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What are some highlights that make you feel that way? I’ve never played.
Here’s my list:
- It scales very well from level 1-20. The math just works at all levels of play.
- 3 action rounds
- Encounter design and balancing is easy for the busy GM
- All of the classes are good, flavorful, and have interesting options
- Teamwork is highly encouraged through class and ability design
- Martial/Caster/Support balance
- Degrees of success/failure
- Easy, free access to the rules
- The ORC license
- https://pathbuilder2e.com/
- Pathfinder Society Organized play is well done and well supported by Paizo
- The rune system for magic weapons/armor
I don’t know if I agree that all classes are good.
Oracle and Gunslinger have always (at least in my mind) seemed to be overly weak. Like, Gunslinger seems like if should be a high damage output class, but lack of Dex to Damage really seems to hinder him from being a hard hitter. Lol, not to mention, guns just feel really weak.
For Oracle, her curse seems a major downside without a compensating upside (at least until late levels; haven’t built one above lv 5).
I’d love to hear counterpoints of anyone has any.
To be clear, 95% agree with your takes though.
Re: oracle
Being a divine spontaneous caster fucks; your entire spell list is Heal if you need it, and literally anything else if you don’t. And trading a spell/day and slightly smaller repertoire for some extra durability is generally worth it in my experience.
Also Divine Access means you can pretty much pick whatever spells you want, and more as more gods come out or you and your GM make some more.
I liked the focus spells more back when battle oracles weren’t hit with the nerf bat and could literally just be the juggernaut whenever they got cursed
I’ve always been allergic to spell casters (the strategy behind the best use of spell slots just never clicked for me - which is extra painful because it seems like if should be simple, but I consistently manage to botch it), going back to when i picked this all up in the 3.0e days.
I think that’s caused me to not really engage with the spell casting side of spell casters in PF2e. I remember in 3.5, we banned Mystics because spontaneous divine spell casting was broken, so maybe I just need to run one to see if work.
Also the sheer amount of stuff they print. They are continuously putting out high quality adventures with a storyline that makes sense and doesn’t have giant blank spots that you’re expected to fill in for a few levels. They’re switching to a quarterly hardcover model instead of a monthly adventure next year. The rulebooks are nice and paizo isn’t shy about making new ancestries, classes, and options for existing ones, and they balance the more odd or possibly unbalanced options by making them uncommon or rare such that they require GM approval to take. And a whole bunch of setting books that examine all corners of their world, from over views of whole continents to deep dives into specific cities.
Two big things I love:
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Three action system: every “activity” (strike, stride, cast a spell, etc) has an action cost. On a standard turn, your character gets 3 actions to spend on those various activities. This obviates the need for DnD’s rules about spending a whole turn running since you can just spend multiple actions striding.
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Keyword system: PF2e leans more onto standardized keywords and uses them appropriately. Everything (all actions, weapons, items, even statuses) has a set of traits that (usually) briefly explains how the thing acts. It allows for standardized templates for interactions between different elements of the game. This takes a HUGE burden off the GM during game play, esp for modules that weren’t written to think about each other. All the examples I can think of would take several pages to explain, but you can look up some things on Easy Tools and see their traits.
Bonus thing I love: all the rules are openly published, leading to TONS of extra tools that just make the game easier to run. (That said you should buy a set of books to help the publishers after you’ve been converted).
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Not OP but the top 3 for me are
- Martial - Caster balance
- 3 action economy
- A much better framework for GMs
3 action economy for me, I also like that the rules are much clearer and more balanced to more play styles.
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That does seem like a big upside!
I think one of the biggest things, besides not being owned by WOTC, is that it doesn’t have a million exceptions you have to remember.
D&D5e: Want to use your bonus action? Cool. Is it for a spell? Have you cast a spell this round? Is it a spell that’s allowed to be cast even if you’ve cast a spell?
Pathfinder2e: Do you have enough actions to perform an action? OK, do it.
That does seem nice. One of the many reasons I DM 5e from a “does it make sense” perspective over a rules as written perspective.
I’ll play with you.
Seriously.
I haven’t before but I’d love to. Last dnd I played was 3.5. I won’t touch anything else, except pathfinder and other non-dnd games.
I’m looking to DM kingmaker on pf2e! Let me know if you’re interested.
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I haven’t really played PF2e, but from reading it I don’t really love that it does the “numbers go way up” thing. I did 3e and I didn’t like the “I rolled a 4, but I have a +47 on my check” thing. I’m told PF2e has a “without level bonus” mode, but I don’t know if anyone plays it.
I think the level scaling fits Golarion, since “becoming a god” is a semi realistic goal for someone to set for themselves :P
But people who want to play in grittier settings do use the proficiency without level rules, and from what I’ve seen all the major third party tools support that option. As a gm, It can be hard to balance for though! The +level to everything mostly serves to give your level 10 cleric a fighting chance on their stealth checks, and without that boost there are some actions some characters just can’t perform.
I think the level scaling fits Golarion, since “becoming a god” is a semi realistic goal for someone to set for themselves :P
First you get really really drunk.
And then you take the Test of the Starstone. As a joke, of course.
Accidental ascensions are never the punchline to a joke. :D
Is it still compatible with all the money I wasted on 3.x Hasbro D&D?
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Oh, also, I don’t care about the setting. I don’t use Golarion anyway, because Forgotten Realms, Mystara, and Sigil exist.
Not really, PF2E is its own system that is in the D20 family but no longer directly compatible with 3.X. However, since encounter balancing is easy, if you want to convert 3.X adventures to PF2E the work is pretty simple.
No, but it is much improved and streamlined
That’s the 4e & 5e sales pitch. No interest then.
Is it still compatible with all the money I wasted on 3.x Hasbro D&D?
While technically the answer is “no”, people who emphasize the difference don’t apply the “Rule of Cool” as liberally as I did.
I re-used all kinds of D&D 3rd Edition resources while switching to Pathfinder.
Sure, we absolutely shouldn’t just dogmatically use the numbers given in a 3E book with Pathfinder.
But I didn’t find it terribly hard to whip up Pathfinder monster and NPC number adjustments based on my 3E source books, more or less on the fly.
Many numbers given are close enough. Most abilities are easy enough to convert in a way that is fun. The Challenge Rating isn’t tuned as carefully, but i find the usual GM toolkit can address that. For example, throwing in a few extras baddies from over the hilldside can scale an encounter up, and awarding the players various story advantages “for good role playing” can scale an encounter’s challenge down.
If my napkin translation went too badly, I threw “Rule of Cool” at it, and just made sure the players were still having fun.
I will say, I relegated 3E stuff to filler encounters, just as I do with anything else I homebrew.
I don’t mind being on my GM toes for a quick encounter, or a short story arc. But I don’t like having something poorly balanced have a recurring role in my campaigns.
All to say I have used 3E source books liberally in my Pathfinder campaigns, and I’m not sure any of my players have ever noticed.
No
Then it’s totally useless to my interests or needs.
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You’re probably right. But I prefer to play the games I’ve already got material and experience with. Though that may be because I tried Apocalypse World and Dungeon World after loving Dogs in the Vineyard, and dislike PbtA systems so much that I’ve gone out of my way to support K. N. Obaugh’s DOGS; and I’ve tried 5e. The only version I can tolerate of it is Black Hack. Shadowrun 6 sent me back to Anarchy, and there is no game that captures what GURPS 3 or Marvel FASERIP do.
First edition Pathfinder should be. Second edition is more like 5e, but actually thought out. I don’t think it’s natively compatible with D&D5e though.
Oh, 1e Pathfinder is basically 3.75. I have the core book and a few others somewhere, and I lost the 3-ring binder with the thread from the GitP forum laying out the major changes between 3.5 and PF, as well as conversions for books that didn’t exist for PF, and some of the Green Ronin stuff.
Yeah. I don’t think 1e is underrated, but I do think it’s over-hated. It’s the system I largely got started with for TTRPGs. It’s really not that difficult, but it does let you make things very complex.
I know why people went for D&D 5e over Pathfinder, but I think it should have been seen as an entry point, not the place you stay forever like it’s become for most people. It’s dumbed down, but also with you having to remember a lot of exceptions and things because they dumbed it down too much and tried adding things that didn’t fit exactly into the rules.
I wish GURPS had taken off more.
I was curious about this some years back.
Are there any published materials on how to run a game in a GURPS system?
Meanwhile, non D&D players are like: they’re the same picture.
I’ve come to the conclusion that 3.5e was the peak of TTRPG and frankly I’ve just decided I’m going to go back to that. It’s not like there isn’t plenty of 3.5e materials to use.
Me as a changeling the dreaming main washing my hands of the dirty pathfinder main.
Did D&D polymorph into a faucet?
