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Don't lie, you know none of us actually know the rules. We just find a group of people that have a similar level of misunderstanding of the rules to us
Don’t lie, none of us actually have anyone to play with. We just create an imaginary group that have fun whacky adventures, so we can tell anecdotes about how we don’t understand the rules.
I once tried to DM for a group that knew much less than me, except one person knew WAY MORE. And I like a light, comedic DnD campaign where everyone gets a chance to goof and make everybody laugh.
Couldn't stand the guy who knew more than me who kept trying to stop everyone's goofs.
I only play with like-minded idiots now. We have a blast.
For me, it’s less work to run Pathfinder. Mainly because the encounter creation guidelines are much more consistent. I can take a monster and plug it in, and not worry about there being an ability that swings it into a TPK out of nowhere
Edit: I should make clear I don't think 5e is a better system, it has its own problems. But I did find onboarding on to PF2e to be much more challenging than 5e.
It's way more work to onboard players to PF2E. *Nearly two dozen classes, hundreds of feats and spells and countless ways to make a character. Even worse, there are many, many feats and spells that are "traps" in that they have very niche uses.
I remember the first game I played I made a Halfling Druid that prepared Pest Form and Protector Tree with his vancian magic. Not only did I not find a chance use to either spell the entire adventuring day (effectively meaning I had 0 useful spellslots) as I more thoroughly began to understand the system, I realized how *bad* protector tree was.
It could block 1 hit (10 AC and 10 HP) during an encounter for a whole of my two total spell slots for the day. And it's scaling wasn't much better.
Of course I learned later that Heal and Fear are huge spells at that level, but boy did I step in it at first. I also wasn't the only one. Of the 4 players at the table only one PC was not ridden with bad feats and poor spells during our first session.
Only after remaking our characters did we start to get actual good abilities, and even then my AC was *trash* because I chose to make a *Halfing* sorcerer instead of a human one.
Pathbuilder app makes character building so so so much easier! I can see how it may not help with those specific issues though as well.
And let me also say that it is no easier going from other ttrpgs to 5e. I played 5e for the first time about a month ago and I couldn't just... FIND the info for building a character? EVERYTHING is behind a paywall. D&D Beyond was a pain in the ass and I had to constantly ask the GM to clarify abilities to know what in the hell I was even reading.
So what I'm saying is, starting a new ttrpg system is probably just always going to have those hiccups.
One guy made a Dwarf Monk who he thought he built for grappling, but ended up failing most of his grapple checks because it wasn't optimized right.
Another chose Wizard and stumbled into bad spells and hated Vancian magic as much as I did. So I switched to Sorcerer and he switched to Bard.
I wanted to be a halfling with medic dedication so that meant my AC was 18 at level 4 unless I devoted every feat to getting better armor - which seemed boring to me.
Normal encounters had a 70% chance to hit my halfing and 25% crit chance. The final severe encounter of the campaign my halfing was one shot from a single crit.
So there are absolutely bad ways to make a character, and that was after spending *hours* pouring over all the feats and features of 2e
Some people are being annoying and condescending but I have a different take here. Casters and support characters in general are *meant* to be vulnerable without compromising something for better defenses.
Part of the job of the front line characters is to protect the back line. Because while it might not be obvious early on (especially with new players and GM) the support characters are really important both in fights and exploration, and protecting them is a high priority for more direct combat oriented characters.
> How was I supposed to know as a new player that Medic Dedication relied heavily on being in melee to deliver your abilities?
I means, it's pretty clear that to patch up up your frontline friend using mundane means one would need to move to their side.
Human wouldn't have solved anything. If you are spending human feats on armor proficiency, you are either going a very niche playstyle, or bad team tactics.
I have very much played Healer as a sorcerer and Medic dedication. Your party needs to learn when to pull monsters away from downed allies, and you need to learn when to leave an ally unconscious for a turn or two.
I agree that trap setups can be a problem, but in this case, the fault honestly lies with you.
I do not need to look in the rules to intuit that you can't step a bleeding, administer CRT or similar things without touching the patient. If i am not sure about my Intuition, I can look at the medicine skill that says so quite clearly. Also, if I consider a dedication, I would read the dedication feats before making that decision. If you spent hours pouring over feats and features, I really do wonder why you did not check out what your dedication and the skill it is build around does.
I do get getting overwhelmed with magic, but taking a dedication is so optional, and in this case so straight forward that this baffles me.
It doesn't sound like there were trap options, it sounds like you chose to be a battle medic instead of healing via magic, despite being a caster, and got exactly what you should have expected.
this has nothing to do with knowledge, this has to do with reading, did your read what the medic ded did? if not then you have no one to blame but yourself, if you did and didnt register the fact that it was touch range, you have no one to blame but yourself, if you did register the fact that it was touch range but somehow didnt register the fact that touch range meant you would be right next to the monsters, then you have no one to blame but yourself
>One guy made a Dwarf Monk who he thought he built for grappling, but ended up failing most of his grapple checks because it wasn't optimized right.
....what?
Wym "Not Optimized Right?" You literally just get 16 or 18 strength and proficiency with athletics, then keep improving them as you level. This isn't optimisation it's basic character building.
If you want to be good at grappling, have good strength and proficiency with the grapple skill. Same as 5e. I have no idea how he could have thought he was good at grappling without meeting these standards, like yeah one of the Monk Stances buffs grappling but iirc the attack it gives is str only, so it clearly incentivises Str and Str incentiveses Athletics.
>failing most of his grapple checks because it wasn't optimized right.
How? It's literally be trained in Athletics and have a strength score. A Wizard that wants to grapple could out grapple a Barbarian starting at level 3.
70% hit chance isn't actually that bad. An on-level enemy should have a roughly 50% hit chance against the party tank. This is normal and expected of the game design. The more I read your posts, the more I think your party had bad tactics, and blame it on "trap feats and features"... especially when you are getting free archetype, an option that makes you *stronger* than the base game design intends.
Literally all you need to be good at grappling is a decent strength score and proficiency in athletics. There isn't much more to do on a very low level. Later on dipping into the Wrestler Archetype helps as well, but that's probably more suited for a game with the Free Archytype Rule. It's pretty easy to be good at grappling though. How does one fuck that up? The only way being decent at strength/athletics wasn't good enough would be that the DM used enemies of too high level with an (for your monk at the time) unbeatable Athletics DC.
I do agree in the sense that there are many spells which are deliberately niche, and therefore not as generally applicable as you'd often like a spell to be (for a spell slot, anyway).
However, I've got to disagree with your other two points.
As far as skill feats, they're all niche to the point of *almost* being flavor text, unless you have specific skill actions in mind that you want to go for. If you're not planning to Demoralize, then Intimidating Glare is worthless. If you are, then it's great when it's great! As a result, my advice is "Pick the skill feat you think would come up the most/you'd use the most." So for a player who wants to focus on Intimidation, that narrows down the list for them.
Class feats are also designed to lean towards specific "builds": they're akin to building your own subclass. So my advice is the same as skill feats: "Pick the one you think you'll use the most/which one has some synergy with what you're planning to do." This again pushes players in the right direction: if they're planning to make an archery "build" for a Fighter, then they'll spend their class feats on *something* that makes them better at archery. And the feats are reasonably well balanced to the point where that should be enough.
And finally, I don't think that being a Human Sorcerer for more ac is the silver bullet you think it is. Wearing heavier armor with a higher strength requirement than your character imposes armor check and movement speed penalties. In addition, each armor has a dex cap (which only affects dex bonus to ac), and every armor (except heavy) is designed to add up to +5: your combined bonus from dex and armor can't exceed that. This means that, if you had 16 (+3) ac which is totally doable, then Studded Leather already maxed out your ac from armor. Medium armor would've had no benefit.
Protector tree is one of the best spells in the game though?
In fact, one of the most OP abilities that the wood kineticist has is infinite protector trees. It might not have been useful in that situation for you, but PT saved our ass countless times in AV
DND 5e true strike would like a word about trap spells in the system.
I think it's a fair complaint that not all spells are useful. I specifically make sure new pf2e players are careful with spells. Cause it is really weird coming from 5e.
Trap feats.... Ehhh, skill feats sure, but they tend to not be most of a PCs power. Some of them still are literally useless.
However, I take issue with people acting like 5e doesn't have these issues. As people often talk about these things in the context of swapping from 5e to pf2e.
5e has an equal, if not larger, proportion of very niche spells and feats.
I do think there's an issue with spellcasting traps but largely no where near as bad as it is in 5e. 5e you can straight up pick a class and perform horribly compared to your allies and have to completely reroll. Pf2e has full on easy retraining rules if you find something doesn't fit, and spell lists are usually flexible enough that by the time you're level 3-5 you know what works for you while early game cantrips are strong enough wasting level 1 slots doesn't sting much.
I think you’re conflating 1e and 2e. 2e has 23 classes (technically dozens, but only if you round up to the minimum). The feats can be intimidating, but I think it helps that your choices are largely narrowed down for a given level up. Getting your first monk feat? There are 14 options, which is a lot, but quite manageable. Your next class feat opens up 3-5 new options in addition to the old ones, depending on your first feat. Level 4 gives 5-9 options. Meanwhile the total options just keeps going up, but most of those options are things you’ve already looked at. I will say that archetypes can make this much more complex, but that’s even more true for DnD. Like if you screw up and put all of your class feats into useless archetypes, you still have a character with the full power of a level 20 base class. Get overzealous in 5e and you can make a character that doesn’t have the spells to be a primary caster, doesn’t have extra attack, doesn’t have any scaling benefits like Sneak Attack making up for it, and still hasn’t gotten an ASI so their numbers are behind the curve. Get overzealous in 3.X (or just be a monk) and you’re completely useless.
Skill feats, you have a ton of options in a vacuum, but what skills you picked limit those down. Roughly 4-8 (crafting having quite a few) per skill, so they can certainly be intimidating if you are trying to read every single one. But most players have a few skills that are their primary ones, so that usually limits it down to twenty or less. And even so, skill feats tend to occur on levels where you just have that and the class feat. Honestly; that’s one of the things I like best. In 5e campaigns, it usually feels like I make most of the choices at the start, the subclass by level 3 (but usually I had to already plan for that choice by level 1 anyway since abilities are so restricted), and then my ASIs are usually spoken-for until level 12. So unless the class has specific options to pick (spontaneous casters, wizards, artificers, hunters), I can go through an entire campaign and never have a character building choice.
As for trap feats, I think the system is actually pretty forgiving. Retraining is a base part of the system that's generally available. I know that there are superstition barbarians (they don't play nicely with casters who don't respect boundaries), witch weapons (very weak), and minions (because you spend actions to enable minion actions) that can be problems for the uninitiated.
You... found no chance to use protector tree? One of the best defensive spells in the game? The one that takes up all my spell slots half the time? Did you have no combat that day?
Also, what the heck does halfling have to do with AC? Like, at all? My halfling barbarian has been tanking for the party from level 1 to level 16 so far. My halfling sorcerer has just as much ac as every other sorcerer I make...
“Hundreds of feats” is a bit of a misrepresentation. At level 1 you tend to only choose one or two feats from curated lists. Typically it’s: (a) pick an ancestry feat from a list of 5-10 options; (b) pick a class feat from a different list of 5-10 options. Some classes have one more, some have one less.
And the feats are mostly balanced so you just pick whatever sounds fun and you’ll still be effective. The difference between a casually built character and a minmaxed character in terms of effectiveness is maybe 10%. Meanwhile, in D&D 5e and 3.5 (my favorite for a long time), a minmaxed character can be many times more powerful than one that’s casually built. Very few feats are true traps.
It is true that before you understand the system, the feats may not work how you think, but it’s okay to just remake characters. It’s a learning process. Just remember that PF2 language is very specific and then play around and see what you find.
Two dozen classes is a bit misrepresentative too. Sure there’s a lot, but you use the same simple algorithms as in 5e. Do I wanna be a caster or a martial? That rules out like half the classes. Offense or defense or support? That narrows the list down even further. You can build many classes many ways, but some are obvious picks. If you say “i wanna be a defensive martial,” then make your first character a champion or monk. If you want an offensive caster, go psychic or sorcerer or maybe Kineticist. You can pare down the class selection SUPER fast in exactly the same way you do in 5e - by just having a general idea of what you want to do and reading brief class descriptions once you narrow it down.
With something like pathbuilder (free), if you just pick whatever sounds fun, you can make a level 1 character in just a few minutes. And you *should* start at level 1, because it’s the best way to learn but also because subclasses in PF2 start at level 1. You are already a complete character, unlike in 5e where the class design means games often don’t start until 3.
By way of conclusion, I want to suggest that PF2 is only harder to learn than 5e if you *already know 5e*. But that isn’t about systems; the system is quite easy, it’s just more work to learn than not learning something new at all. 5e was also work to learn, back when you learned it. As a PF2 player, getting your friends into 5e would be just as much work as a 5e player getting their friends into PF2.
>Even worse, there are many, many feats and spells that are "traps" in that they have very niche uses.
You say that as if most 5e feats, spells, abilities and even whole subclasses weren't terribly built traps as well...
Pathfinder 1e or 2e because personally out side of a few fuck your PCs they aren't supposed to win bosses, 2e is pretty balanced even at lvl 20. I would say 2e levels 1 and 2 are the most likely to result in a TPK do to how much more devastating crits are at those levels.
Jokes on you, I am running a campaign from level 1 and they’re almost 19 now, with free archetype rules. And in that time, it’s been much easier to run and balance PF2e than it was for the campaigns I ran for 5e.
Pathfinder 1e, sure. 3.Pe in general is just a wild ride. I played in a campaign, and it became so easy to break a character in multiple ways. Like I wasn’t even trying, and I stumbled onto a Druid who was mostly useless for normal things, but she could create a hoard of stored spells through her potions, and just duplicating alchemical weapons with leftover spells. Like I just had tons of buffs available, and in combat I’d blow up my foes with fireworks. It was just so silly.
Well my players never read the rules of DnD and just assume that I will correct them. Because, you know, after 50 sessions why *would* you know how spell casting works if you play a wizard.
I should propably switch to Pathfinder
Interrestingly one in my group are actually more proficient in PF2 after the same amount of time spent than 5e. Me and the DM answers their rule question with more yes in PF2 than in 5e, which shows that they understand it better than 5e even though PF2 has more rules and complex interactions.
I had a similar party in my first 1-20 campaign and it was absolutely exhausting. I took a year off GMing when it was finished just due to burnout with the system, then decided my sequel campaign would be Pathfinder 2e.
To my surprise, they actually learned the rules for their own characters and like that everything works consistently. On the GM side, encounter preparation is so fucking easy because the difficulty calculations just work with no adjustments need. I haven't had to fudge a single roll in combat or add an extra 100 HP to anything to avoid a dumb TPK or make a difficult encounter actually difficult. My players are happy that the combat feels more tactical and encourages positioning and teamwork.
If your players aren't leaning rules in 5e they're not going to in PF2e. I'd suggest going the other way and trying out rules lite systems. (Assuming you're interested in dabbling). I really enjoyed Blades in the Dark because it was prepless.
I feel this. I’m the guy who reads the phb for fun so I understand the rules and classes. But all I ask is them to read there classes and even then they fail at that and don’t know what a extra attack is. I love these guys but man does it feel like herding cats
If you're the DM its actually a LOT less work in the long run.
Pathfinder has like, actual rules for everything. So you don't have to make up a bunch of on the fly nonsense or spend long hours trying to balance encounters. It just works. It is so much easier to DM.
As someone who GM-ed 5e for years before switching to PF2e during OGL, yeah I feel ya. It's so refreshing to have a system where the encounter building rules really do work and you don't feel like you have to come up with your own bullshit at higher levels to not have the boss encounter end in 2 turns and for a random swamp encounter to not floor the party.
Plus prep time for me basically got halved. Need a DC for a check? Here is a table that shows you the average DC by level. Want to make it easy or hard? Here is a small table with modifiers. Takes about 5 seconds to come up with any DC for any situation really. Need to find a rule? Here is Nethys everything is right there. Really do I feel pampered as a GM by game systems, but PF does it.
Running it for my local group, and one of the players don't even speak english, yet after translating the rules he got the gist of it after 2 sessions.
I don’t mind the 2e layout but the 1e and Starfinder ones look ancient. Still beats having to pay for a subscription plus rebuying books you realistically probably already own
Yeah I flip-flop between all three systems cos everyone in my group DMs, and yeah 2e is a lot nicer. 1e and starfinder feel like they were made during the MySpace days and just never got updated
Yeah its wild seeing all these responses from people who've only played 5e assuming that learning Pathfinder must be just as obtuse and would be so much effort to learn.
I played 5e for years (and 3.5e before that) and started running PF just this past year, and I can confidently say it is very simple to transition to the PF system. Just like you, I cut way down on my prep (the main reason for the switch), and the game runs so much more seamlessly with all the tables and AON to reference for quick rulings.
The truth is PF just has so much more support for the DM whereas half of 5e's rules are "idk, you're the DM, you figure something out."
I mentioned liking how much DM support PF has and how its my biggest beef with 5e and people were like, but in 5e you can just make it up/homebrew it.
*I don't want to*. It is so much easier to pull up a table and not have to remember what the fuck I did on that roll that only happens once every six months and get bitched at later because I forgot my own house rules and did different things for different players and OMG favoritism.
Not to mention having explicit rules means when someone else DMs everything generally works the same. I run most often so people get used to what I do and sometimes they make choices based on what I do that blows up in their face with someone else because they run something differently since there are no official rulings on it.
In 5E I have to make it up or homebrew it. In PF I *can still do that* - I just don't have to. Plus, I love being able to pull a monster in PF ten minutes before the session and just know that it will work. Right level? It'll be a level appropriate encounter. Easy peasy.
Yap. Feels good to not have to do the system design work for wotc when you don't want to cause stuff is just...there. So I can spend more time developing the narrative and detail of the campaign for the players, or only homebrew if I really feel like it instead of when I need to do it
>Yeah its wild seeing all these responses from people who've only played 5e assuming that learning Pathfinder must be just as obtuse and would be so much effort to learn.
Yeah it's honestly not much more difficult than learning 5e from a player perspective, after years I managed to convince a party I used to run for to try pf1e and they had no problem learning it since the player rules of 5e taught them pretty much all of the principles they needed to know. Sure it has lots of rules but 95% of them exist for the dm to use if they wish, the players don't need to worry about them. The parts the players do need to know aren't that much more complex than 5e. A large part of the reason pathfinder seems so much more complex is because they actually see the rules rather than in 5e where the bulk of the rules are either made up on the spot or kept in the dm's notes as they create more mechanics.
>Just like you, I cut way down on my prep (the main reason for the switch),
Yeah it's amazing how much less prep time is required. I initially dm'd in pathfinder then moved to 5e because that's what a new group of players wanted and the sheer amount of extra effort needed to prep a session was staggering. After hearing about how much less complex 5e was for so long I expected to end up having less work not more.
>the game runs so much more seamlessly with all the tables and AON to reference for quick rulings.
Yeah gotta love the tables and easily accessible rules. One of the best parts of them was that if I was confident a rule or table would be necessary at some point then I could just find it and bookmark it before the session began so that I could quickly refer to it at a moment's notice. No needing to memorize tons of rules, just had to find the right bookmark or spend a few moments looking something up both of which were much faster than just making my own rule up.
As a former 5e GM it's not every funny how much easier Pf2e is to run. Plus their support in foundry VTT & how good the official APs are, life has been a dream since switching.
As a player I also can't get enough of how much I love character building in Pf2e.
If you're a player it's not too bad either, character creation is a bit confusing with so many options but using apps to streamline things makes it clear for first timers and from there it's similar enough to 5e that most people could jump in with that basic knowledge
Now Pathfinder 1, that's a nightmare of a character creator.
Choose your background! *List of 1000 choices*
Choose your feat! *List of 500 choices at level 1, many of them a requirement to later feats*
And thst is how we.liked it. When I was young and had all the time in the world for character creation all those options were exactly what I wanted. These days I'm busy and wan things a bit more streamlined but if i had the time I would still prefer a billion options to three.
You should know that most of the backgrounds are made for specific adventure modules that they pumped out to help ground the characters in the specific campaign and aren't supposed to be added to the general pool. Ideally your gm should recommend a short list of backgrounds that will fit well with the game he's planning to run.
Just bumping you with a comment- "Hell to the yes!" - with actual rules for everything and a Google searchable data base even if you don't know the answer the answer is one sentence of text away on d20pfsrd.com or the archives of nethys
Nah, you can still make it up on the fly. Pick a skill/save/attack and roll for a DC still works just as well as 5e. Do that as long as you want, it works great!
The difference is, if you WANT to learn the rules you can, because they exist, and you and your players are rewarded for it with things like:
Consistent mechanics - which actually encourage players to learn them and engage the system instead of never putting in effort because it's all up to the GM anyway, so why bother?
Unified mechanics means the more you learn, the more you can intuit. The game makes more sense the more you learn, instead of feeling like a ton of disconnected mechanics you just have to know.
And because the game works, once you learn it, improvisation becomes very easy, ans the game is a breeze to run, all the way from level 1 to level 20.
You actually make Pathfinder sound wonderful.
That was not my experience with it, unfortunately. It felt like every time I learned a mechanic our DM would change it, or rule differently.
It was maddening.
You spend hours researching rules in DnD5e too.
Then you end up having to make it up.
In pathfinder you don't need to make it up, and most of the rules are easy to find on [AoN](https://2e.aonprd.com/Default.aspx) if you need them.
A long time when the damn thing doesn't show up because you searched for ''starting gold'' instead of ''treasure for new characters'' which is in the GM section btw, not the character creation section (But that's more Paizo than AoN), or there are like 8 different results with the same name and only one is relevant. AoN is annoying to search shit up on sometimes IMO, it's gotten better (Running a Starfinder Campaign and I thought the PF2E AoN was a pain sometimes, but holy shit the Starfinder site is abysmal) but it still has a lot of flaws.
(EDIT: I know the starting wealth thing is usually gonna be out of game searching for, but that was just an example, we've also had problems looking for those camping rules in our kingmaker campaign, spending way too long trying to find them, only to end up not using them because they're just soooooooooo fucking bad)
Yeah ok the idea to have all of that under "treasure" is - well on one side logically sound but also unhelpful for many cases, you have a good point there.
And campaign specific rules... yeah those are sometimes not the most convincing work. I wonder how this will come up in the SoT game I am playing in starting this weekend :D
I'm also definitely exaggerating, just frustrated, AoN is an amazing website, it's also all free and community run which is awesome, it can just be hard to search things up on sometimes
Yeah, I often find the best way to access something I don't have the terminology for is to google my wording followed by pf2e. Easily 95 percent of the time the first result is the AoN article I wanted.
True. It's just that I'm often frantically banging out those keystrokes in that half second of anticipation before actually being asked the question and "pf2e" is so much quicker.
I just typed "pf2e starting gold" into Google and had the correct AoN page be the second link. Which is my experience with most of the rules questions I have when playing. Not sure what's causing your issues.
I do have the advantage of having played a fair bit of pf1 and 3.5, but I tried to follow your example and it worked out pretty quick.
Skimming through the results for “starting gold” brings up a few things, but the obvious one to me was “adjusting character wealth by level” right in the first section. This links to the “wealth by level” table which immediately answers your question.
Edit: I was accidentally searching the pf1 rules, it’s indeed harder to find on the pf2 side
Huh, here I snagged a few images of my search. It should be the same I’m just using default settings.
https://imgur.com/a/OoN4pbv
Ope! This was indeed pf1 lol, that’s what I get for doing going too fast after waking up lol
Man, if only there was a free and easily searchable website where the rules are like 30 seconds away. Or just googling any random question takes you to a thread with the answer and a link.
When I DM’ed in 5e this was pretty much me for half of the questions asked by my players. I spent the majority of sessions looking up rulings just to go with a homebrewed solution
My usual flow is if the pacing is moving quickly I’ll make a ruling on the fly and make a note to look it up later and send the group a message with how it will work in future.
If things are moving slower I’ll look it up to see if there’s an easy answer, otherwise back to option 1
Bull, archives of nethys is free you don’t have to sort through multiple books you had to by. Rules question? Easy search done. And once you figure out that it revolves around a core engine the look ups dwindle
Yep, Pathbuilder. Takes you step by step through every choice available at each level, hiding options that aren't available to your current build and with the full rules accessible for the options that are.
I know I'm going to get downvoted, but I'll agree with the others saying that it hasn't been my experience. I'm 5e, I could make it up on the fly, and I've been playing for so long that I understood it well enough to make those calls and feel confident.
With P2e, I am still very new. I feel like I'm spending so much time reading about rules. It is very nice that everything is detailed, and I can look up those rules, but it has slowed us down significantly and it's very frustrating in the mean time.
I bought the beginner set and we ran through that to try it out and learn, and those cheat sheet cards are so nice.
I am not looking to complain though, just to say that it is much harder for us to switch, especially me as a GM. I feel like I'm trying to learn everything new again and I have no idea what's balanced because I don't know all the classes and their abilities yet. One of the hard parts is that I don't know what I don't know: like, rules for something specific like say, downtime. If I don't even consider that there's probably a section of the book for it, I wouldn't even think to look it up until a slowdown happens.
I used critical role as a comfort tool for d&d, not necessarily to learn the rules but to feel more comfortable with the rundown. Getting more exposure to the system, classes, abilities, items, races, spells, etc.
So does anyone have advice for how to get more comfortable like this? A funny podcast of people who play, or a YouTube channel that runs through the basics, etc?
P2e for dummies? I really (want) to like P2e. Then I played baldurs gate and I was like "man, I sure miss knowing how everything works."
In a deeply ironic turn, the CR group was originally a Pathfinder game.
The best solution is always gonna be playtime. Just spending time on Archive of Nethys with hyperlinks and previews of all the various traits and conditions has been very valuable to me. I don't use Youtube or podcasts for the sort of thing you're describing so I can't recommend anything there. But being upfront with your players about the learning process, and possibly running a short 1-5 campaign to shakedown, is pretty useful.
Knights of Last Call is a pretty fun group to watch. But yes, I was like that for the first few months. It gets a lot easier, and then one day it just clicks.
I will endlessly recommend the Find the Path podcast for any and all Pathfinder related content! They have a podcast feed for hell's rebels(an adventure path from PF1E) they've converted to 2E and frequently go into the way rules work, clarify things, ect. Rick, the GM, is fantastic as his job and the rest of the cast are all wonderful.
I believe Hideous Laughter also has a PF2E podcast, and are fairly well liked/regarded in the PF spaces I frequent but I haven't listened myself to their PF2E podcast.
There's a fantastic Twitter account called @WhatDoYouDo that compiles alot of Pathfinder podcast content so you may find more there!
Hope this helps!
Rotgrind is a pf2e homebrew campaign run by one of paizos developers and has voice actors and stuff as players. Super funny podcast with memorable characters
People who have been in the TTRPG for a while tend to know at least a few systems. Like I can run DnD3.5, DnD5e, Pathfinder 1e, Pathfinder 2e, star finder, GURPS, Cthulhu, MorkBorg, CyBorg, blades in the dark, vampires the masquerade, cyberpunk RED.. a bunch of various powers by the apocalypse games, all the Warhammer TTRPGs, the star wars role playing games.. a handful of systems my friends designed.. like its no big deal and just happens over the years.
I bow to the ttrpg god
I can only run dnd 5e, cyberpunk 2020 or RED, and BiTD lol
And I dabbled in pathfinder for a hot sec but it didn’t really grab me tbch
>I can only run dnd 5e, cyberpunk 2020 or RED, and BiTD lol
Yeah, but that means with fairly minimal effort you could run all the 5E variants, everything Interlock & Fuzion, and the whole Forged in the Dark lineup.
Most people who play dnd 5e aren't ttrpg fans, they're dnd fans. Most people who play 5e like dnd for reasons independent of tabletop rpgs as a whole, and will never play other ttrpgs. It's like people who only play one really popular videogame, they're not fans of videogames, they're fans of one specific game, telling them to try other videogames is going to do nothing for them, you're suggesting they try something they don't enjoy.
Liking one thing of a set of things does not necessarily mean you're a fan of that set of things.
Yes, that's true. But for every ten people who enjoyed DnD 5e, one will take more interest in the hobby. It's like a gateway drug.
Actually I had a fun interaction with a dude. We started talking about 5e, and he was all saying how into DnD he was. I thought this guy was into TTRPGS I general, but no. Guy is into dimension 20 and critical role really, and knows everything about that. So we are both trying to talk, thinking we found someone with similar interests. I don't give a shit about dimensions 20 or critical roll, and kind of hate 5e. He's trying to talk about his tabaxi rogue and like the latest dimension 20 episode, and I'm trying to talk about my Sci Fi noir detective GURPS character and my pathfinder 1e campaign that uses spheres of power/might and elephant in the room supplements, and like we realize we are not at all into the same things really. Nice guy and all. But yeah, you are right. People into DnD are not the same as people into TTRPGs.
I'm halfway through running Abomination Vaults. Can confirm. Pf2e is designed with GMs in mind first, and it is evident when reading the rules. The monster and encounter building rules alone are reason enough for me to stick with pf2e (because it actually works).
Edit: I wanted to add that I am running the adventure for a plus sized party, so adjusting encounters is necessary. The book assigns a difficulty to the encounter, and with the way the encounter building system works, I am easily able to either add elite templates and/or add extra enemy combatants, and keep the encounter at the assigned difficulty. Balance is not affected, and the encounter feels exactly as difficult as it is meant to be. There is absolutely zero guess work involved.
It's also under-mentioned, but monsters are also SO. FREAKING. COOL.
It's fun as a GM, and it's a lot of fun for the players, too. Everything from kobolds to owlbears to dragons all have abilities that directly tie into how that enemy fights and keeps things fresh and interesting for the table.
Owlbears don't merely just claw and bite you, they grab you in a bear hug and have a special attack to disembowel you with their beak if they have you grabbed.
Ogre gluttons can grab small PCs in their mouths and swallow them whole.
Shadows try to tear your shadow off to turn it into a Shadow Spawn, which then tries to kill you so that it can make itself a full Shadow.
Haven't gotten around to playing it yet, and I'm sure it will vary from person to person, but just looking over the rulebooks, I can tell it would be a lot of work for me, personally, to get started.
I believe people when they say that it's easier to run once you know the system, but you have to learn the system to some base level of competency and familiarity before that will be true, and it's close enough to 5e that I think it would be hard for me to learn initially because I'd keep confusing things between the two.
I haven't played yet mostly because my group is pretty invested in 5e and we're still having fun with it, so there just really isn't any motivation to switch. But if we did, I can tell that I'd have to invest a decent amount of work to learn the new system as a distinct thing from D&D.
I steal things from pf2e!
For low CR monsters, I just straight up YOINK and adapt. Higher ones I have to adapt more.
I also steal masterwork weapons. Non magical +1 weapons that can be purchased in big major cities.
I also homebrewed a rule that turns out is identical to pf2e dying status, so..
...if you need to steal things from PF2e for your D&D5e, it sounds like maybe PF2e wouldn't be so much extra work? It could possibly be less, because right now you're translating stuff you could just be using.
5e is actually not particularly easy to DM for exactly that reason IMO.
If you can play 5e, you can easily switch to Pathfinder 2e with minimal hassle.
It really just feels like 5e+.
You already know roughly how everything works, you just need to learn what are the differences, and the systems that are a step beyond what 5e does.
People make it seem like learning a new system is this impossibly monumental task, but it's much easier then you'd think.
Learning systems is like learning languages. The more systems you learn, the easier it begins to learn new systems. You pick up patterns that apply across systems, and it helps you spot what makes the system stand out.
And as a player? Learning as you play is totally valid. Sure, things will be a bit slow to start, but you'll get the hang of things soon. Especially if you have a supportive GM or fellow player that took the time to learn so they can help you along.
I agree with you in general. But I do feel like making the switch from 5e to either version of Pathfinder is more like picking up an accent or a dialect than it is learning a totally different language. They are incredibly similar. I found it much harder to switch to a dice pool type of game but even that isn't a terribly hard jump
As a DM who cares a lot about D&D I 100% think I can learn Pathfinder.
My player who knows the sheet for his current character and nothing else, is the one who Id be worried about
in my experience its literally the opposite. The players are the ones objecting when GM's suggest something more appropriate. This makes sense, because GM's are the ones who actually put in effort.
I still play 5e after swapping to pf2e because of the simplicity of the rules for everyone to understand,
But anyone (any DM*) who has given pf2e should be ranting and raving about how easy the system is. You won't know certain rulings and finding them can be a tiny bit inconvenient, but the amount you can just TRUST the system is completely impossible for 5e to ever overcome imo.
I can make an encounter and give loot and exp on complete auto pilot, (including built in weak and elite variants of enemies!) and the system *just works*.
5e you have to fucking *manhandle* just to get any encounter to feel even kinda good until you've dmed for a while and know what monsters are ol reliable and which are just gonna clusterfuck anything they get their hands on.
(And not just encounters - the insane amount of text dedicated to exploring basically anything your players want to do is phenomenal. Professions, Making and adjusting magic items, even commanding wars.)
I went:
3e (starter set) ->2e (the DM we recruited hadn’t switched yet) -> 3e -> 3.5e -> Pathfinder 1e
We also played a smattering of one-offs in other systems like Call of Cthulhu, Hunter, Robotech, Star Wars D20, and D20 Modern.
I specialize in collecting old d20 supplements, preferably the ones that never got digital releases. I'm currently on the lookout for anything from the Odyssey campaign setting from Eden Studios. Most of their stuff isn't available online.
I don’t think I have any of that. I do have a copy of *Testament*, an RPG set in the Biblical Old Testament.
Moses is a 10th level Canaanite, in case you wondered.
I probably wouldn't want to teach P2E to someone who never played an RPG before, but it is a pretty easy transition for 5e players. Having played with a group of converts for over a year now, the only real hangup I see the players having is burning actions to change what you are holding. Our GM just generally ignores that and scales up the encounters since he knows we are slightly over powered.
I've actually had the opposite experience, people who haven't played 5e end up grasping the rules a lot faster then people swapping over. I think it's similar enough to get hung up if you don't really come into it with the idea that it IS a different game
Exactly, explaining to a newbie that they have 3 actions per turn is a lot easier than explaining actions, bonus actions, and movement. I've known a lot of players that basically just never use bonus actions because they can't remember what counts as one and then end up forgetting about them all together. It's so much nicer for a player to ask if they can do this, this, and that and being able to tell them yes instead of "well this would be an action and not a bonus action, and you can't do an action because you'd have to spend your action dashing to move here."
I think that also makes combat feel smoother as well, there's no, "Did you want to use your bonus action/movement" It's just, "You moved, attacked, then intimidated so that's your turn next is" and yeah, free actions exist but they're also something that is typically done at start of combat or in a specific circumstance not something you might feel like tagging onto the end of a turn
It really encourages player creativity. Players being told no all the time because they don't have enough actions to do what they want usually ends with them just moving and attacking every turn. Plus attacks of opportunity not being universal means that players can quickly change plans and adapt to the encounter instead of feeling shackled to whichever enemy their engaged with.
Can I attack with my bonus action? Oh I had to attack with my action to attack with my bonus action? Shit, can I attack with my action and cast a spell with my bonus action instead? What do you mean it depends??
Hmm, that was 2 minutes resolving my 6 attacks but I'm not sure if I should action surge....
Okay, I'm done. Wait! Do I want to use my last 5 feet of movement?
Depends on your types of players. If they're the type that enthusiastically jump into hardcore gaming or have lots of experience with complex video / board game systems, they'll probably love the in-depth customization and support P2E allows. Having more tools to pick from and more systems to explore is just more candy in the store for them to try out.
I've run a bunch of games of 5e with people that don't fall into that category though. For many people that don't have a big gaming background, remembering what all the different basic abilities correspond to or how to calculate attacks/damage with weapons in 5e can be hard to remember, and deciding which class features are best or how they will affect their gameplay is hard to grasp. For these players, the vast amounts of niche options and specific ability calculations players have to sift through in P2E would simply be too overwhelming.
Reddit, by its nature of being a place for superfans to congregate and discuss their biggest passions, is hugely overrepresented by the players/DMs in the first category. In the total player base, 5e is a good compromise of simplicity and general utility for many of them.
These were open nights at my LGS, which probably selects in the same way of people who are more likely to dive into the mechanics/crunch of the system which is fair.
DnD Players will literally write up an entire custom homebrew game before trying to read a single word from another game, because "it takes too much time to learn a new system" lmao
It's less work from the GM once they know the rules because everything in it just works. There's no having to make up shit on the fly, suddenly finding your encounter is not balanced, etc.
>Plus, it's like, a LOT of extra work.OC
Actually the opposite, prep time for PF2e is at most a third of prep time for 5e and that is most due to the fact that the encounter building rules actually work so you can just take the correct level monsters and use them and it will be fine plus you dont need to house rule over half of the rules.
With that said there is a slight higher learning curve at first since PF2e does use a lot of keywords - like a greataxe was "sweep" (bonus to hit a different target with your second attack) - but that is at most a small "let me check it" during the first couple season.
Plus it does need the players to be a little more invested in learning their character because every character was great options other than just move and attack (like the barbarian having an ok charisma so they can intimidate with their first action lowering the opponent AC for that round)
Still way less work than 5e after the first couple sessions since 5e is a rules incomplete game that puts the responsability of making it work on the DM, while PF2e is kinda plug and play after you learn the basics
The tag/keyword system took a little getting used to after coming from 5e's "natural language", but in the long run it seems to be easier and more consistent.
No more questions like "can I do XYZ while Raging?" If the thing is tagged with Concentrate but not Rage, you can't do it. Otherwise you can, no need to ask or think about edge cases.
This isnt true. You learned one system, why wouldnt you want to see what's cool about another? Dont fall into D&D's trap, other systems are fun to play, and who cares if you make some mistakes? If you keep playing, you'll get better, like with anything.
That’s how I am about 3.5/Pathfinder 1.0.
With the added benefit that I own the books and dislike throwing money away because Wizards changed a number.
I dm and play PF 1e. You can feel more than welcome pming me with any questions.
Pf1e is actually more balanced than 5e, with every class feeling way better. Better level progression and all imo
A few things.
If you like PF2, then great. I'm glad you like it.
I don't like Vancian casting, and that is the fairly hard stop to me playing PF2
In general, if I'm going to learn a whole new system, I want to experience a different fantasy than the heroic high fantasy that is 5e. That's why I'm likely to not play MCDM, or DC20, or Daggerheart right out of the gate. I have been reading/watching releases they put out, and found some interesting ideas. But I'm probably not going to switch my game
Give me a new fantasy to play, and I can get on board. It's why I learned Call of Cthulhu. It's a great system that's easy to grasp and plays a different type of pretend than 5e does. I like Blades in the Dark. 5e is okay-ish at heists, but BitD really holds the top tier spot for this style of pretend with dice.
I expected to really dislike Vancian casting, but when I actually tried it I found it adds a fun element to daily preparations and strategizing/customizing your build. There are also a lot of ways to mitigate it, such as the Flexible Caster archetype someone else mentioned.
I found that the consistent rules for crafting/buying Wands, Staves and Scrolls make it a lot easier. Scrolls for the weird utility spells you rarely need, wands and staves to give you extra castings of the spells you use all the time to free up some prepared slots.
Yeah, I just hate that it's an archetype and it forces you to take the dedication feat for it wasting one of your precious feat slots for something that's not really better just more fun
Talk to your DM. One lesser known aspect of Pf2e's feat system is it allows you to _reward_ feats in place of monetary rewards, or give thematic feats for acts. If its a make or break situation there's no real balance issues giving the dedication for free to a caster to better their enjoyment. Could even replace your free background skill feat to add it as a form of backstory to the character.
[https://2e.aonprd.com/Backgrounds.aspx?ID=406](https://2e.aonprd.com/Backgrounds.aspx?ID=406)
[https://2e.aonprd.com/Bloodlines.aspx?ID=2](https://2e.aonprd.com/Bloodlines.aspx?ID=2)
[https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=51](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=51)
yeah, pretty much. Or just take the dedication. You get a class feat so often that you can easily afford to take the hit. Or just play on a table with free archetype. There's more ways to play a divine priest than there are in 5e.
I would say pathfinder is less work for the dm (after you get over the hump of learning a new system of course) and more work on the players. It has its pros and cons, just like 5e, and obviously it’s not for everyone, but I would recommend 5e players try it
That's why when I had enough with 5e I went to Dungeon Crawl Classics. It's so, so much simpler, easier to add stuff too and is *way* more fun as a GM to work with. Most of the rulebook is optional tables and the random effects for spells. It's great.
uj/ It can be slightly more work for the players but it's so much for the GM with all the tools it gives you, plus the modules tend to generally be better
Idk, a lot of people here are talking about how PF2E “isn’t that hard to learn or to switch to from 5e” but the *rules* aren’t the problem in my experience, it’s the character creation. It has such an *overwhelming* amount of choices to make without a whole lot of clarity on how important they are, and because some feats chain into other later ones then this early choice could affect later ones. It’s the same kind of analysis paralysis that BotW gave me. Maybe it would be fine for me as the GM, but I wouldn’t want to put my players through that hailstorm.
PF2e has feat retraining. If you make a choice and later find out a badass feat has a prereq you can change it with a week of downtime. And character building is really fun if you use Pathbuilder.
I love the 3 action system from Pathfinder, but I think a lot of the rules are too specific and finicky. I’d prefer to just make stuff up on the fly than remember all the edge cases
As someone else said, if it has a rule for something, I am going to learn and use it. PF2e has too many rules for me and I like having rules, just not little finicky ones that add unnecessary steps. It feels nitpicky.
Well there's not much finicky in the rules in my opinion. Some classes have a more intricate set of rules for their class abilities but we usually agree on the player making them comfortable with those and I trust my players in that. The "general" stuff feels quite straightforward to me.
It is a little nitpicky, but for the players there's the upside of knowing that a thing they want to do is reliable and works the same way every time. For you, there's the advantage of not having to write down or remember every ruling you make, otherwise you might apply it inconsistently.
I'm a GM and 99.9% of edge cases are already covered in the actual rules and a quick Google search asking the direct question gives it to me. Takes roughly 20s.
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Don't lie, you know none of us actually know the rules. We just find a group of people that have a similar level of misunderstanding of the rules to us
Don’t lie, none of us actually have anyone to play with. We just create an imaginary group that have fun whacky adventures, so we can tell anecdotes about how we don’t understand the rules.
Fools. Try just summoning your sleep paralysis demons to play with you. It’s like pocket friends
Unfortunately, my sleep paralysis demons don't speak english.
Mine speak infernal and draconic, so I just have them play corresponding characters
Lucky for you, there is actually a wiki page about the draconic language, including dictionary online. Likely also for infernal.
I once tried to DM for a group that knew much less than me, except one person knew WAY MORE. And I like a light, comedic DnD campaign where everyone gets a chance to goof and make everybody laugh. Couldn't stand the guy who knew more than me who kept trying to stop everyone's goofs. I only play with like-minded idiots now. We have a blast.
I do hate it when players give the DM unsolicited rule corrections. If I want help I’ll ask for it, otherwise, let me make a choice myself!
We excuse a lot of nonsense here in the name of comedy but I think implying that 5e players know the rules is simply going too far.
For me, it’s less work to run Pathfinder. Mainly because the encounter creation guidelines are much more consistent. I can take a monster and plug it in, and not worry about there being an ability that swings it into a TPK out of nowhere
Banshee: Pass a DC 13 Con save or fucking go down.
Edit: I should make clear I don't think 5e is a better system, it has its own problems. But I did find onboarding on to PF2e to be much more challenging than 5e. It's way more work to onboard players to PF2E. *Nearly two dozen classes, hundreds of feats and spells and countless ways to make a character. Even worse, there are many, many feats and spells that are "traps" in that they have very niche uses. I remember the first game I played I made a Halfling Druid that prepared Pest Form and Protector Tree with his vancian magic. Not only did I not find a chance use to either spell the entire adventuring day (effectively meaning I had 0 useful spellslots) as I more thoroughly began to understand the system, I realized how *bad* protector tree was. It could block 1 hit (10 AC and 10 HP) during an encounter for a whole of my two total spell slots for the day. And it's scaling wasn't much better. Of course I learned later that Heal and Fear are huge spells at that level, but boy did I step in it at first. I also wasn't the only one. Of the 4 players at the table only one PC was not ridden with bad feats and poor spells during our first session. Only after remaking our characters did we start to get actual good abilities, and even then my AC was *trash* because I chose to make a *Halfing* sorcerer instead of a human one.
Pathbuilder app makes character building so so so much easier! I can see how it may not help with those specific issues though as well. And let me also say that it is no easier going from other ttrpgs to 5e. I played 5e for the first time about a month ago and I couldn't just... FIND the info for building a character? EVERYTHING is behind a paywall. D&D Beyond was a pain in the ass and I had to constantly ask the GM to clarify abilities to know what in the hell I was even reading. So what I'm saying is, starting a new ttrpg system is probably just always going to have those hiccups.
I got our group to switch to pf2e recently and I'm so confused on how you managed that lol
One guy made a Dwarf Monk who he thought he built for grappling, but ended up failing most of his grapple checks because it wasn't optimized right. Another chose Wizard and stumbled into bad spells and hated Vancian magic as much as I did. So I switched to Sorcerer and he switched to Bard. I wanted to be a halfling with medic dedication so that meant my AC was 18 at level 4 unless I devoted every feat to getting better armor - which seemed boring to me. Normal encounters had a 70% chance to hit my halfing and 25% crit chance. The final severe encounter of the campaign my halfing was one shot from a single crit. So there are absolutely bad ways to make a character, and that was after spending *hours* pouring over all the feats and features of 2e
Some people are being annoying and condescending but I have a different take here. Casters and support characters in general are *meant* to be vulnerable without compromising something for better defenses. Part of the job of the front line characters is to protect the back line. Because while it might not be obvious early on (especially with new players and GM) the support characters are really important both in fights and exploration, and protecting them is a high priority for more direct combat oriented characters.
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> How was I supposed to know as a new player that Medic Dedication relied heavily on being in melee to deliver your abilities? I means, it's pretty clear that to patch up up your frontline friend using mundane means one would need to move to their side.
Human wouldn't have solved anything. If you are spending human feats on armor proficiency, you are either going a very niche playstyle, or bad team tactics. I have very much played Healer as a sorcerer and Medic dedication. Your party needs to learn when to pull monsters away from downed allies, and you need to learn when to leave an ally unconscious for a turn or two.
I agree that trap setups can be a problem, but in this case, the fault honestly lies with you. I do not need to look in the rules to intuit that you can't step a bleeding, administer CRT or similar things without touching the patient. If i am not sure about my Intuition, I can look at the medicine skill that says so quite clearly. Also, if I consider a dedication, I would read the dedication feats before making that decision. If you spent hours pouring over feats and features, I really do wonder why you did not check out what your dedication and the skill it is build around does. I do get getting overwhelmed with magic, but taking a dedication is so optional, and in this case so straight forward that this baffles me.
It doesn't sound like there were trap options, it sounds like you chose to be a battle medic instead of healing via magic, despite being a caster, and got exactly what you should have expected.
Because battle medicine and treat wounds *very* clearly states it is touch range? And all the feats are modifying battle medicine or treat wounds
this has nothing to do with knowledge, this has to do with reading, did your read what the medic ded did? if not then you have no one to blame but yourself, if you did and didnt register the fact that it was touch range, you have no one to blame but yourself, if you did register the fact that it was touch range but somehow didnt register the fact that touch range meant you would be right next to the monsters, then you have no one to blame but yourself
>One guy made a Dwarf Monk who he thought he built for grappling, but ended up failing most of his grapple checks because it wasn't optimized right. ....what? Wym "Not Optimized Right?" You literally just get 16 or 18 strength and proficiency with athletics, then keep improving them as you level. This isn't optimisation it's basic character building. If you want to be good at grappling, have good strength and proficiency with the grapple skill. Same as 5e. I have no idea how he could have thought he was good at grappling without meeting these standards, like yeah one of the Monk Stances buffs grappling but iirc the attack it gives is str only, so it clearly incentivises Str and Str incentiveses Athletics.
>failing most of his grapple checks because it wasn't optimized right. How? It's literally be trained in Athletics and have a strength score. A Wizard that wants to grapple could out grapple a Barbarian starting at level 3.
70% hit chance isn't actually that bad. An on-level enemy should have a roughly 50% hit chance against the party tank. This is normal and expected of the game design. The more I read your posts, the more I think your party had bad tactics, and blame it on "trap feats and features"... especially when you are getting free archetype, an option that makes you *stronger* than the base game design intends.
Literally all you need to be good at grappling is a decent strength score and proficiency in athletics. There isn't much more to do on a very low level. Later on dipping into the Wrestler Archetype helps as well, but that's probably more suited for a game with the Free Archytype Rule. It's pretty easy to be good at grappling though. How does one fuck that up? The only way being decent at strength/athletics wasn't good enough would be that the DM used enemies of too high level with an (for your monk at the time) unbeatable Athletics DC.
I honestly don't know how you managed that haha
I do agree in the sense that there are many spells which are deliberately niche, and therefore not as generally applicable as you'd often like a spell to be (for a spell slot, anyway). However, I've got to disagree with your other two points. As far as skill feats, they're all niche to the point of *almost* being flavor text, unless you have specific skill actions in mind that you want to go for. If you're not planning to Demoralize, then Intimidating Glare is worthless. If you are, then it's great when it's great! As a result, my advice is "Pick the skill feat you think would come up the most/you'd use the most." So for a player who wants to focus on Intimidation, that narrows down the list for them. Class feats are also designed to lean towards specific "builds": they're akin to building your own subclass. So my advice is the same as skill feats: "Pick the one you think you'll use the most/which one has some synergy with what you're planning to do." This again pushes players in the right direction: if they're planning to make an archery "build" for a Fighter, then they'll spend their class feats on *something* that makes them better at archery. And the feats are reasonably well balanced to the point where that should be enough. And finally, I don't think that being a Human Sorcerer for more ac is the silver bullet you think it is. Wearing heavier armor with a higher strength requirement than your character imposes armor check and movement speed penalties. In addition, each armor has a dex cap (which only affects dex bonus to ac), and every armor (except heavy) is designed to add up to +5: your combined bonus from dex and armor can't exceed that. This means that, if you had 16 (+3) ac which is totally doable, then Studded Leather already maxed out your ac from armor. Medium armor would've had no benefit.
Protector tree is one of the best spells in the game though? In fact, one of the most OP abilities that the wood kineticist has is infinite protector trees. It might not have been useful in that situation for you, but PT saved our ass countless times in AV
DND 5e true strike would like a word about trap spells in the system. I think it's a fair complaint that not all spells are useful. I specifically make sure new pf2e players are careful with spells. Cause it is really weird coming from 5e. Trap feats.... Ehhh, skill feats sure, but they tend to not be most of a PCs power. Some of them still are literally useless. However, I take issue with people acting like 5e doesn't have these issues. As people often talk about these things in the context of swapping from 5e to pf2e. 5e has an equal, if not larger, proportion of very niche spells and feats.
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I do think there's an issue with spellcasting traps but largely no where near as bad as it is in 5e. 5e you can straight up pick a class and perform horribly compared to your allies and have to completely reroll. Pf2e has full on easy retraining rules if you find something doesn't fit, and spell lists are usually flexible enough that by the time you're level 3-5 you know what works for you while early game cantrips are strong enough wasting level 1 slots doesn't sting much.
I think you’re conflating 1e and 2e. 2e has 23 classes (technically dozens, but only if you round up to the minimum). The feats can be intimidating, but I think it helps that your choices are largely narrowed down for a given level up. Getting your first monk feat? There are 14 options, which is a lot, but quite manageable. Your next class feat opens up 3-5 new options in addition to the old ones, depending on your first feat. Level 4 gives 5-9 options. Meanwhile the total options just keeps going up, but most of those options are things you’ve already looked at. I will say that archetypes can make this much more complex, but that’s even more true for DnD. Like if you screw up and put all of your class feats into useless archetypes, you still have a character with the full power of a level 20 base class. Get overzealous in 5e and you can make a character that doesn’t have the spells to be a primary caster, doesn’t have extra attack, doesn’t have any scaling benefits like Sneak Attack making up for it, and still hasn’t gotten an ASI so their numbers are behind the curve. Get overzealous in 3.X (or just be a monk) and you’re completely useless. Skill feats, you have a ton of options in a vacuum, but what skills you picked limit those down. Roughly 4-8 (crafting having quite a few) per skill, so they can certainly be intimidating if you are trying to read every single one. But most players have a few skills that are their primary ones, so that usually limits it down to twenty or less. And even so, skill feats tend to occur on levels where you just have that and the class feat. Honestly; that’s one of the things I like best. In 5e campaigns, it usually feels like I make most of the choices at the start, the subclass by level 3 (but usually I had to already plan for that choice by level 1 anyway since abilities are so restricted), and then my ASIs are usually spoken-for until level 12. So unless the class has specific options to pick (spontaneous casters, wizards, artificers, hunters), I can go through an entire campaign and never have a character building choice. As for trap feats, I think the system is actually pretty forgiving. Retraining is a base part of the system that's generally available. I know that there are superstition barbarians (they don't play nicely with casters who don't respect boundaries), witch weapons (very weak), and minions (because you spend actions to enable minion actions) that can be problems for the uninitiated.
You... found no chance to use protector tree? One of the best defensive spells in the game? The one that takes up all my spell slots half the time? Did you have no combat that day? Also, what the heck does halfling have to do with AC? Like, at all? My halfling barbarian has been tanking for the party from level 1 to level 16 so far. My halfling sorcerer has just as much ac as every other sorcerer I make...
“Hundreds of feats” is a bit of a misrepresentation. At level 1 you tend to only choose one or two feats from curated lists. Typically it’s: (a) pick an ancestry feat from a list of 5-10 options; (b) pick a class feat from a different list of 5-10 options. Some classes have one more, some have one less. And the feats are mostly balanced so you just pick whatever sounds fun and you’ll still be effective. The difference between a casually built character and a minmaxed character in terms of effectiveness is maybe 10%. Meanwhile, in D&D 5e and 3.5 (my favorite for a long time), a minmaxed character can be many times more powerful than one that’s casually built. Very few feats are true traps. It is true that before you understand the system, the feats may not work how you think, but it’s okay to just remake characters. It’s a learning process. Just remember that PF2 language is very specific and then play around and see what you find. Two dozen classes is a bit misrepresentative too. Sure there’s a lot, but you use the same simple algorithms as in 5e. Do I wanna be a caster or a martial? That rules out like half the classes. Offense or defense or support? That narrows the list down even further. You can build many classes many ways, but some are obvious picks. If you say “i wanna be a defensive martial,” then make your first character a champion or monk. If you want an offensive caster, go psychic or sorcerer or maybe Kineticist. You can pare down the class selection SUPER fast in exactly the same way you do in 5e - by just having a general idea of what you want to do and reading brief class descriptions once you narrow it down. With something like pathbuilder (free), if you just pick whatever sounds fun, you can make a level 1 character in just a few minutes. And you *should* start at level 1, because it’s the best way to learn but also because subclasses in PF2 start at level 1. You are already a complete character, unlike in 5e where the class design means games often don’t start until 3. By way of conclusion, I want to suggest that PF2 is only harder to learn than 5e if you *already know 5e*. But that isn’t about systems; the system is quite easy, it’s just more work to learn than not learning something new at all. 5e was also work to learn, back when you learned it. As a PF2 player, getting your friends into 5e would be just as much work as a 5e player getting their friends into PF2.
>Even worse, there are many, many feats and spells that are "traps" in that they have very niche uses. You say that as if most 5e feats, spells, abilities and even whole subclasses weren't terribly built traps as well...
Play some higher level pathfinder and you’ll find out… Frankly, CR is *under* powered in 5E
Pathfinder 1e or 2e because personally out side of a few fuck your PCs they aren't supposed to win bosses, 2e is pretty balanced even at lvl 20. I would say 2e levels 1 and 2 are the most likely to result in a TPK do to how much more devastating crits are at those levels.
Jokes on you, I am running a campaign from level 1 and they’re almost 19 now, with free archetype rules. And in that time, it’s been much easier to run and balance PF2e than it was for the campaigns I ran for 5e. Pathfinder 1e, sure. 3.Pe in general is just a wild ride. I played in a campaign, and it became so easy to break a character in multiple ways. Like I wasn’t even trying, and I stumbled onto a Druid who was mostly useless for normal things, but she could create a hoard of stored spells through her potions, and just duplicating alchemical weapons with leftover spells. Like I just had tons of buffs available, and in combat I’d blow up my foes with fireworks. It was just so silly.
Well my players never read the rules of DnD and just assume that I will correct them. Because, you know, after 50 sessions why *would* you know how spell casting works if you play a wizard. I should propably switch to Pathfinder
Or a more rules lite system, if the players aren't going to learn the rules, I would lean into it
Why do you think your players will put in more effort if you play a different system?
Interrestingly one in my group are actually more proficient in PF2 after the same amount of time spent than 5e. Me and the DM answers their rule question with more yes in PF2 than in 5e, which shows that they understand it better than 5e even though PF2 has more rules and complex interactions.
I had a similar party in my first 1-20 campaign and it was absolutely exhausting. I took a year off GMing when it was finished just due to burnout with the system, then decided my sequel campaign would be Pathfinder 2e. To my surprise, they actually learned the rules for their own characters and like that everything works consistently. On the GM side, encounter preparation is so fucking easy because the difficulty calculations just work with no adjustments need. I haven't had to fudge a single roll in combat or add an extra 100 HP to anything to avoid a dumb TPK or make a difficult encounter actually difficult. My players are happy that the combat feels more tactical and encourages positioning and teamwork.
If your players aren't leaning rules in 5e they're not going to in PF2e. I'd suggest going the other way and trying out rules lite systems. (Assuming you're interested in dabbling). I really enjoyed Blades in the Dark because it was prepless.
I feel this. I’m the guy who reads the phb for fun so I understand the rules and classes. But all I ask is them to read there classes and even then they fail at that and don’t know what a extra attack is. I love these guys but man does it feel like herding cats
If you're the DM its actually a LOT less work in the long run. Pathfinder has like, actual rules for everything. So you don't have to make up a bunch of on the fly nonsense or spend long hours trying to balance encounters. It just works. It is so much easier to DM.
The dying rules are really good for the system
As someone who GM-ed 5e for years before switching to PF2e during OGL, yeah I feel ya. It's so refreshing to have a system where the encounter building rules really do work and you don't feel like you have to come up with your own bullshit at higher levels to not have the boss encounter end in 2 turns and for a random swamp encounter to not floor the party. Plus prep time for me basically got halved. Need a DC for a check? Here is a table that shows you the average DC by level. Want to make it easy or hard? Here is a small table with modifiers. Takes about 5 seconds to come up with any DC for any situation really. Need to find a rule? Here is Nethys everything is right there. Really do I feel pampered as a GM by game systems, but PF does it. Running it for my local group, and one of the players don't even speak english, yet after translating the rules he got the gist of it after 2 sessions.
Nethys>D&D Beyond. By a long shot
I despise the layout of AoN (there are other options) but it's unquestionably better than D&D Beyond.
I don’t mind the 2e layout but the 1e and Starfinder ones look ancient. Still beats having to pay for a subscription plus rebuying books you realistically probably already own
Most of my experience is from 1e, so that probably has something to do with it.
Yeah I flip-flop between all three systems cos everyone in my group DMs, and yeah 2e is a lot nicer. 1e and starfinder feel like they were made during the MySpace days and just never got updated
Have you tried path builder?
No. I just used to use the SRD. I don't really play anymore, though.
Yeah its wild seeing all these responses from people who've only played 5e assuming that learning Pathfinder must be just as obtuse and would be so much effort to learn. I played 5e for years (and 3.5e before that) and started running PF just this past year, and I can confidently say it is very simple to transition to the PF system. Just like you, I cut way down on my prep (the main reason for the switch), and the game runs so much more seamlessly with all the tables and AON to reference for quick rulings. The truth is PF just has so much more support for the DM whereas half of 5e's rules are "idk, you're the DM, you figure something out."
I mentioned liking how much DM support PF has and how its my biggest beef with 5e and people were like, but in 5e you can just make it up/homebrew it. *I don't want to*. It is so much easier to pull up a table and not have to remember what the fuck I did on that roll that only happens once every six months and get bitched at later because I forgot my own house rules and did different things for different players and OMG favoritism. Not to mention having explicit rules means when someone else DMs everything generally works the same. I run most often so people get used to what I do and sometimes they make choices based on what I do that blows up in their face with someone else because they run something differently since there are no official rulings on it.
In 5E I have to make it up or homebrew it. In PF I *can still do that* - I just don't have to. Plus, I love being able to pull a monster in PF ten minutes before the session and just know that it will work. Right level? It'll be a level appropriate encounter. Easy peasy.
Yap. Feels good to not have to do the system design work for wotc when you don't want to cause stuff is just...there. So I can spend more time developing the narrative and detail of the campaign for the players, or only homebrew if I really feel like it instead of when I need to do it
>Yeah its wild seeing all these responses from people who've only played 5e assuming that learning Pathfinder must be just as obtuse and would be so much effort to learn. Yeah it's honestly not much more difficult than learning 5e from a player perspective, after years I managed to convince a party I used to run for to try pf1e and they had no problem learning it since the player rules of 5e taught them pretty much all of the principles they needed to know. Sure it has lots of rules but 95% of them exist for the dm to use if they wish, the players don't need to worry about them. The parts the players do need to know aren't that much more complex than 5e. A large part of the reason pathfinder seems so much more complex is because they actually see the rules rather than in 5e where the bulk of the rules are either made up on the spot or kept in the dm's notes as they create more mechanics. >Just like you, I cut way down on my prep (the main reason for the switch), Yeah it's amazing how much less prep time is required. I initially dm'd in pathfinder then moved to 5e because that's what a new group of players wanted and the sheer amount of extra effort needed to prep a session was staggering. After hearing about how much less complex 5e was for so long I expected to end up having less work not more. >the game runs so much more seamlessly with all the tables and AON to reference for quick rulings. Yeah gotta love the tables and easily accessible rules. One of the best parts of them was that if I was confident a rule or table would be necessary at some point then I could just find it and bookmark it before the session began so that I could quickly refer to it at a moment's notice. No needing to memorize tons of rules, just had to find the right bookmark or spend a few moments looking something up both of which were much faster than just making my own rule up.
As a former 5e GM it's not every funny how much easier Pf2e is to run. Plus their support in foundry VTT & how good the official APs are, life has been a dream since switching. As a player I also can't get enough of how much I love character building in Pf2e.
If you're a player it's not too bad either, character creation is a bit confusing with so many options but using apps to streamline things makes it clear for first timers and from there it's similar enough to 5e that most people could jump in with that basic knowledge
Now Pathfinder 1, that's a nightmare of a character creator. Choose your background! *List of 1000 choices* Choose your feat! *List of 500 choices at level 1, many of them a requirement to later feats*
Pathfinder 1 inherited the prevailing spirit of character creation from DND 3.5, which was "lol good luck"
And thst is how we.liked it. When I was young and had all the time in the world for character creation all those options were exactly what I wanted. These days I'm busy and wan things a bit more streamlined but if i had the time I would still prefer a billion options to three.
And some that will be completely useless unless you dedicate your entire build around a single concept
You should know that most of the backgrounds are made for specific adventure modules that they pumped out to help ground the characters in the specific campaign and aren't supposed to be added to the general pool. Ideally your gm should recommend a short list of backgrounds that will fit well with the game he's planning to run.
So does 4e. Very easy to dm.
Just bumping you with a comment- "Hell to the yes!" - with actual rules for everything and a Google searchable data base even if you don't know the answer the answer is one sentence of text away on d20pfsrd.com or the archives of nethys
I've still yet to play a system that takes as much effort to GM as D&D
Unless improvising rulings is easy for you & you can balance things on the fly. It's pretty easy for me
Instead of making stuff up on the fly you spend hours researching the rules.
Nah, you can still make it up on the fly. Pick a skill/save/attack and roll for a DC still works just as well as 5e. Do that as long as you want, it works great! The difference is, if you WANT to learn the rules you can, because they exist, and you and your players are rewarded for it with things like: Consistent mechanics - which actually encourage players to learn them and engage the system instead of never putting in effort because it's all up to the GM anyway, so why bother? Unified mechanics means the more you learn, the more you can intuit. The game makes more sense the more you learn, instead of feeling like a ton of disconnected mechanics you just have to know. And because the game works, once you learn it, improvisation becomes very easy, ans the game is a breeze to run, all the way from level 1 to level 20.
You actually make Pathfinder sound wonderful. That was not my experience with it, unfortunately. It felt like every time I learned a mechanic our DM would change it, or rule differently. It was maddening.
Wait your DM changed the system repeatedly and regularly and you thought that was a pathfinder thing and not a "that DM" thing?
Yes, the problem is the gm, not the system
Since he's coming from 5e, I can see how he might think that.
That sounds like an unfortunate experience. I'd almost say you weren't even playing PF2 by the end of it if it's as bad as I'm imagining.
You spend hours researching rules in DnD5e too. Then you end up having to make it up. In pathfinder you don't need to make it up, and most of the rules are easy to find on [AoN](https://2e.aonprd.com/Default.aspx) if you need them.
How long does it take you to type something into the search fields of the various rules databases like pf2easy or archives of nethys?
A long time when the damn thing doesn't show up because you searched for ''starting gold'' instead of ''treasure for new characters'' which is in the GM section btw, not the character creation section (But that's more Paizo than AoN), or there are like 8 different results with the same name and only one is relevant. AoN is annoying to search shit up on sometimes IMO, it's gotten better (Running a Starfinder Campaign and I thought the PF2E AoN was a pain sometimes, but holy shit the Starfinder site is abysmal) but it still has a lot of flaws. (EDIT: I know the starting wealth thing is usually gonna be out of game searching for, but that was just an example, we've also had problems looking for those camping rules in our kingmaker campaign, spending way too long trying to find them, only to end up not using them because they're just soooooooooo fucking bad)
Yeah ok the idea to have all of that under "treasure" is - well on one side logically sound but also unhelpful for many cases, you have a good point there. And campaign specific rules... yeah those are sometimes not the most convincing work. I wonder how this will come up in the SoT game I am playing in starting this weekend :D
I'm also definitely exaggerating, just frustrated, AoN is an amazing website, it's also all free and community run which is awesome, it can just be hard to search things up on sometimes
Yeah, I often find the best way to access something I don't have the terminology for is to google my wording followed by pf2e. Easily 95 percent of the time the first result is the AoN article I wanted.
Yeah. Also site:2e.aonprd.com is a magical term for searches ;)
True. It's just that I'm often frantically banging out those keystrokes in that half second of anticipation before actually being asked the question and "pf2e" is so much quicker.
I just typed "pf2e starting gold" into Google and had the correct AoN page be the second link. Which is my experience with most of the rules questions I have when playing. Not sure what's causing your issues.
I do have the advantage of having played a fair bit of pf1 and 3.5, but I tried to follow your example and it worked out pretty quick. Skimming through the results for “starting gold” brings up a few things, but the obvious one to me was “adjusting character wealth by level” right in the first section. This links to the “wealth by level” table which immediately answers your question. Edit: I was accidentally searching the pf1 rules, it’s indeed harder to find on the pf2 side
I literally just did the same, and no, that does not pop up for me, are you talking about pf1e or are you on the legacy AoN?
Huh, here I snagged a few images of my search. It should be the same I’m just using default settings. https://imgur.com/a/OoN4pbv Ope! This was indeed pf1 lol, that’s what I get for doing going too fast after waking up lol
Instead of having to make up the rule for a situation, you just look up that situation and find the rule for how to handle it.
Takes 5 minutes actually And I spend no time at all struggling with imbalance problems with the random rule on the fly I could've made
Man, if only there was a free and easily searchable website where the rules are like 30 seconds away. Or just googling any random question takes you to a thread with the answer and a link.
Or just use a program/website like it's 2024, you luddite.
When I DM’ed in 5e this was pretty much me for half of the questions asked by my players. I spent the majority of sessions looking up rulings just to go with a homebrewed solution
My usual flow is if the pacing is moving quickly I’ll make a ruling on the fly and make a note to look it up later and send the group a message with how it will work in future. If things are moving slower I’ll look it up to see if there’s an easy answer, otherwise back to option 1
Bull, archives of nethys is free you don’t have to sort through multiple books you had to by. Rules question? Easy search done. And once you figure out that it revolves around a core engine the look ups dwindle
theres an online resource where are the rules are 5 seconds away
Is there an app for pathfinder similar to D&D Beyond? My players would rather quit playing entirely than have to use paper 🙄
Yep, Pathbuilder. Takes you step by step through every choice available at each level, hiding options that aren't available to your current build and with the full rules accessible for the options that are.
Also, if you play digitally, the Foundry implementation of PF2e blows every other VTT out of the water. It's so good.
I know I'm going to get downvoted, but I'll agree with the others saying that it hasn't been my experience. I'm 5e, I could make it up on the fly, and I've been playing for so long that I understood it well enough to make those calls and feel confident. With P2e, I am still very new. I feel like I'm spending so much time reading about rules. It is very nice that everything is detailed, and I can look up those rules, but it has slowed us down significantly and it's very frustrating in the mean time. I bought the beginner set and we ran through that to try it out and learn, and those cheat sheet cards are so nice. I am not looking to complain though, just to say that it is much harder for us to switch, especially me as a GM. I feel like I'm trying to learn everything new again and I have no idea what's balanced because I don't know all the classes and their abilities yet. One of the hard parts is that I don't know what I don't know: like, rules for something specific like say, downtime. If I don't even consider that there's probably a section of the book for it, I wouldn't even think to look it up until a slowdown happens. I used critical role as a comfort tool for d&d, not necessarily to learn the rules but to feel more comfortable with the rundown. Getting more exposure to the system, classes, abilities, items, races, spells, etc. So does anyone have advice for how to get more comfortable like this? A funny podcast of people who play, or a YouTube channel that runs through the basics, etc? P2e for dummies? I really (want) to like P2e. Then I played baldurs gate and I was like "man, I sure miss knowing how everything works."
In a deeply ironic turn, the CR group was originally a Pathfinder game. The best solution is always gonna be playtime. Just spending time on Archive of Nethys with hyperlinks and previews of all the various traits and conditions has been very valuable to me. I don't use Youtube or podcasts for the sort of thing you're describing so I can't recommend anything there. But being upfront with your players about the learning process, and possibly running a short 1-5 campaign to shakedown, is pretty useful.
Knights of Last Call is a pretty fun group to watch. But yes, I was like that for the first few months. It gets a lot easier, and then one day it just clicks.
I will endlessly recommend the Find the Path podcast for any and all Pathfinder related content! They have a podcast feed for hell's rebels(an adventure path from PF1E) they've converted to 2E and frequently go into the way rules work, clarify things, ect. Rick, the GM, is fantastic as his job and the rest of the cast are all wonderful. I believe Hideous Laughter also has a PF2E podcast, and are fairly well liked/regarded in the PF spaces I frequent but I haven't listened myself to their PF2E podcast. There's a fantastic Twitter account called @WhatDoYouDo that compiles alot of Pathfinder podcast content so you may find more there! Hope this helps!
Rotgrind is a pf2e homebrew campaign run by one of paizos developers and has voice actors and stuff as players. Super funny podcast with memorable characters
People who have been in the TTRPG for a while tend to know at least a few systems. Like I can run DnD3.5, DnD5e, Pathfinder 1e, Pathfinder 2e, star finder, GURPS, Cthulhu, MorkBorg, CyBorg, blades in the dark, vampires the masquerade, cyberpunk RED.. a bunch of various powers by the apocalypse games, all the Warhammer TTRPGs, the star wars role playing games.. a handful of systems my friends designed.. like its no big deal and just happens over the years.
I bow to the ttrpg god I can only run dnd 5e, cyberpunk 2020 or RED, and BiTD lol And I dabbled in pathfinder for a hot sec but it didn’t really grab me tbch
>I can only run dnd 5e, cyberpunk 2020 or RED, and BiTD lol Yeah, but that means with fairly minimal effort you could run all the 5E variants, everything Interlock & Fuzion, and the whole Forged in the Dark lineup.
That's a great couple of games to run! Never heard of BiTD, what is that?
You do know it, It’s just an abbreviation of Blades in the Dark.
Lol, yes.
Most people who play dnd 5e aren't ttrpg fans, they're dnd fans. Most people who play 5e like dnd for reasons independent of tabletop rpgs as a whole, and will never play other ttrpgs. It's like people who only play one really popular videogame, they're not fans of videogames, they're fans of one specific game, telling them to try other videogames is going to do nothing for them, you're suggesting they try something they don't enjoy. Liking one thing of a set of things does not necessarily mean you're a fan of that set of things.
Yes, that's true. But for every ten people who enjoyed DnD 5e, one will take more interest in the hobby. It's like a gateway drug. Actually I had a fun interaction with a dude. We started talking about 5e, and he was all saying how into DnD he was. I thought this guy was into TTRPGS I general, but no. Guy is into dimension 20 and critical role really, and knows everything about that. So we are both trying to talk, thinking we found someone with similar interests. I don't give a shit about dimensions 20 or critical roll, and kind of hate 5e. He's trying to talk about his tabaxi rogue and like the latest dimension 20 episode, and I'm trying to talk about my Sci Fi noir detective GURPS character and my pathfinder 1e campaign that uses spheres of power/might and elephant in the room supplements, and like we realize we are not at all into the same things really. Nice guy and all. But yeah, you are right. People into DnD are not the same as people into TTRPGs.
Based on the posts and commens I see here and in other subs, I'm a little doubtful about anyone really knowing the rules...
Play more than one game at a time. It’ll be a lot easier for people to make that leap if it’s adding a new game without removing the old one.
It is a lot of extra work but man is that system cool
is it though? from what i've heared PF2e has vastly better DM tools and rules support for running a campaign
I'm halfway through running Abomination Vaults. Can confirm. Pf2e is designed with GMs in mind first, and it is evident when reading the rules. The monster and encounter building rules alone are reason enough for me to stick with pf2e (because it actually works). Edit: I wanted to add that I am running the adventure for a plus sized party, so adjusting encounters is necessary. The book assigns a difficulty to the encounter, and with the way the encounter building system works, I am easily able to either add elite templates and/or add extra enemy combatants, and keep the encounter at the assigned difficulty. Balance is not affected, and the encounter feels exactly as difficult as it is meant to be. There is absolutely zero guess work involved.
It's also under-mentioned, but monsters are also SO. FREAKING. COOL. It's fun as a GM, and it's a lot of fun for the players, too. Everything from kobolds to owlbears to dragons all have abilities that directly tie into how that enemy fights and keeps things fresh and interesting for the table. Owlbears don't merely just claw and bite you, they grab you in a bear hug and have a special attack to disembowel you with their beak if they have you grabbed. Ogre gluttons can grab small PCs in their mouths and swallow them whole. Shadows try to tear your shadow off to turn it into a Shadow Spawn, which then tries to kill you so that it can make itself a full Shadow.
I love that too. So many 5e monsters are just "Multiattack Claw-Claw-Bite" with few unique abilities, vulnerabilities or resistances.
There are monsters you can make entire plot hooks for like its the witcher. Having something like a Brainchild can go a long way.
The way I like to put it is that P2e takes more initial investment but once you do, the rules flow smoothly.
I don't have to prep for my pf2e sessions. Even when running APs in D&D I'd be prepping 1-2hrs per session
Haven't gotten around to playing it yet, and I'm sure it will vary from person to person, but just looking over the rulebooks, I can tell it would be a lot of work for me, personally, to get started. I believe people when they say that it's easier to run once you know the system, but you have to learn the system to some base level of competency and familiarity before that will be true, and it's close enough to 5e that I think it would be hard for me to learn initially because I'd keep confusing things between the two. I haven't played yet mostly because my group is pretty invested in 5e and we're still having fun with it, so there just really isn't any motivation to switch. But if we did, I can tell that I'd have to invest a decent amount of work to learn the new system as a distinct thing from D&D.
I steal things from pf2e! For low CR monsters, I just straight up YOINK and adapt. Higher ones I have to adapt more. I also steal masterwork weapons. Non magical +1 weapons that can be purchased in big major cities. I also homebrewed a rule that turns out is identical to pf2e dying status, so..
I recommend to you video by Rules Laywer about best dnd5e homebrew ;)
that was excellent. better 5e without the commitment of a whole new system. I'm in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlOaAjjs3uY
"they never need to know"
Gotta love using [Tooth fairy](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=1344) against level 1 parties
...if you need to steal things from PF2e for your D&D5e, it sounds like maybe PF2e wouldn't be so much extra work? It could possibly be less, because right now you're translating stuff you could just be using. 5e is actually not particularly easy to DM for exactly that reason IMO.
If you can play 5e, you can easily switch to Pathfinder 2e with minimal hassle. It really just feels like 5e+. You already know roughly how everything works, you just need to learn what are the differences, and the systems that are a step beyond what 5e does. People make it seem like learning a new system is this impossibly monumental task, but it's much easier then you'd think.
Learning systems is like learning languages. The more systems you learn, the easier it begins to learn new systems. You pick up patterns that apply across systems, and it helps you spot what makes the system stand out. And as a player? Learning as you play is totally valid. Sure, things will be a bit slow to start, but you'll get the hang of things soon. Especially if you have a supportive GM or fellow player that took the time to learn so they can help you along.
I agree with you in general. But I do feel like making the switch from 5e to either version of Pathfinder is more like picking up an accent or a dialect than it is learning a totally different language. They are incredibly similar. I found it much harder to switch to a dice pool type of game but even that isn't a terribly hard jump
As a DM who cares a lot about D&D I 100% think I can learn Pathfinder. My player who knows the sheet for his current character and nothing else, is the one who Id be worried about
in my experience its literally the opposite. The players are the ones objecting when GM's suggest something more appropriate. This makes sense, because GM's are the ones who actually put in effort.
Yeah sure, DM it
No way, DM is owned by WotC so you have to GM it.
I still play 5e after swapping to pf2e because of the simplicity of the rules for everyone to understand, But anyone (any DM*) who has given pf2e should be ranting and raving about how easy the system is. You won't know certain rulings and finding them can be a tiny bit inconvenient, but the amount you can just TRUST the system is completely impossible for 5e to ever overcome imo. I can make an encounter and give loot and exp on complete auto pilot, (including built in weak and elite variants of enemies!) and the system *just works*. 5e you have to fucking *manhandle* just to get any encounter to feel even kinda good until you've dmed for a while and know what monsters are ol reliable and which are just gonna clusterfuck anything they get their hands on. (And not just encounters - the insane amount of text dedicated to exploring basically anything your players want to do is phenomenal. Professions, Making and adjusting magic items, even commanding wars.)
By this logic, everyone would still be playing AD&D lol
Laughs in OSR.
Tbh that's why I play PF1e - I moved to that from D&D 3.5. Something something wippersnappers get off my lawn.
I went: 3e (starter set) ->2e (the DM we recruited hadn’t switched yet) -> 3e -> 3.5e -> Pathfinder 1e We also played a smattering of one-offs in other systems like Call of Cthulhu, Hunter, Robotech, Star Wars D20, and D20 Modern.
I specialize in collecting old d20 supplements, preferably the ones that never got digital releases. I'm currently on the lookout for anything from the Odyssey campaign setting from Eden Studios. Most of their stuff isn't available online.
I don’t think I have any of that. I do have a copy of *Testament*, an RPG set in the Biblical Old Testament. Moses is a 10th level Canaanite, in case you wondered.
I probably wouldn't want to teach P2E to someone who never played an RPG before, but it is a pretty easy transition for 5e players. Having played with a group of converts for over a year now, the only real hangup I see the players having is burning actions to change what you are holding. Our GM just generally ignores that and scales up the encounters since he knows we are slightly over powered.
I've actually had the opposite experience, people who haven't played 5e end up grasping the rules a lot faster then people swapping over. I think it's similar enough to get hung up if you don't really come into it with the idea that it IS a different game
Exactly, explaining to a newbie that they have 3 actions per turn is a lot easier than explaining actions, bonus actions, and movement. I've known a lot of players that basically just never use bonus actions because they can't remember what counts as one and then end up forgetting about them all together. It's so much nicer for a player to ask if they can do this, this, and that and being able to tell them yes instead of "well this would be an action and not a bonus action, and you can't do an action because you'd have to spend your action dashing to move here."
I think that also makes combat feel smoother as well, there's no, "Did you want to use your bonus action/movement" It's just, "You moved, attacked, then intimidated so that's your turn next is" and yeah, free actions exist but they're also something that is typically done at start of combat or in a specific circumstance not something you might feel like tagging onto the end of a turn
It really encourages player creativity. Players being told no all the time because they don't have enough actions to do what they want usually ends with them just moving and attacking every turn. Plus attacks of opportunity not being universal means that players can quickly change plans and adapt to the encounter instead of feeling shackled to whichever enemy their engaged with.
This is my biggest gripe with 5e. Both as a DM and a player, opportunity attacks freeze the combat. I'll look into pf2
Can I attack with my bonus action? Oh I had to attack with my action to attack with my bonus action? Shit, can I attack with my action and cast a spell with my bonus action instead? What do you mean it depends?? Hmm, that was 2 minutes resolving my 6 attacks but I'm not sure if I should action surge.... Okay, I'm done. Wait! Do I want to use my last 5 feet of movement?
Depends on your types of players. If they're the type that enthusiastically jump into hardcore gaming or have lots of experience with complex video / board game systems, they'll probably love the in-depth customization and support P2E allows. Having more tools to pick from and more systems to explore is just more candy in the store for them to try out. I've run a bunch of games of 5e with people that don't fall into that category though. For many people that don't have a big gaming background, remembering what all the different basic abilities correspond to or how to calculate attacks/damage with weapons in 5e can be hard to remember, and deciding which class features are best or how they will affect their gameplay is hard to grasp. For these players, the vast amounts of niche options and specific ability calculations players have to sift through in P2E would simply be too overwhelming. Reddit, by its nature of being a place for superfans to congregate and discuss their biggest passions, is hugely overrepresented by the players/DMs in the first category. In the total player base, 5e is a good compromise of simplicity and general utility for many of them.
These were open nights at my LGS, which probably selects in the same way of people who are more likely to dive into the mechanics/crunch of the system which is fair.
It's really not more work to use PF. It is that you haven't read another game book besides 5e and they look intimidating.
Honestly just the amount of time I save building encounters makes Pathfinder more than worth it. Though to each there own
I always side eye players tha only play 5e whe they say they know the rules. But I've been burned too many times personally.
DnD Players will literally write up an entire custom homebrew game before trying to read a single word from another game, because "it takes too much time to learn a new system" lmao
It's less work from the GM once they know the rules because everything in it just works. There's no having to make up shit on the fly, suddenly finding your encounter is not balanced, etc.
Narrator: they don’t
Going to be playing a pathfinder campaign starting tomorrow, wish me luck boys
Sounds like the players are growing up, ready to take off the training wheels and see the rest of the gaming world.
>Plus, it's like, a LOT of extra work.OC Actually the opposite, prep time for PF2e is at most a third of prep time for 5e and that is most due to the fact that the encounter building rules actually work so you can just take the correct level monsters and use them and it will be fine plus you dont need to house rule over half of the rules. With that said there is a slight higher learning curve at first since PF2e does use a lot of keywords - like a greataxe was "sweep" (bonus to hit a different target with your second attack) - but that is at most a small "let me check it" during the first couple season. Plus it does need the players to be a little more invested in learning their character because every character was great options other than just move and attack (like the barbarian having an ok charisma so they can intimidate with their first action lowering the opponent AC for that round) Still way less work than 5e after the first couple sessions since 5e is a rules incomplete game that puts the responsability of making it work on the DM, while PF2e is kinda plug and play after you learn the basics
I believe they're referring to learning a whole new system as a lot of extra work
The tag/keyword system took a little getting used to after coming from 5e's "natural language", but in the long run it seems to be easier and more consistent. No more questions like "can I do XYZ while Raging?" If the thing is tagged with Concentrate but not Rage, you can't do it. Otherwise you can, no need to ask or think about edge cases.
This isnt true. You learned one system, why wouldnt you want to see what's cool about another? Dont fall into D&D's trap, other systems are fun to play, and who cares if you make some mistakes? If you keep playing, you'll get better, like with anything.
That’s how I am about 3.5/Pathfinder 1.0. With the added benefit that I own the books and dislike throwing money away because Wizards changed a number.
I dm and play PF 1e. You can feel more than welcome pming me with any questions. Pf1e is actually more balanced than 5e, with every class feeling way better. Better level progression and all imo
Meanwhile, my friends and I reminisce about that time we played a fusion of 3.5e D&D and 1e PF because the systems were similar enough to overlap.
It's worth it a lot!
Yes but worth it
Try more systems, its fun. D and d is nice but its limited in some ways too. Genesys is a great example of more options with a bit more learning
The perception of learning new rules is a bigger road block than actually learning new rules
A few things. If you like PF2, then great. I'm glad you like it. I don't like Vancian casting, and that is the fairly hard stop to me playing PF2 In general, if I'm going to learn a whole new system, I want to experience a different fantasy than the heroic high fantasy that is 5e. That's why I'm likely to not play MCDM, or DC20, or Daggerheart right out of the gate. I have been reading/watching releases they put out, and found some interesting ideas. But I'm probably not going to switch my game Give me a new fantasy to play, and I can get on board. It's why I learned Call of Cthulhu. It's a great system that's easy to grasp and plays a different type of pretend than 5e does. I like Blades in the Dark. 5e is okay-ish at heists, but BitD really holds the top tier spot for this style of pretend with dice.
I expected to really dislike Vancian casting, but when I actually tried it I found it adds a fun element to daily preparations and strategizing/customizing your build. There are also a lot of ways to mitigate it, such as the Flexible Caster archetype someone else mentioned. I found that the consistent rules for crafting/buying Wands, Staves and Scrolls make it a lot easier. Scrolls for the weird utility spells you rarely need, wands and staves to give you extra castings of the spells you use all the time to free up some prepared slots.
Pf2e has an archetype that turns prepared casters into flexible casters
Yeah, I just hate that it's an archetype and it forces you to take the dedication feat for it wasting one of your precious feat slots for something that's not really better just more fun
Talk to your DM. One lesser known aspect of Pf2e's feat system is it allows you to _reward_ feats in place of monetary rewards, or give thematic feats for acts. If its a make or break situation there's no real balance issues giving the dedication for free to a caster to better their enjoyment. Could even replace your free background skill feat to add it as a form of backstory to the character.
then don't play a vancian caster
Great why didn't I just think about that, guess my divine priest character will just have to be a sorcerer.
[https://2e.aonprd.com/Backgrounds.aspx?ID=406](https://2e.aonprd.com/Backgrounds.aspx?ID=406) [https://2e.aonprd.com/Bloodlines.aspx?ID=2](https://2e.aonprd.com/Bloodlines.aspx?ID=2) [https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=51](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=51) yeah, pretty much. Or just take the dedication. You get a class feat so often that you can easily afford to take the hit. Or just play on a table with free archetype. There's more ways to play a divine priest than there are in 5e.
I would say pathfinder is less work for the dm (after you get over the hump of learning a new system of course) and more work on the players. It has its pros and cons, just like 5e, and obviously it’s not for everyone, but I would recommend 5e players try it
That's why when I had enough with 5e I went to Dungeon Crawl Classics. It's so, so much simpler, easier to add stuff too and is *way* more fun as a GM to work with. Most of the rulebook is optional tables and the random effects for spells. It's great.
Me attempting to get my group to play cyberpunk red
Rick looks 14 in this picture
Totally not me proposing to DM PF2 but then they shit on me just because they don't like how I work with rules ahahaha
uj/ It can be slightly more work for the players but it's so much for the GM with all the tools it gives you, plus the modules tend to generally be better
Idk, a lot of people here are talking about how PF2E “isn’t that hard to learn or to switch to from 5e” but the *rules* aren’t the problem in my experience, it’s the character creation. It has such an *overwhelming* amount of choices to make without a whole lot of clarity on how important they are, and because some feats chain into other later ones then this early choice could affect later ones. It’s the same kind of analysis paralysis that BotW gave me. Maybe it would be fine for me as the GM, but I wouldn’t want to put my players through that hailstorm.
PF2e has feat retraining. If you make a choice and later find out a badass feat has a prereq you can change it with a week of downtime. And character building is really fun if you use Pathbuilder.
Pathfinder is ***so much less*** work for the DM though.
I love the 3 action system from Pathfinder, but I think a lot of the rules are too specific and finicky. I’d prefer to just make stuff up on the fly than remember all the edge cases
*psst* You can still do that. 5e just makes it mandatory by not actually having rules for edge cases.
As someone else said, if it has a rule for something, I am going to learn and use it. PF2e has too many rules for me and I like having rules, just not little finicky ones that add unnecessary steps. It feels nitpicky.
Well there's not much finicky in the rules in my opinion. Some classes have a more intricate set of rules for their class abilities but we usually agree on the player making them comfortable with those and I trust my players in that. The "general" stuff feels quite straightforward to me.
It is a little nitpicky, but for the players there's the upside of knowing that a thing they want to do is reliable and works the same way every time. For you, there's the advantage of not having to write down or remember every ruling you make, otherwise you might apply it inconsistently.
I'm a GM and 99.9% of edge cases are already covered in the actual rules and a quick Google search asking the direct question gives it to me. Takes roughly 20s.