Pathfinder vs 5e?

[HouNDDoG]

Which do you prefer for cRPGs and why? What’s the big differences? I’m finding BG3 pretty straight forward and newb friendly as I never really played dnd. Does one make for more fun combat or exploration than the other?

[videomike_Ultimate_Plushie]

Pathfinder, but I wish there were 2nd edition games

[magritte]

I prefer 5e to Pathfinder 1st edition, but have heard good things about the 2nd edition.

[Rozpierdalacz]

Pathfinder for character creation and level ups, 5e for everything else.
Building character and theory crafting is cool in pathfinder but it sucks with everything else. Combat is atrocious. Poor balancing of playable classes and half of game play is casting buffs on yourself out of combat.

[Ryan]

5e, 2e its all gobbledygook to me, the combat sucks, period.

[✙205🍉🐆→]

Pathfinder

[Eddie]

I will admit I have preferred the world of Pathfinder, but I do enjoy both very much. They can co-exist

[Hobocop]

5e by a mile to actually play.

Pathfinder for coming up with goofy character builds.

[Ammellisan]

i prefer the dnd world, but as a pathfinder dm i'd have to go with pathfinder every time. I like bg3 but i still find 5e made for people who sniff glue, it's so incredibly simple that you not only have no freedom but need no brains to make a character which is a damned shame.

Though it's still aeons above 4e which was a cosmic joke xD

[Deylendor]

it's just a preference thing for some. I like both.
We kinda "need" both to avoid corporate ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

[NixAhmose]

I prefer the simplicity of 5e. In theory I like all the build customization that Pathfinder provides, but if the Owlcat games are anything to go by then the whole system comes off as a horribly balanced and convoluted mess that actively harms roleplaying and in-game decision making.

I have a lot of issues with 5e, but the thing I really like about it is that you can very quickly come up with a fun character balance, make a viable build based off it and do well in combat so long as you know how to use good tactics, and get straight into the fun roleplaying.

[Ammellisan]

Originally posted by NixAhmose:

I prefer the simplicity of 5e. In theory I like all the build customization that Pathfinder provides, but if the Owlcat games are anything to go by then the whole system comes off as a horribly balanced and convoluted mess that actively harms roleplaying and in-game decision making.

I have a lot of issues with 5e, but the thing I really like about it is that you can very quickly come up with a fun character balance, make a viable build based off it and do well in combat so long as you know how to use good tactics, and get straight into the fun roleplaying.

Owlcat took the great pathfinder system and raped it into oblivion. I like the owlcat games but they are not pathfinder, they are pathfinder-ish :P

[Sentient_Toaster]

There's... a lot of differences. Plenty of articles have been written about such. For Pathfinder 2e, the mechanics themselves are OGL'd/ORC'd and you can read them starting at https://2e.aonprd.com/PlayersGuide.aspx ; or, say, create a free account w/ Demiplane and read the primer ( https://app.demiplane.com/nexus/pathfinder2e/sources/pathfinder-primer ). Related to the later: Demiplane streams on Twitch, and they sometimes have giveaways. Pathfinder 2e PDFs have often shown up fairly frequently on HumbleBundle.


There aren't *any* CRPG adaptations of PR2e as far as I'm aware. The Kingmaker campaign has been converted to 2e, but Owlcat's take on it uses the 1e rules; and the WOTR campaign was never converted to 2e. There's a more action-y take on the Abomination Vaults coming up, but it won't be a full-crunch version but a co-op hack & slash.

If you want to see a more purist take on D&D 5E as a combat-focused tactical CRPG, look at Solasta by Tactical Adventures. Low production values and they didn't have the full license that Larian did, so they had to stick with the basic rules + their own subclasses and monsters etc; but, in terms of mechanics, they hew a lot more closely to the 5E ruleset than BG3 does. Point in its favor: it does have support for user-created adventures, and the modding scene largely coalesced around one major mod ("Unfinished Business") which adds a lot that Tactical Adventures itself didn't implement.


PF2e would be interesting but probably have a narrower player base than 5E due to less-invested players running into analysis paralysis w/ the sheer number of options, and I'm not talking only about character creation options even (which does require player effort, because there's a lot of decisions to make). With actual mechanics that punish a simple "attack (x3)" use of three actions w/ reduced accuracy, that provide specific ways to use Deception and Intimidation and Acrobatics in combat, with movement and object interactions competing with other actions for your time... never mind something like rolling up an alchemist and deciding how and when to spend your infused reagents, there's greater demand on player effort. In D&D 5E, if somebody wanted to play without having to deal with complexity... OK, I wouldn't personally play it because I'd be bored out of my mind, but for that sort of player, human champion fighter spec'd for melee is probably the most autopilot-y build possible and it's... functional?

For players that are willing to put in the effort to learn the crunch and to use the variety of actions they have available even early on, though, PF2e a very neat system that's been pretty carefully considered; and in 2e they strictly limit modifier stacking and don't really mechanically encourage spending lots of time trying to buff yourself before combat.

There's probably an argument to be made that PF2e is actually a more suitable system to convert because there *are* already a lot of long-tested-and-discussed rules for many things (leaning more into the 'rules' part of 'rules vs. rulings') whereas D&D 5E tends to provide fewer explicit mechanics and guidelines and leaves a lot to DM discretion. e.g. PF2e has explicit rules for how much a recipe to craft a particular item should be, how much you'll need to spend to start crafting it, what skills to check, the time-vs-money tradeoff, etc; 5E largely puts this on the DM's shoulders. Related, PF2e has explicit rules for upgrading weapons and armor based on runes, including rules for transferring runes between items. Consequence: this reduces the need to tailor loot for a specific group's preferences. Like, if a fighter has built to use a heavy maul and to do so really really well, and you're running a prewritten adventure that doesn't feature any enchanted mauls but there's this neat-o +1 striking flaming shortsword in it, in the long run that's OK; with access to a smith who knows magical crafting (which shouldn't be hard to find unless for some reason they can't really return to any settlement of decent size), one can transfer the weapon potency, striking and flaming runes to his favorite maul. Alternately, there are rules for retraining so the player controlling the fighter theoretically has the option to change what he specializes in, given sufficient downtime.

5E doesn't have any rules for transferring properties, nor for retraining, and very little guidance for selling magic items to get ones they'd rather use. Consequence: more burden on the DM to tailor things to the specific characters in the group. This is something that a human DM can do very readily given some time and effort, but a lot harder of an ask for a computer program.

[Zef]

Neither, i'm not a fan of both.

[DuneDog]

5e is easier to get into. Pathfinder gives you a lot more options to play with.

[Yagger]

3e