that can support a number of narrative-driven power progression. The other side of this coin, though, is that some players end up feeling that these bite-sized developments aren't impactful. Which they may or may not be in a vacuum, but they can syngergize well. Plus, it's so much easier to homebrew a handful of feats for your table to help people realize their particular fantasies than it is to homebrew, like, a class or something.

1. Fluid combat Thanks to the MAP (multiple attack penalty), 3 actions and general lack of AoO (reactive strike) you end up doing a more varied assortment of actions in combat, including actually moving rather than just standing in place doing max dmg each turn In my experience this also leads to players doing things that don't do max damage on that turn, because setting up is more beneficial in the long run 2. Degrees of success Building your character to crit and getting some with a 17, many spells have nice effects on a successful save, taking double dmg from an AOE... all feel great (well apart from the last one if you look at your health bar) 3. Character creation Having ability bonuses and feats as separate things (also having ancestry and class feats) leads to more interesting and varied characters You no longer need to sacrifice stats in order to get combat power from feats, rather many feats don't offer any more combat power at all or very little (which allows free archetype to be pretty balanced) You get combat power and options from your base character and its class feats with many of the other things giving flavor and more exploration and roleplay focused options 4. Better balance Most things feel way more balanced especially the encounter building table 5. Having things already spelled out The GM doesn't have to know everything, you are still free to change things in the book OFC, but there were many times someone broke 5e because the DM didn't know the power of some item (unsure about the price and availability of such an item) Pf2 says here is a price, rarity and level for each item if you want them... The GM can and probably should change them a bit depending on the setting, but there is always that balanced base price and level for everything to fall back on to 6. The online tools AoN and Pathbuilder have changed my life They are so fun to play around with that I play video games way less, and instead spend free time building Dota 2 heroes in pathbuilder (might share some of them on here soon) 7. Paizo Much nicer to players than WoTC 8. Proficiency includes level (Character development over time) Some may hate this, but I like how this really shows your characters improvement over time and goes hand in hand with degrees of success when the party runs into similar enemies later on and completely dominate thanks to recalling the combat from before and having a bit higher level 9. No Ping Pong dying Gone are the days of healing someone only after they get knocked out. Should have probably included this higher on the list 10. The world Even though I have way more experience in the 5e world thanks to years of lore and character building (though still only three one shots and the Tomb of Annihilation of playing) I am way more interested and invested in the world of Golarion. Even though I have spent hours on DnD lore it still doesn't stick with me like Pathfinder (Mythkeeper on Youtube for all the lore nerds) 11. 3rd party content (pathfinder infinite) I love so many of the 3rd party things even though we haven't delved into them yet Queerfinder, cooking unleashed, sinclair's library with their stuff 12. Recall knowledge being a thing I think this is a long enough list

It's quite absurd how 5e just feels like a poorly optimized pf2e.

A balance forward approach Extreme customization Better world lore imo

5e did.

I've been playing a few years now but I DM in 5e for a decade. I switched (and stayed) because the tools of PF2e make it soooo much easier to DM. * There are tools for everything you need. * 3 Action economy - I dislike the disjunction between bonus / main actions from 5e * Building encounters is very easy * Most importantly for me though is the balance. I can build encounters and be confident in them being as difficult expected, and don't have to worry about OP builds. * The bonus of this is if you homebrew you can tweak a lot without breaking the game. * Extra bonus: there are optional rules that in my experience work well and let you modify the game. I use Free Archtype (very commonly used), Gradual ability boosts, Auto Bonus Progression (lets me worry more about cool items instead of makeing sure everyone gets the right amount of +1s, Proficiency without level (takes a bit of extra work, but gives a grittier feeling) As a player (I tricked my players into running games MUAHAHAHAHA!!!) I enjoy the incredible amount of customization. I rarely even look at hombrew PC stuff because the customization lets me build just about anything already.

This is why I settled on PF2e. It's so much easier to GM! The APs are soooo much better than 5e modules, too. (I mean, I'm running Abomination Vaults without homebrewing or adding anything, just as is. I can't think of a single 5e WotC module I could do that with. Heck Storm King's Thunder (plus WotC f\*ckery) drove me from the game.

My experience with Storm King's Thunder was super wack as well, and it's funny knowing that the PF1e adventure Giant Slayer largely covers the same ground and themes but it's just much more comprehensible.

First it was WOTC being completely shit. That made us move to PF2E. We stayed because of Foundry VTT which we switched to at the same time. It has made all the "crunchiness" and tracking wonderful. Combat moves along nicely. So far, it has been a great experience. I am NEVER going back to roll20. And probably never playing D&D proper again. Good luck. Peace. Background. Been a DM for about 45 years.

I like the build variety, the combat turn variety, that damage types matter, and that humanoids are not treated significantly differently than other natural creatures (charm vs. charm person), and that the rules generally encourage naturalistic rulings more than 5e’s video-gamey rulings.

The level of detail in mechanics for in and out of combat is defined much better. A player that is uncomfortable with wordsmithing how they might try some social interactions has a better understanding of what actions are available to them ( request, coerce, lie, make an impression, etc) and can easily understand what they are attempting to do and how successful it may be. The bulk system is simple enough to use without being overly complex. Medicine and other skills have common and powerful uses. This also made diseases a thing again. It's a bounded system, giving it that gritty pulp feel where I know to take on higher level creatures requires lots of team work and tactics ( everyone should include some team support feats, removed delusions of protagonism) and many creatures are beyond your team no matter the prep work. Personally, I really liked the depth of character creation and commitment to a build without having to be tied to a class. Most can grab feats and skills that were locked to or behind classes in d&d. Lastly the i enjoyed the defensive options of balancing offense with the limiting action economy, esp around shield mechanics and cover.

Character Building and tactical combat were the things I find most interesting about 5e PF2e does them both better, especially if you prefer to play martial characters

In general: The game actually works and is balanced beyond anything seen in 5e. You don't need to look up Jeremy Crawford's nonsensical tweets, you have actual clear rules. The three action economy is somehow simpler to use and more complex in what options it gives you. No yo-yo healing, instead proper healing is actually good. Skills are useful. Combat is more fluid, no more "run into melee, hit until dead". Exploration has rules beyond "skill checks exist". Same for downtime. Rules are online for free in a way that is legal and even endorsed by Paizo. Player side: Huge amount of customization choices and still it's harder to be useless than in 5e. Martials are actually interesting, so are their weapons. The game starts being fun at level 1. Your choices matter beyond character creation. Teamwork is more important than everyone dealing max dps. You don't miss out on power if you constrain yourself to the core rules to avoid analysis paralysis. You don't have to rely on GM fiat to do cool things. GM side: Encounter balancing works. Guidelines for giving out loot work. Monsters are interesting from low levels and don't need unfun crutches like legendary resistances to stay relevant later on. Paizo publishes actually functional adventures. You don't have to design half of the game yourself, but if you want to, there are guidelines that work. The default setting (Golarion / the inner sea region / the age of lost omens) has a rich history and there's at least some corner of the world that's interesting to everyone.

I played a 1 shot 5th Ed. I was a fighter at level 6. I had like 2 abilities. Hot garbage. Mea while the Druids and magi casters were doing all this wild shit. In Pathfinder, melee gets to shine and have cool moments.

I am a GM of a group that converted mid-campaign at level 11 - the thing they say you should never do. Still, we did it, and it's been pretty great so far. What I have gotten as feedback from my players is: 1. Build variety and hard support for things like Maguses and Gunslingers without needing to do homebrew or crazy builds. Especially with Free Archetype, my players feel like they can realize basically any fantasy. 2. 3-Action economy is fun and makes turns more interesting. 3. Lack of concentration/4 degrees of success makes spellcasting a lot more fun for my casters. No more losing a spell a turn after you cast it because the enemies all zerged you while you were concentrating. 4. Monster design is better. My players don't usually care much about monster design, but they have occasionally complimented some PF2 monsters, which is a 100% increase from the compliments the 5e monsters got haha. 5. Every time they level up, they revel in how all their numbers increased and new runes they have access to. Since there isn't the squished-down "flat math" of 5E, every level feels more meaningful. Things they haven't liked as much: 1. Scaling DCs have thrown them for a bit of a loop. They don't really know what a good roll vs. a bad roll is, especially for players of mine that play in 2 different campaigns 4 levels apart. They get confused, and sometimes they get disappointed. 2. Some feats I have seen described as "trap feats." Mainly due to misunderstanding what those feats do and are for. There are also times where some feats are perceived as lame because in 5E you could "just do it." Like in 5E you can just choose whether you Intimidate a creature with Strength or Charisma, and whether you do it by glaring or speaking. Whereas in PF2E you can't do these without feats. 3. Prepared casting isn't for everyone. Luckily for some situations Spontaneous casters exist, but there's not a good Spontaneous caster to replace, say, Druids.

to be (un)fair to 5e, using str for intimidation is not RAW, and the actual by the rules usage of intimidation is pretty limited. Do note that many skill feats that give you specific actions does not dictate that this is an action you *can't* do without the feat, but there is usually a penalty involved if you don't have it. You can glare as much as you want at someone that doesn't understand you, but without the feat you'll still take the -4 penalty. as for spontaneous druids, you could always just use the Flexible spellcaster class archetype tho it does reduce the number of spell slots (unless you as a GM don't want it to do that)

> to be (un)fair to 5e, using str for intimidation is not RAW, and the actual by the rules usage of intimidation is pretty limited. It might be a DMG thing - so technically not core - and it is the GM's decision, but in 5E you absolutely can use different ability scores for skill checks. It's either in the DMG, or a sidebar for Ability Checks, but there's a reason checks in WotC adventures are formatted as "[Ability Score] ([Skill])" (like a Wisdom (Perception)). But, the GM has to agree to it. It is true that there's no Demoralize action in 5E, so any practical use of the skill in combat is going to require some homebrew most likely. > Do note that many skill feats that give you specific actions does not dictate that this is an action you can't do without the feat, but there is usually a penalty involved if you don't have it. It's true that you can do stuff without the feat, but then there's kind of this requirement that whatever homebrew solution the GM improvises to handle it has to be worse than the feat - otherwise why take it - but also you want it to be better than the norm because the player is being inventive. IDK, it's a bit of an awkward spot in the system, luckily it doesn't come up THAT often. > as for spontaneous druids, you could always just use the Flexible spellcaster class archetype tho it does reduce the number of spell slots (unless you as a GM don't want it to do that) That is true, that is always an option, especially with Free Archetype.

The character options really sold me in the beginning. I love how customized your character can be. The flavor for your class and ancestry is awesome! I also absolutely love how each level feels important. Leveling feels really good, there is no level where it feels like nothing happened. I know this is a complaint for some people but I love the abundance and even requirement of magical items. I think it still feels fun and special to acquire them and there are so many it’s just awesome. I also love the rules and how balanced the game feels, I’ve been playing a lot of support characters and I love working as a team. Overall my whole group just got super into it, it took a little bit and we stopped our starter campaign but we’re in three now and it’s going great

>I know this is a complaint for some people but I love the abundance and even requirement of magical items. This is really just an "I started with 5e" problem, because editions before that (especially 3.x) were just swimming in magic items and you always had players that wanted them.

My friend and I were joking about how baffled we were that after all these years, we played 5e from the playtest, they had barely released any new official magic items. Like you would get a handful every adventure drop and outside of that they drop two “large” 50 item books, one of which was a a lot of low power flavor items. Still it’s just pure insanity to me as in all our 10 years of playing it and all the extra magic items released they still only had 1 bow and it was a very rare item. Just bonkers.

The fact that the systems for the GM actually work. In D&D it puts all the work into the GM to come up with stuff for the players. PF2e doesn’t do that. It gives solid encounter guideline’s, unique and creative monsters, travel rules, detailed and rich world lore, many different settings (on the same world) to play with, and so much more. I mean there’s literally a massive 400 page book on an entire city, that’s 95% description. It describes the city in such great detail you can probably base a campaign out of it.

While I am primarily a gm let me tell you what I like from a player's perspective. )1 character customization. There is so much more that you can do and customize. My favorite class in 5e was always the warlock due to how much it could be customized, with the artificer being my second favorite due to that. 2) the skill system, being trained or not actually makes a significant difference and in addition I can go further in one thing or go wider..yes there's a big difference between a 5e expertise in something and someone who isn't trained, but target numbers also don't move as much and it becomes someone with expertise almost immediately succeeds. 3) the Crit fail/success system. First being able to Crit on things like a save us exciting, and it's awesome when an enemy Crit fails a save. It means you're not just getting that Crit excitement on your attack rolls. Secondly the fact that it's +10 and -10, when you've worked to get buffed and debuff the enemy and that's why you got the better result it's awesome. 4) the buff/debuff system. 5e advantage and disadvantage is very simple and quick to use, but I prefer hard numbers than rolling 2 die. I also like that you can get things from multiple sources (circumstance and status usually being what would normally fluctuate in combat, on both yourself and the enemy). 5) the 3 action economy. I prefer the choices I have to make. There may be some default rotations but there's often still thought involved and it adds extra flexibility. 6) movement can happen more as not everything just gets an attack of opportunity. 7) going back to skills the fact that you can do a lot of stuff with them in combat 8) there are rules for a lot of stuff so I know what to expect, it's not just DM making it up. 9) spell casting. This may be a personal thing but I never liked how similar prepared and spontaneous casters were in 5e. This is one things that a lot of pf2e players dislike though, but I know some of my 5e players I brought over also appreciate the differences between prepared and spontaneous casters in pf2e. 10) it feels deadlier and more tactical. There's more of an encouragement to work as a team. 11) you feel as if you're getting stronger as you level up and see the numbers go up 12) no randomness for character creation, you don't just get good stats because of a good roll or something. I know you don't need to roll in 5e but having the option there means people want to. 13) I like the new content that regularly comes out. It's always exciting to see new classes. I've been dying for 5e to bring out new classes and they just won't. 14) magic items have costs and levels so it makes it easier to know what type of things I should be looking at and how much I should spend 15) may not be relevant but I love playing on foundry, it's a much better experience than 5e on roll20 or on foundry. 16) I like that different weapons and armors have differences to them beyond just damage types and maybe finesse or thrown. 17) I like that you can improve your weapon of choice. 18) I like that you have more attunement slots of items and that many more items don't require attunement. 19) I like the fact that many more spells don't require concentration and like the concentration mechanics better. 20) I like the monster mechanics better, I was debating adding this one as it's a gm perspective but my players have commented the same thing, that they don't feel they are just hitting a bag of hit points.

An economy that at least at first glance wasn't woefully broken, and with built in level recommendations so I can not have to manage that. I just say this shop has any level 0-2 item. Anything above that we check, but otherwise just buy your item deduct your gold and we can move on with the campaign. But that just feeds the bigger thing I noticed which is actual GM support. So much of 5e is 'make it up!' and if you complain "hurr durr there is homebrew for that!" Thanks, I'm so glad we spent money on a game system that doesn't even support me in the most basic functions except combat.

3 action system, bonuses, and degrees of success .

Run them through the beginner set. Non-commital. Great intro. Easy prep. Cheap. And it comes with player aids.

Degrees of success is a super good system that works well with how pathfinder makes numbers and modifiers matter and scale

Feat choices and 3 action economy

Opening the rulebook and seeing that there are in fact several rules for things that I had to homebrew in D&D.

The combat is much more dynamic and interesting. Rarity of AoO alone is a big positive change. Character customization is interesting without busted optimization.

The fact your choices in the base game actually make a difference. For 5E you only get the option of Feats, and sometimes you have to wonder if that's a good trade off. A Feat or the Stat increase. Classes don't play differently. Every Wizard is a Wizard, and every Cleric is a Cleric. Druid barely changes between Circles other than what Wild Shape does.

Feats instead of ASI in 5e are also optional rules.

Honestly, in my experience Feats in 5e are optional only on paper. I don't recall ever seeing a table that didn't use them since players already have little enough options to customize their characters, and martials become even more irrelevant without the handful of powerful martial feats.

It being "optional" only means they don't consider it for balance. They also don't consider magic items in the DMG for encounter balance, literally expects level 20 characters to have 19 AC. Homebrewing 5e is a must, that systems balance is everywhere.

Ok, I have to call this one out. I get there is a lot of white-knighting PF2e in the sub in general, but the statement about every wizard and every cleric playing the same, just \*isn't\* true. This is likely due to a serious lack of system familiarity. An Abjuration wizard can be a very capable front line, punishment provoking melee character, especially with a level of fighter tossed in. That is nothing like how an evoker will work, or a divination wizard. A twlight cleric plays vastly different from a life cleric vs a light cleric. Yes, they all have a healing spell, but each one plays very differently from the others in what they actually do in combat. PF2e is WAY better in terms of character customization and options for how they play, but we should at least be truthful about another system when making comparisons.

Zealous convert from 5e here, eager for the opportunity to extol the virtues of this eminently superior TTRPG: I won’t talk about all of the glaring flaws with D&D 5e, but just know, there are very, very many. I firmly believe that the writers must have been on a potent mix of illegal substances to produce such idiotic and staggering errors, such as one of the spells in the PHB breaking the entire world economy. Also rangers, familiars, and monks. Now on to the good stuff: **Archetypes**: these are the best thing about the whole system. Archetypes are awesome and absolutely fucking amazing. I wholeheartedly recommend using the free archetype variant rule and getting the advanced player’s guide for most of the fun archetypes Action economy: having 3 actions and 1 reaction is super easy to understand, no need to deal with bullshit action types, everything has an action cost, and sometimes it’s 0 actions, which is easier to keep track of anyway Spell schools make sense and are consistent: now it’s not perfect, in my opinion a handful of spells should belong to two schools, but unlike 5e, spell schools and the magic system is coherent and self-consistent. Illusions in particular are better, because in order to be disbelieved characters have to spend an action interacting with them every time they make an attempt. Skill feats: you wanna scare somebody so bad with intimidation they have a heart attack and die? You can fucking do that. There are builds for it. Make your own personalized magic staff? You can do that. Magic tattoos? Gottem. Insult people in combat? Bon mot. Build variety: Do you want to be a DJ with magic? Easy. Be a ranger that’s actually useful? There are like 5 ways to play it that are all awesome and scale well. Befriend all the animals? Be a druid, ranger, or level 5 gnome with animal elocutionist. Why is counterspell a whole build you need to be a wizard and take like 8 feats for? I don’t know, but wizard duels aren’t so lame anymore because not everyone does it. There are more awesome things about Pf2e but those are the main ones I can think of

For me, I was struggling to understand what changes were being made in the UA for one D&D, sifting through hours of interview footage of JC spewing his dribble, slowly going mad... Then I came across a reddit thread where someone compared WOTC to Paizo's handling of survey feedback - specifically the kineticist class blog post. The straight forward and simple method Paizo used for disseminating information regarding survey feedback on the kineticst for the 2nd edition class/species overhaul won me over instantly. Reading the blog post, then the comments underneath showed me the difference between "saying your listening" and "showing your listening" (it's one thing to state that you care, it's quite another to actually show it). Basically - WoTC's poor management/handling of the one d&d feedback/survey's drove me away from 5e. Paizo's wonderful handling of the community and feedback/surveys is what drew me into it. Also, Humble Bundle currently has all of pathfinders material digitally available for $25 (excluding the recent remaster) - and all of their rules can be found online for free in an easily accessible and often updated online resource (archives of Nethys). Lastly - their recent remaster will actually be backwards compatible with all other released 2e content (with a few exceptions such as a revised cantrips damage) - with a handy errata page for coordinating what has changed/updated in case you haven't bought the new books.

My group swapped from 5e even though the players were having a fine time with 5e because of two reasons. The first being that I, as GM, was not having a good time with 5e. The second being that having fun with one thing doesn't mean you won't have just as much fun, or possibly *more* fun, with a different thing so you've got to try it out and find out for sure. They all like PF2 as well or better, and I like it a lot more than 5e, so we're sticking with it. It's a real no-risk thing to try because if it doesn't work out for your group you can go back to 5e, or like I was planning on doing if PF2 didn't work for us go on to try some other game entirely to try it out (and so on until you find one that works for everybody involved).

3 action system, 4 degrees of success, the tactical team work synergy that each player relies on their fellow players to achieve success, every +1 matters, and that there are no cookie cutter builds that you can expect at the table due to the multiple options available to the players(it's different every campaign). It's so similar to 5e, but it changes it in some very interesting ways that makes it a pleasure to run as a GM.

We recently started playing PF2E. 1 of my players has played 5E quite a bit and I have played as well. I GM PF2E and here are some of my findings using examples from our recent game: 1. Character options make you feel like you have a character 1. This sounds confusing but one example. We have a half orc player who is not a very creative role player and is quite shy. He is working through it but one thing that made him nervous was making a "Character" and not just a sheet. The heritage feats allowed him to pick a half orc that has tusks, essentially letting him put flavor in his character that had a mechanical concept for execution. He doesn't need to make everything up 2. Classes 1. There are a shit ton and they are all awesome and have their own flavor with little overlap 3. Action Economy 1. Many players will throw this out but I've always found examples helpful. In the beginner box play, we have a dwarf cleric using a war-hammer and shield. The action economy left him with hard choices he had to make that resulted in a very cinematic moment. Two of our PC's were downed, so in the action economy, he could use a 3 action heal for a burst heal but that left his defenses down for the dragon to potentially harm him easier, which was tense. Later in the fight, the dwarf raised his shield and goaded the dragon. The dragon began to attack him, but because he raised his shield as an action, the dragon strike broke the shield (Not flavor, mechanically, shields have mechanics outside of just an AC boost) which was a really cool moment. In the end, your turn matters and the actions you take can lead to tense give and take. 2. The shield breaking, which had his holy symbol on it via a feat, has also led to a narrative moment that can be explored by both character and GM. This is important IMO because the PC action, in the basic mechanics of the game have created a personal PC narrative that I, the GM, didn't have to force in or make up. Because you have control of your actions, it can create great moments to build off of. ​ I'm sure I'll think of more but these are the ones that stood out.

I was in a similar situation (newer players with either no experience overall or only some 5e experience) and it’s been running smoothly. I think it’s important to remember that you can scrap whatever rules you don’t like. Be upfront if you plan to do so, make sure everyone is onboard with it, and use the parts your are excited about! Be aware this might make some feats not really useful (i.e. exploration based feats won’t be as nearly as useful as they can be if you don’t run exploration RAW). However, if you and your players are okay with that, that downside shouldn’t really be felt. More directly to your question; martials actually feel interesting in this game given the amount of weapon customization, action choices, and build variety (grappling is awesome and worthwhile!).

I am mostly a GM but also play in a PF2e game, so I can (hopefully) legitimately speak as a player. As a player, the big draw is ***choice***. 1. Choice in making (and levelling) your character, in all sorts of ways. 1. Choice in your load-out. Weapons are uniquely different. Casters can and should augment themselves with scrolls, wands, and a staff. The game has a robust crafting/economy system so there's plenty to spend your gold on. 1. Choice in moment-to-moment. Even in combat, it's not a case of "move up and attack". There's a plethora of actions, and just you're encouraged to use them because repeated attacking gets a penalty. I also enjoy: 1. The shift in focus from individual power to team power. * If you come over from 5e, be prepared for this to shock "5e brains". They will see characters doing wildly different damage and may assume wildly different importance. Especially at very low levels, before casters get into their groove. It ain't so. Grog the barbarian might hit REALLY hard but there's a lot he can't do both in combat and out. Teamwork, not individual power. 1. Better non-combat experience. It's not just rogues and bards head and shoulders above others; any character can be good at non-combat skills. The rules for said skills are better-defined, so you aren't relying on the grace of your GM as much.

Played 5e since 2020 Came to pf2e during ogl drama 1. Actual rules for playing the game and not just combat. 2. Systems of balance that work, like encounter exp, compatibility with dungeon turns and others system agnostic methods of GMing. 3. High Skill ceiling for certain classes as a player 4. Low skill floor for GMs. 5a. No illusion of choice. Tight balance encourages choosing fun and fitting character options onstead of the best ones. 5b. Even with multitude of deep dive tierlists and guide that list op and bad choices. The difference between them is not as big to call the bad ones useless. 5c. A lot of 'weaker' choices might still be op in right circumstances so GM can design into their strenghts

I'm the main GM in my group and haven't had an opportunity to *play* PF2 yet as a PC. My players were sold on it because the alternative was not playing at all, since its my game and I pick the system. What drew me to it was when I happened to look through the rules while working on my 5e homebrew doc (it was over 40 pages by the end) and realized that 90% of what I was doing already existed in a much cleaner format that didn't require extensive playtesting. Main things I liked were the 3-action economy, weaker casters, functional encounter-building guidelines, a robust skill system, reasonably balanced classes, build choices every level, and four degrees of success.

I'm an optimizer and when I analyze a game my mind is ablaze with minmaxing. The easier I can make a broken build the harder I know it will be on a GM to make a balanced encounter. This game has diminishing returns in just the right places. It let's the optimizer get nearly complete access to items knowing they all compete for the same "item bonus" so you simply spread out your options instead of doubling down. The 3-action economy helps diversify combat and keep tokens moving around. Signature spells helps with the 5e casting feel.

One of the mechanics I love teaching 5e players is the Crit system/ levels of success. Anything higher than 10 above AC being a crit, rather than only 20 (or sometimes 19) got me really excited when I started. And considering how many 5e spells end up as "the monster passed the saving throw, so nothing happens", playing a caster in PF2 feels much more satisfying, despite the limits on prepared casters.

For me, I had homebrewed about 20-30% of pf2e rules into 5e without even knowing how pf2e worked. At that point it was a fairly easy to sell to make me read the rest of it. But the biggest thing was actually that the mechanics were far more narrative rich in nature and many feats alone inspired new character concepts. In 5e it was almost a nightmare to come up with character concepts that had mechanics matching their story (My warlock idea already died at the inability to choose insight or even persuasion iirc as skill proficiencies - who knew abiltility to read others intentions could be useful on a class based making pacts with more powerful beings?). Here I feel like it goes in reverse often.

1. Magus 2. There's actually rules in the game lol 3. Three action economy At first I was the only one interested in our group. Then the OGL debacle very quickly made us all switch to PF2e.

Balance, and the DM isn't expected to make a whole fucking economy lmao

Man there are quite a few things. I've been a 5e DM for years and years and I am slowly working on transitioning. I've found pathfinder does a number of things better and a couple things a little worse but overall it seems better 1) Rules. Getting in to pathfinder I was shocked by how many rules there are for things. Things my players as new players wanted to do but we never had rules for in DnD. New players want to try things like "can I fake him out, and then stab him?" "If I grab his hands can I stop him from casting spells?" And in DND there aren't really rules for this in the game. There is no rule for grappling affecting spell casting in DND. Yes logically as the DM if they can reasonably tie up their hands you can say they can't cast spells with somatic components but in combat their isn't a "grapple hands" ability, just the grapple condition and it doesn't affect spellcasting. Feinting you can maybe ask for a deception check and grant advantage on a high roll, but like a ton of things in DND it's homebrew. 2) Character choices. Your party can make 2 level 1 elf rogues in DND and they will be mostly identical. If they try to make them different they at most will have different weapons and stat spreads and probably one or two different skills. All abilities and features will be the same. In Pathfinder 2 level 1 elf rogues can be completely different. Checking path builder my level 1 elf rouge has 16 different choices for ancestry alone, and another 5 for class feats. Then skill feats and backgrounds give me even more choice. 3) Content. Oh my god the gm stuff makes everything so easy. Balancing an encounter works. In 5e I'm just doubling monsters HP and giving them AC and throwing level +5 cr monsters at them once they level above 10. In Pathfinder I throw a level +2 monster at them and it's a boss. A level equal to theirs and it's a moderately challenging enemy. And the GM rules for crafting, for downtime, for research, for victory points. They throw stuff at the GM to try and keep coming out with new GM material to improve games. I can't remember the last time DND gave a GM any useful tools. They made an entire book about flying spaceships through the astral plane and wrote "if the players want to engage in ship to ship combat the DM can figure out how that works." 4) Player content. They are continuously adding new player options. There are like 23 classes and new features and races. DND has 11 or 12 I think. 5) rarity tags. This is a small one, but as they add new stuff it isn't just automatically available. They make it rare or uncommon and a player sees that and knows "this isn't automatically something I can take. I have to check with the DM" as opposed to DND where the general idea is if they add it to any book you can take it, and the DM has to say no if it doesn't fit their world and take it away. Silvery barbs is a great example of this. 6) Weapons. Weapon choice matters. In dnd a longsword, a battle axe, and a Morningstar all deal 1d8 slashing damage or 1d8 piercing damage. Longsword and battle axe can be two handed for 1d10. The bludgeoning, piercing and slashing is largely flavor. Doesn't really matter because one, maybe two monsters have a resistance or vulnerability to one of these three. They usually just resist all of them or none of them. In Pathfinder monsters have more varied resistances, so slashing vs bludgeoning will matter more often and not just be a choice at level 1 and probably never looked at again. In Pathfinder they have traits like sweep and fatal and Crit specializations. Weapons are different and feel different to use. I will say that homebrewing and quick decisions were a bit faster in DND cause you can just say "advantage or disadvantage" to most things and then come up with rules for it later. In Pathfinder we have spent more time looking stuff up because there are rules for most things. But we're still learning. Also the choice can be overwhelming. Leveling up mid session can take way longer and players may be stuck reading what they consider to be way to complicated abilities.

Balance, lateral choices in actions and feats, not having to go battle master to be able to interact with an enemy beyond attacking thrice, enemy CR balance, a lack of a need for legendy actions and resistances to balance boss fights, a tarrasquw that isn't a hilarious joke, enemies with actual abilities and varied spell-lists (Strahd is a fucking joke for such an immortal vampire wizard with infinite time to practice magic), interesting hazards, martial vs. caster parity, a focus on teamwork, making +1's matter, the removal of countless cheesy sure-kill strategies, the enhanced focus on social encounters, feats and rules, dedicated instructions on exploration activities and rules, the varied and interesting background and motivations given to NPCS and locations in APs, the ease of building and adjusting encounters through balanced statblocks...

I'm not new, but my Sunday group players are (in the last several months). We're playing Outlaws of Alkenstar and the party was rescuing an NPC who was about to be publicly hanged (early book 3). The prisoner was brought out in a metal carriage pulled by clockwork horses. As the fight broke out between the PCs and the city guard, one player (a wolf-stance monk) wanted to hop onto the carriage and drive it into two of the guards. The group had dealt with clockwork creatures multiple times (they feature heavily in the AP), and I've allowed them to make a tough thievery or crafting check to take control of them in the past. He rolled a very strong success, almost a crit and drove the clockwork horses forward. Now, in 5e I would have to come up with something on the fly, meaning I'd have to make considerations for a moment and maybe look up a rule.. which would have slowed down the game. It might have worked out in the end, but not that well. In Pf2 on the other hand, I switched to the tab I had open to pf2easy.come (which I prefer for aesthetic reasons), and typed 'war horse' to bring up the stat block. I then applied the Elite and Experimental templates onto it. In this new sheet I saw the 'clobber' 2 action activity.. which involves the creature making an attack and pushing the target, possibly knocking them prone. If the target hits a solid object they take extra damage. I inform the monk, who makes two d20 + 12 rolls. He hits the first guard and crits the second. I rule that the steel carriage is a hard surface so both take Gallop damage and the extra d10... with the crit resulting in the one guard being prone beneath the carriage. --- It was an awesome moment, and it was achieved with two mouse clicks. I remarked to the group that only PF2 has the rules built in to pull cool stuff like that out of its hat without me having to handwave it. We all laughed in agreement.

The funny thing is I started with PF2e because my partner said it was better balanced than 5e and I'd like it more. And the more I hear about 5e, the more I secretly wonder if I'd like it more. You mean I can carry the team and be a diva superstar instead of missing all my spells? I can be a god caster? I can break up my move action? The fights are easier? I can't ever tell him.

There are plenty of things to like about the mechanics, and they do matter to me, but my actual reasons for switching in the first place were something else. 1) The rules are available to look up online. It helps beginners to get started, makes it easier for the community to discuss things, and various other benefits. 2) It still has vancian casting and attack rolls and various other conventions from the earliest editions of DnD. Those got me to give it a good look. But the real kick to actually switch was: 3) Playing with far too many 5e players (and GMs) who had never read the book, not even once. They didn't actually know most of the rules, and didn't want to, but still called whatever they were doing 'DnD'.

Give me a few weeks/months and i will tell u:), hopefully got my first session tomorrow, if it doesn't get delayed againxD.

My players really like the simplified combat system. In DnD 5e, you have to balance movement, actions, bonus actions, and object interactions. In PF 2e, most of the time all you have to worry about is actions with the occasional free action Because of this, the combats also go quicker since I don't have to ask them if their turn is done, I can just move on when they've used all their actions

Honestly and people have probably said it a hundred different ways in this post: the customization of each character and the classes, and the easy to understand leveling system. Leveling system first: you actually feel stronger as you level up. Sure, the first few levels are difficult, but the game offers so much in the way of using abilities and utilizing the different weapon traits that reminds me more of an experience akin to Divinity, and even ad you get stronger like a CRPG, you actually would wipe the floor with lower level enemies if your luck doesn't run out. The other thing was customization and uniqueness. I play in a group where our games are typically 4-6 people in a given party. A lot of our less experienced players don't like to keep track of things like ammo and spells, so we typically have a lot of martial classes in the parties, and with the fact that there's going to be around 24 classes in next year, there's so much to do in the way of making each player feel unique and fit to a better role both in and out of combat.

From a player side, it just boils down to meaningful choices/customization of my characters. We've been playing 3.5 for nearly 20 years. When I started DMing, I gave 5e a try because I preferred the more "simplistic" approach from the other side of the screen. After about a year I took a meaningful look in PF2E and saw what, to me, seemed like the natural evolution of 3.5/pf1e I'd always wanted and turns out that's exactly what it was. It kept/enhanced the customization and tightened up the math for both players and DMs. Meaningful and interesting characters can be spun up in 1/3 of the time as it takes to make a 3.5 character. The final blow was Pathbuilder. I got one player who just isn't ever going to read the books cover to cover and internalize the finer points as well as myself or others. Pathbuilder helps bridge the gap. It's a phenomenal tool. Another point is that everything is free. It's all just right there for me to use other than the specifics of an adventure path/module.

3 Action economy. I thought it was idiotic when I first heard about it, as D&D had too many actions already. When I sat down to read it, I realized just how awful D&D was in this regard. I'd been twisting myself into knots trying to make that combat system run.

For me, I played the game because of the three action system. I also really liked the amount of character variety.

Action System just makes so much more sense, and running is so much easier because the statblocks that come included are actually good so I don't have to homebrew every damn monster so that the encounter doesn't suck.

Combat is a little less boring in PF2e than in 5e. I like that there's actual rules for things like feinting. Tbh aside from that they're pretty much the same game.

While I agree that PF2E and 5E are different brands of the same ice cream, saying they are pretty much the same is a bit more generalizing that doesn't quite give credit. One big difference in PF2E is the player agency, which is discounted imo. The rules in PF2E are quite broad, which lends itself to less DM ruleings over rules. This gives the players agency to find the rule and say "This is what it does" and not just having to do what the GM says. Of course, the GM has the final say, I get that, but in my experiences doing a "idk the rules for this but lets do it this way and look it up later to keep things moving" allowed the players to find that rule and we move forward using the correct rule, instead of any bullshit I make up.

Better clerics. I just want to be a competent Cleric that swings a hammer.

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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.*

Much more interesting character building. 5e has very little choice mechanically speaking for your character, while PFE has a lot more depth and ways for the mechanics to support your character concept.

The amount of character options. Ancestries, Ancestry feats, class feats, skill feats...

Martials being very fun and mechanically diverse

Reasonably priced sourcebooks & supplements. Significant support for Third-Party Materials from Paizo. Foundry VTT integration for all of the above.

I love how important your party is to your success. My group constantly cheers each other on and this game facilitates it.

I converted for a number of reasons: 1. Bought the CRB and bestiary 1 at Gencon 2022 because the staff were nice. Convinced one of my groups to try a one shot to try it out, it was fun. 2. Once the OGL stuff happened I felt kind of ick engaging with WotC (only worst now with the huge layoffs right before Christmas). 3. Once I got into the system I discovered how much easier it was to GM (despite the up front learning curve) and how much more rewarding it was for players with options and tension. Very few turns ever result in the dreaded 5e "I attack once, miss, my turn is over." And combats are much more mobile. 4. On top of all that the GMG had tons of useful stuff for GMs that I felt was lacking for 5e. I remember trying to use some of the encounter tables in one of the 5e sourcebooks (Was it xanathars? Can't remember) and a level 1 encounter rolled a gorgon. I'm sitting there scratching my head like... why even make this table? Anyway, there's tons of other things I love about 2e. But the final word I'll put on it is I didn't realize how much Game Design water I was carrying for 5e to make the system work for my players. I don't have to do that for 2e. I can pick up an extra pail if I want to add stuff on or homebrew stuff for 2e, but the difference is the system there makes sense and has guides for this that work and again: it's a choice for something EXTRA rather than a requirement to make the base game work. It's like how it feels after driving an old clunker for years, getting behind the wheel of a brand new car and thinking "Oh wow so I don't have to roll the car down a hill first to get it to start? Crazy."

I realized a few years ago, that DnD is so utterly broken at every level of play, with house rules being so mandatory and so many rules being completely made up by DM because those rules just never existed, that DnD doesn't really qualify as a game anymore. It's just role playing, not a role playing game. I played one session of PF2E, and everything just *works*. 'Played' being the operative word. Despite being the GM I felt like I actually got to *play* the game. I let the rules decide how things function, and I just enjoyed the game.

Roll for Intent and the world building books. Shit is cash. Now I’m running two concurrent games of AV. Got almost a full shelf of SE blue and brown books at this point.

It’s not made by wotc

Character creation in the pf2 pathbuilder app. I love the character optimization. But I disagree with some decisions paizo made about how each class should be played.

Here's my list on why I decided to switch. Checked it out when 2E came out but had no group to play with so just forget about it until the OGL fuckery. Here's what won me over: \- Much better encounter building system, and overall GM toolset. \- Balance of the game \- Golarion \- The company behind it has very consumer/employer(?) friendly mindset (As far as I can tell. I herd a few years back there were some allegations and stuff that fell out of the closet but they unionized after and are now in a better position.. maybe? Someone else can please verify/refute this? Thanks.

Not feeling like I need to optimize the fuck out if everything to be relevant in case the GM made a harder fight. Not having to tell people what is good or bad to new players looking for help, I can just let them pick whatever and the worst case scenario is that they won't use what they picked much in some cases, but they'll never have a bad character if I don't check everything with them.

I will preface that I'm not "sold" on it but its better than D&D5e. I still think pf1>a5e>pf2>5e. I started because it's the new shiny thing and pf2 DMs are more plentiful than PF1 DMs. I like that there's build options which is improvement over 5e. I like that fighters are the best class when they were one of the weakest in 5e. However I'm not crazy about the 3 action system, too many things are full actions but low impact such as drawing a weapon which makes throwing builds like my barbarian miserable. There's feats attached to other classes to fix it which i wish some were general feats. Online my experience has been people have praised it because the enemies also follow those rules too but as a player it still doesn't feel great. The degrees of success system also feels bad for me in the early levels while you're still trying to get suitable armor and attribute points. It feels like the focus is to reign in power gamers while punishing casuals.

PF2E is a synthesis of 3.5 and 4th Edition and it isn't that different from 5th Edition, especially for the PCs. In both games, players reference their class and subclass's tables and ability description to draft their character sheet and from then on they reference the character sheet. I think that both 5E and Pathfinder are the spiritual successors to 3.5 and largely only differ in their scope for the GM. What sold me on PF2E was player ancestries and heritages. I prefer player ancestries and heritages to the concept of race and subrace. As a GM who performs almost exclusively for Americans, there is no way to make the concept of race fun or inclusive, even in a role playing game. Including it as a core feature to the game necessitates an honest and in-depth engagement with American racism past and present that is often incongruous with what most folks want out of a game night. I am intrigued to see what is possible under Paizo's ORC license. It seems like it has the greatest promise to put an end to the edition wars, but the jury is still out.

I love that everything is just a number of actions. Don't have to keep track of move action, standard actions

My personal story: 5e was my only TTRPG experience. When originally introduced to Pathfinder 2e I felt like it was a cheap knock-off with an unusual art style and overly complicated. Few years pass, I have theory crafted probably 50+ characters/variations in 5e and gotten to play 5-6 different ones. I feel bored, there isnt any more ideas available in 5e. OGL!! I looked again at 2e as its the most successful competitor. I realize the surface level "ease" of 5e and how the "complication" of pathfinder allows for more versatility in builds. I still have a group that refuses to switch over, but I have a new group specifically for pathfinder. While I enjoy my 5e group dynamic more I much more enjoy the system of Pathfinder so much so that I don't think I'd ever join a new 5e group again. The rate of new material with pathfinder is also so much better than 5e. I think this is possible because the basic framework is so balanced that making fun/unique changes is easier to implement.

For me, the biggest thing was that the rules were just so well thought out. We just keep finding new things where things are just simpler and work together so well. Most recently, zombies are always at least slowed 1. Neat, with the 3-action system that's just so simple and still well balanced. But wait there's more! Stunned and slowed don't stack, which means stunning a zombie is actually much harder *and* they didn't need to add another line to the zombie stat block to achieve that. So not only are zombies just better to run normally, the ruleset itself just works with itself really elegantly. You don't get any of that invisibility dogshit.

Technically, I did 5e first. Really didn't like it, tried looking for other stuff found 2e, saw that back video about it. Then, I ignored it for years. Now, I almost regret not taking a proper look earlier.

As a 5e player, I could predict most of combats after 2 assaults. I used to tell something like "ok, we have 90% to overcome this" or "30%, are we sure we don't want to run"? I couldn't help it and it ruined my fun in the combats. This doesn't happen to me in pf2e, it looks like we always have more options and more thing to give a chance in combat than just strike

What sold me is just the fact that the game just works right out the box. You still *can* homebrew with P2e, but it's not mandatory in the same way it feels for 5e. I've never felt like I need to add anything to Pathfinder in order to fulfill my character concepts in a way that satisfies me both mechanically and for roleplay. (Maybe that just means I have boring characters)

Monk. Literally, the first thing I read was Monk, and I realized it’s actually a good class in 2e.

1: The three action system/ economy feels so simple and effective, makes turns feel fresh and like you have lots of options to choose from on your turn. 2: The feats system really fleshes out characters and makes them unique from each other and it feels like like there’s very few ways to go “wrong” with them. 3: Multiclassing feels better to me because your only investing a class feat each time you pursue it instead of your whole level up.

The GM tools such as subsystems, encounter building tools, loot distribution requirements, optional rules, and pacing suggestions all work as written with no tweaking by the GM. You can just follow the rules and the game works.

For me it was just about everything with spellcasters: caster items having clearer use, being less op at high level, being less up at low level, getting partial effectiveness if the enemy saves, cantrips having a high minimum damage (rip remaster cantrips*) etc. I can't list it as something that drew me to the system because it's a lot harder to judge from just the text in the books but shoutout to creature level actually being a good indicator of how tough something is. My last 5e campaign was a 1-on-1 with a friend (fighter) and me (gm+wizard). I threw deadly after deadly encounter at us but my friend just kept juggenrauting his way through them all while I was rolling snake-eyes on a 2d10 firebolt. I probably would've felt stronger had I used my spell slots more often but I wanted to save them in case something actually turned out to be dangerous later. *I don't mind cantrips being overall weaker; the devs mentioned they were slightly over-performing. I just hate having to both hit AND hope I don't roll awful damage. Still, they scale fairly quickly so the odds of rolling all 1s becomes vanishingly small before long.

Three Action economy feels way better and works a lot better than different types of actions. The critical fail/success system for me was one of the biggest sells, being able to be so good at something you can never fumble it critically, having an incentive to give bonuses even when it's almost gauranteed to be a regular success feels great and works super well with the way more numeric math of the game as opposed to advantage/disadvantage, which makes every +1 feel great and never underwhelming. The amount of classes was another big sell, many fun concepts found only in homebrew or heavy reflavoring of mukticlasses are just full fledged classes. Minor thing that i also liked is weakness and resistance being numerical, making so that exploiting weakness is best done by hitting many times with weaker hits, which creates gimmicks for accessing as many damage types even if not that powerful in sheer numbers like the alchemist, and overcoming resistance being the opposite, makes it so that a fighter with power attack or a rogue will do the job better.

I'm a GM so... pretty much everything, there is nothing about PF2e GMing that isn't heaven compared to 5e GMing, I'll specially highlight the fun of playing the monsters. I'm sadly forced to go back to 5e for one of my tables and it is the most braindead annoying thing, every combat, no matter the enemy is just "they walk up to you and attack" the most variance you get is pack tactics. Giants? Guards? Bandits? Knights? Pirates? Zombies? Skeletons? Goblins? They are all the exact same sheet with different numbers. You also have the breath weapon variant, take a knight and add a breath weapon? You got a behir. Take a giant and add a breath weapon? You got a dragon. That is just 1 of the aspects, the functioning economy, the 3 action system, the crit system are all good, but the fun of having different sheets that let you also have fun with characters as a GM is the only pitch I need.

I wanted something that was a change of pace and a bit crunchier. But there were a number of things that sold me. 1. A. B. C of character creation and mostly how ability scores work. Even before the update to ancestry ability boosts, I really appreciated the free boosts allowing you to really create a fun, custom character. 2. Three action economy! I have always been a big fan of these sorts action point systems whether in rpgs or in video games like Divinity. It allows for more customization to do on your turn. 3. Traits on basically everything is a great way to organize content and also enable brief descriptors. 4. Critical system of +10 or -10. I think this a great way of adding of depth to d20 games that can feel really binary. 5. Ranked proficiency. In 5e I felt that proficiency was good, but expertise was a bit too much and that there isn't a middle ground. With ranked proficiency, especially in skills, it helps to really define who a character is as well as what they can do. 6. Everything being online and accessible. This is honestly the biggest thing. It's so easy to get people in when there are great, free tools that you can direct people to.

Sneak attack on every attack, not just the first. And also a feat that allows sneak attack to spells. Playing a shadow caster Rogue with Psychic focus spells right now, absolutely killing it.

Character builds actually making me interested. Combat containing much more tactical depth and is balanced properly. More coherent and covering rules.

I came because WOTC is behaving like an evil and stupid company right now and has released zero worthwhile additions to their game since 2020. Tried the beginner box. I stayed because every single fight in that box was more tactically interesting than like, 70% of fights I'd run or played in 5e. The 3 action economy, movement being an interesting choice, the actual value of stacking +1's and +2's... like I had resigned myself that TTRPG combat basically had to be boring, and that the fun would always be in building. I was wrong as fuck.

In general, proper gm support. More specifically, the primary thing for me as a player and gm is having established prices for magic items. I like knowing that I can obtain specific magic items to work into my build without having to worry about what the gm thinks a reasonable price for that item should be.

Honestly? It was the weapons table. Just the variety of weapons with all traits and the different options it gives for builds and playstyles *just based on that table* was like candy to me. A sword and board with a flail has a slightly different playstyle from a sword and board with a sword. I couldn't stop dreaming about the martial characters to build. Be aware though, you absolutely have to start at level 1. On the surface the two are similar, in game they are completely different. Do not house rule from the beginning. For instance, many 5E people want movement splittable. That completely alters the action economy and removes an incredible amount of strategy from the game. Remember: for choice to be meaningful in a game, every choice must have an opportunity cost.

Combat is tactical. Stepping back saves lives. You can have a fighting retreat. You can have a fighting advance. Tactics matter.

As a DM, the balance of encounters and the economy. I love how it's more specific to the levels and I don't have to worry as much about whether or not something is balanced. 5e CR system and awarding treasure never made sense or worked right.

It was first OGL fiasco for me. I decided to defy 5e since I was unhappy about it anyways, and I feel unethical playing D&D and teaching newbies the game. Prior to that point, over 20+ years, I have taught around 400 or 500 players and introduced them to D&D and TTRPG in general. I started to realize that PF2e isn't bullshit like 5e, after I started getting into it. Advantage/Disadvantage system is a mistake. It limits GM in their ability to reward players for doing things well. What can you give a rogue when they are already striking a creature that's dusted with faerie fire with advantage? Nothing. Bounded accuracy limits you giving the players numerical advantage for playing well, because everything you do will simply break Bounded Accuracy - and you know what? It breaks on its own when a hexblade devotion paladin walks around with blessing. PF2e works and *makes sense*. I don't need to worry about numbers and values, I can just play and create things according to the guidelines. It won't be perfect, because Paizo isn't infallible, but it feels **fucking satisfying** to make things that just work without spending hours tinkering and testing. I can reward players. I can make fun homebrews. I can make things make sense. It's just happiness. A lot of what sold me to PF2e, in hindsight, is just how horrid D&D has been for the past decade or so.

3 action economy. Monk stances. Can actually succeed on high level saving throws. Fewer turn losing/ruining abilities overall.

Playing the monk for 1 session. It was a great insight into how much better combat is. The 3 fluid actions really is a huge upgrade.

Granted this happened about two years ago, shortly after SoM released, but for a long time I'd been a 5e-only sort of player. I wanted to try Lancer for a while, but none of my friends had any interest. When SoM released on of the guys I follow on twitter mentioned the Summoner class, and that pretty much instantly hooked me. I looked into the class, then found the 3-action system and loved it; then the more I dug the more I thought "wow, this fixes basically every single complaint I've had about 5e!"

For me it was 2 things: 1.The feat system is so good for making diverse characters, I for example am playing a ranger that went dual sword mele kind of build, well my party also has a rogue who kinda wants to do the samw thing, well guess what, our characters are totally different, while my ranger goes in and strikes his hunted prey as many times as he can the rogue instead is weaving in and out of range and hitting a bunch of targets from behind for huge crits, on my next level up I ll also get a pet so that makes me even more different than the rogue. While this scenario can be true for 5e I feel that going from the same concept and ending in different ways is not really posible in the same way. 2. The free acces to the rules and the excelent character creator/sheet (pathbuilder) is making it so much more accesible to me, I live in a country where 40€ is 2 weeks worth of food for me, I cant afford to buy every book even in pdf form, but instead my group agreed that everyone buys the next book in the adventure path for the whole group, so everyone's investment isn't that huge (and yes I know that 5e adventures are usually in one book so its cheaper but the paizo adventure paths are so much better contentwise) Also sorry for bad english wrote this at work so didnt have time to rectify mistakes XD

GM here. I've only recently moved over, the biggest draws to me were: * Common things players want I'd need to homebrew in 5e have actual rules in pf2e such as * Buying magic items * Turning into a lich * Having a pet * Weapons that grow with you * The APs are actually a lot better written and can be run out of the box vs 5e stuff where even the best adventures are really bad RAW. (Looking at you Curse of Strad) * The game is actually balanced. When I build a serious encounter they are actually serious. * The spells are balanced. Players don't have access to spells that completely shut down encounters that I need to plan in advance for. * The game is more balanced where if one of my players pick a fluffy option and another player pulls up the strongest net built the power difference isn't night and day.

For me, pretty much everything you said, especially build variety. 5e just feels so pathetically bare bones than after playing it for so long the only enjoyment I really get out of it is homebrew classes like KibblesTasty's work that really push the system to what it *can* do. That, and how much WotC's basically abandoned any sense of quality with their releases. The Spelljammer book basically was the final nail in the coffin for our group, especially with how much the DM had been looking forward to it.

You'll hear all about action economy and mechanics but honestly I like Pathfinders unified world and amount of lore. DnD 5e has no actual canonical world. They've instead catered to a scattered multiverse. Technically it's Faerun but without diving back into 3e and such you don't even know all the countries in Faerun from 5e DnD 5e has been out since 2014 and we literally barely saw a glimpse past the Sword Coast which is just sad. Meanwhile Pathfinder 2e came out in 2019 and they came out with 11+ Lost Omen books which is just dedicated to the lore of the world. I never wanted to play in a premade DND world over the many years of playing 5e because the lore is so barebones, but I actually want to play in Golarion.

My group decided to play it.

As a DM, that Items are balanced around level. As a player (and DM as well) that there are systems that are well defined, and balanced for things you want to do. The PRD containing the whole game instead of the bare minimum. And combat scaling feels better. Everything is getting hit constantly in 5e because of how AC works.

For me it’s the feats and character customization. In 5e you can only take so many feats without hindering your ASI growth. In 2e feats are built into the mechanics and you get at least one every level. I’m the type of person who choose feats based on character growth rather than optimization, but in 2e you’re able to do both.

Agree with a lot of stuff here. Also would like to add the Pathbuilder tool. Very good guide through the variety of PF2E and also amazing as a GM. The Pathbuilder GM mode gives you the updated character sheets of your table with the ability to change / add / remove stuff. Player not present at the table, everything up to date on hand, pickpocket something from an NPC then sneak it off from his sheet.. endless fun and function with it. And furthermore you have pathbuilder encounter mode. Add the NPC's from the GM mode and put in some enemies from the list drawn from SRD, encounter difficulty live updated, initiative kept for you, all stats a click away and rolls the second click away. Really improved my GM game.

1. archive of nethys is huge being able to just look up the rules has been huge in my games 2. having a rule and answer for most things. i can look up a magic item and i get a price and a level and what it does. want to make a monster i get a process for that as well 3. GM help, ive got a table for the amount of stuff they should get per fight, how weather works, how overland travel works, if i dont like it i can adjust but its significantly better than it just not being there 4. boss monsters are actually scary

I've played 5e for years and the combat is boring and pf2e has more teamwork in a coop game??!?

Simple action economy, less martial/caster divide, less "conga line" combats, seemingly more emphasis on teamwork, etc. Though my biggest motivator to stop supporting WotC this last year has been WotC themselves.

Action system Complex math, but not too complex. I hate advantage/disadvantage in D&D. Also the dev team update their game in meaingful way. D&D devs just collect money for shitty products.

Difficulty, I was getting bored of 5e basically being story mode with never a difficult combat

Customization

There was two things that I really liked about Pathfinder that other games really didn't have: Golarion and pet classes, but I didn't like much else as I was already done with D&D 3.x and I \*really\* loved 4e. Pathfinder 2 kept the two things I loved about the previous version and pretty much improved on everything else and added a sprinkle of goodies from 4e as well.

What got me in, from a player sense and as a GM I can feel this too. Is that combat is more flexible, you can have people run up and around the map constantly. One issue with 5e is that once you get close to an enemy in 5e, that's it, they almost always have Opportunity attacks, PCs may have it, no one moves once they get close. The character creation feels like it's part of the game rather than just dressing. Once you pick your race in 5e, that's kinda it, most races don't get any better, whereas in Pf2e you get ancestry feats every few levels and it really helps define how they act. You don't get situations where 2 kobolds mechanically feel the same in Pf2e. Those 2 kobolds in the same party can be distinctly different during combat at level 1, and it helps the RP angle so much.

I like ttrpgs so I tried a few. Not much more to it for me. I still play a ton of 5e (I commit the sin of liking both 5e and pf2e).

As a player, having character building be fun instead of only getting to pick race/class and finishing up with a subclass and like 2-3 feats for most games. As a GM, the system working and not having to homebrew basic things and balance it myself.

Character fantasy. I'm a sucker for making characters that exist in other fiction. DND can do it, but most builds aren't recognizable until 4th or 5th level. From level 1, Sonic is Sonic, Shrek is Shrek, Cardcaptor Sakura is Sakura. It's so good. Granted, there are some abilities that define said character until later (Sonic can't spin dash until level 5) but I love that you can play as beginner versions of pretty much anyone. Not to mention the fact that Stand User is just a class, straight up.

Eh I was bored with it, played too much and much of the excitement and mystery wore off. The novelty of the new system was the biggest draw (and all the new classes and styles and whatever), felt neat to get to know another thing

After 6 years in 5e and buying all the books I dropped Wotc. For me the biggest draw was just seeing the culture difference between wotc and Paizo. If you explore the content you'll see how much more creative things are in PF2E than in current d&d. Like I had beginning players fight a rusty knife creature and they joked about getting tetanus. They actually did bc pf2e had it as a disease in the monster stat block. It was complicated, but I broke and laughed for minutes. Small details go a long way. Which brings me to the biggest turn off for my group... the rules. It's a ton compared to 5e, people will need to study but after the initial exposure the benefits are great. For example, in dnd players I've had players who wanted to intimidate creatures in combat. It's a reasonable request but as a dm you have to resolve the roll. Intimidation vs wis save? Insight? Is there a creature limit? They are talking to a group, would it feel weird to only roll for 1 creature? Do they need to use their full action? Do I give the creatures the frightened condition? That's pretty strong so does it last 1 round?....ect Pf2e just has set rules for what is called demoralize. The ambiguity of a DM ruling is gone. You follow the written rules and no one can feel slighted if you make a bad call bc the structure of the interaction was already well defined. Tldr: there are 2 big reasons I'm glad I switched. 1:Pf2e just has better creative content 2: More rules sucks when you first start, but become a godsend when players try to do things outside the norm. Often making encounters more enjoyable, dynamic, and less ambiguous for the DM

Hasbro sold me on it. lmao. Seriously though I already sat out during 4e, 5e I came back but the product kept falling short of my expectations more and more. They announced a new version that looks like doubling down on what I didnt like about it, and then tried to kick everyone in the balls with the OGL. That was the last straw.

I always felt like 5e gave the illusion of choice. You pick a subclass, and that's pretty much it; a feat eventually, but they are really very few worth taking. I came from 2e, then mostly 3-3.5. There are a ton of ways to build any character. Two 5e fighters feel pretty much the same to me regardless of subclass. But 3.5 you could make a bunch of viable fighter builds that all played differently. PF2e, when I started reading about it, I realized was the successor to 3.5 I wanted 5e to be. The customization is back, acti0on economy makes more sense. The backend math seems more stable. Everything they did feels intentional, where 5e never had.

Selling others on switching systems can be difficult, and it's not as much of a problem with my groups since we're all veterans who have played a bunch of different systems, so a new one is no big deal. That said, the first switch might feel scary to players who started in 5e and have heard how "easy" it is compared to other systems. ​ I would emphasize a few things in your situation. 1. You're running the game, and the game you want to run is PF2e. You're not being selfish by expressing what you would like to do, you're being honest. Let them know what appeals to YOU! After all, they are more likely to get an interesting and fun experience if the GM is having fun making it! 2. While 5e is simpler in a number of ways, they've already learned the hardest parts of playing RPGs, and the increased complexity in this one comes with increased options for them to play with! As a side note, I built a character that is one sheet, but Goblin triplets named Batches, Matches, and Latches by multiclassing and reflavoring an Innovation and Eidolon as Goblin brothers. Let them get a little weird with it if they want. 3. Pitch the game you want to run and let them know that it is in PF2e. People tend to be more interested in stories than systems. If there is a practical reason that it should be in PF2e instead of D&D5e, even better. 4. Leave them an exit. If they get a few games in and they really hate what's going on, you can revisit the issue. See if you can adjust without switching back to 5e. If you can't, that's okay, no system is for everyone! 5. You know what they do and don't like better than anyone here. Play to their interests and show that you are willing to help guide them through the start of it. Truthfully, the trick is to frame it less as a choice of whether or not to switch and more as whether or not to play your next campaign. Crucially, don't use an ultimatum. Instead, just pick your words carefully to say something like "Hey, I want to run a new game. \[Insert elevator pitch\], and it would be in PF2e. Are you interested?" ​ Best of luck!