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As far as we're talking about Pathfinder 2ed, it's a D&D offshoot that's more complex and has more player-side options than D&D 5e but is less complex than D&D 3.5/Pathfinder 1st edition.
Apart from that, it's your usual STR/DEX/CON hit points AC skills high-power heroic fantasy heartbreaker game. Comes with its own distinct setting.
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It's the game for people who sit dowmn to plan a character for 5e and then go "wait... that's it?"
Pathfinder, I feel, is at its heart a system for people who want their creativity to have mechanical impact on the game.
You can make pretty much any kind of character you imagine and it will look, feel, and play distinctly different from other builds.
To some extent, it's what Path of Exile is to Diablo 3.
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To some extent, it's what Path of Exile is to Diablo 3.
As someone who's played both systems and both games, this is a perfect analogy, I'm gonna start using this!
Pathfinder's publisher (Paizo) also writes lots and lots of pre-written adventures.
They come out at a pace of one part a month, every month.
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What is Pathfinder?
It's amazing.
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Way back when WotC rolled out the 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons, they innovated a way to spread their game in the Open Gaming License. Specifically this allowed anybody to use the *rules content* from Dungeons & Dragons to make whatever game product they want subject to guidelines in the OGL.
During the 3.x era, Paizo published Dungeon and Dragon magazines with a license for WotC, but with the advent of 4th edition WotC cancelled both magazines and Paizo pivoted into publishing their own version of the 3.x rules (complete with its own setting) in Pathfinder. The production schedule for Dungeon became the production schedule for the Pathfinder Adventure Path series.
11 years later, we have the 2nd edition of Pathfinder just launched. The first edition of Pathfinder was a great game, but it was based on a 15 year old rules framework which had started to show its age.
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It's the game for people who sit dowmn to plan a character for 5e and then go "wait... that's it?"
Pathfinder, I feel, is at its heart a system for people who want their creativity to have mechanical impact on the game.
You can make pretty much any kind of character you imagine and it will look, feel, and play distinctly different from other builds.
To some extent, it's what Path of Exile is to Diablo 3.
I am not familiar with Path of Exile nor Diablo 3. I haven't even played D&D 5th Edition. But I do have a recent example that illustrated the difference between D&D 5th Edition and Pathfinder.
Several weeks ago, I started a new Pathfinder campaign under Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules. One new player, who had never played Pathfinder before, came in with some preliminary work. She had created a gnome rogue in a trial version of D&D Beyond.
First, we had to adjust the stats to Pathfinder standards by raising a few. Next we had to fill in customization details. Her character was a gnome, but in Pathfinder the race also has a heritage, so her gnome became an Umbral Gnome who could see in the dark. Her class was rogue, but in Pathfinder a class also has a specialty, so her rogue gained the thief racket, basing her weapon damage on Dexterity rather than Strength. Then we added a Criminal Background. And chose some more skills and a 1st-level skill feat.
Pathfinder character creation is more work, but it creates a character that already has a personal story. And at each level the mechanics add a little more customization.
Pathfinder is a game designed to allow you to imagine any character you might want to play and build it, piece by piece, decision by decision until you have what you want and that character will still play well at the table. It is a tactical game that allows you to make decisions in and out of combat that affect the flow of the game.
Otherwise, its an offshoot of D&D: they parted company at the end of D&D 3.5 edition's run. They will continue to change in different ways going forward. And that's a good thing: people can play what they like and find the game that's right for them.
So there are a LOT of different kinds of Tabletop RPGs out there. Both D&D 5th and Pathfinder 2nd edition are 'd20' based systems.
Pretty much everything your character attempts in these systems works off of rolling a d20 and hoping the number that comes up, with whatever bonuses added and penalties subtracted, meets or beats a target number and that determines whether you succeed and what you're doing or not. The situation the character is in and the difficulty target number is set by a GM.
In that both 5e and pf2e are exactly the same.
The difference comes really in
1. Character creation and advancement.
2. Actions in game.
In both 5e opts for simplicity. There are fewer character options and fewer things the character can do round to round. This allows for the game to be fast to pick up and gives GMs a lot of latitude to come up with how the simple rules of the game can be applied to what a character wishes to do.
PF2e on the other hand opts for more character options and more things the character can do on a round to round basis. This allows for a LOT Of different character builds to be created with real mechanical differences in how they interact with the game world and gives GMs a more expansive framework of defined rules to use to adjudicate what is happening in the world.
Oh and also all Pathfinder 2e rules are free for use. Check out the archives of Nethys!
Edit: Oh and the power curve is very different. In 5e you can become truly exceptional but still vulnerable to a gang of lower level threats. In pf2e you become a demiGod. Different feels and pf2e is harder to GM as you have to be careful about what you throw at the players else there will be a TPK.
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This question has been answered a lot by others so like Mathmuse let me tell a story.
I was at a party once when a friend brought up that he plays D&D (5e). I've played some RPGs, D&D (2,3,3.5,5), Mutants and Masterminds 3e, Starfinder, Pathfinder (at this point only 1e was out), and some smaller games like Everyone is John and Trash Pandas. The resulting conversation went like this:
My Friend: Have you ever played CactusUnicorn?
Me: Yeah, but I prefer Pathfinder
My Friend: What's that
Me: It's another pen and paper RPG
My Friend: Why don't you like D&D
Me: It's not bad, I just don't really like the fact that it takes 15 minutes to make a character
My Friend: Well you can use generators or pre gens to make it faster it doesn't have to be that slow
Me: *Laughs* That's not what I meant. I meant it's to short. I like to spend 2-3 hours on a character at 1st level. More when I'm making higher levels
So yeah that's my story. I thought it was funny when it happened but it's probably not read like a year later. But it gets the point across, Pathfinder is far more complex and it rewards system mastery which I enjoy. I can spend days with a circle of books laying on the ground making NPCs and future PCs.
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I've found Pathfinder 2e Character Creation very, very simple. Not as easy as 5e, sure, but I managed to walk one of my players who usually just tries to use a generator (and then still gets confused) through it with no problems. I mean, sure, he made a Human Fighter who used to be a soldier, but even something that simple we were dragging out background as we went along.
I've found Pathfinder 2e Character Creation very, very simple. Not as easy as 5e, sure, but I managed to walk one of my players who usually just tries to use a generator (and then still gets confused) through it with no problems. I mean, sure, he made a Human Fighter who used to be a soldier, but even something that simple we were dragging out background as we went along.
About how long did that take?
Only a few minutes!?
Either you've had a lot of practice with those apps, or you're surely making mistakes along the way.
It takes me hours to do it manually, and at least 1 hour with a familiar app.
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I've knocked out a basic level 1 in 15 minutes before a society game with a new player. You can get it done quick if you want / need to.
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With hero lab, a 1st level character is a ~9 minute task. Coming up with a path you want to go down in the future would take a whole lot longer.
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Coming up with a path you want to go down in the future would take a whole lot longer.
This might be my issue. I'm never not doing that.
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Coming up with a path you want to go down in the future would take a whole lot longer.This might be my issue. I'm never not doing that.
It's not a bug, it's a feature!
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The difference being, unless you've got a complex multiclass you're trying to envision, it's not just starting the character that takes 15 minutes... It's planning the entire thing.
Starting a character in Pathfinder, especially using pathbuilder, takes 15 minutes maybe. But planning the whole thing? That's a rabbit hole of a very different depth.
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With hero lab, a 1st level character is a ~9 minute task. Coming up with a path you want to go down in the future would take a whole lot longer.
I reviewed the steps of character creation and for me, a big slowdown is writing all the decisions and minor calculations in pencil on a paper character sheet. Going electronic is not much of a speed-up, because I type up my NPCs in a text file in stat-block form and it is still a lot of typing small entries. I lack character-generation software.
However, the biggest slowdown is optional: reading in detail what feats and features do before I select one. Take rogue for example. I read the full entries for Ruffian, Scoundrel, and Thief rackets and ponder for a few minutes which one better fits my character concept. Then I have to go through four 1st-level class feats. If I already created a rogue or two, then I would have this memorized. If I already created an alchemist, bard, druid, monk, and wizard, then the options for rogue could still be a mystery for me.
Likewise, chosing appropriate equipment is slow right now, but I should memorize the options after a few more characters.
As for planning a path for the future, I design for the theme of the character and I can read up on higher-level options that fit that theme later. If nothing beyond 1st level fits the theme, then I would be disappointed, but I am willing to take that risk. If I build a character at higher level than 1st level, character creation is slowed down as I scan from the higher level on down and then build from 1st level on up.
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The difference being, unless you've got a complex multiclass you're trying to envision, it's not just starting the character that takes 15 minutes... It's planning the entire thing.
Starting a character in Pathfinder, especially using pathbuilder, takes 15 minutes maybe. But planning the whole thing? That's a rabbit hole of a very different depth.
Most of said depth IMO comes from the system being so recent. We collectively do not yet have the system knowledge required to easily find the options that best fit a given concept over a character's levels.
PF1 has a more that 10 years headstart there. But PF2 has been far more focused and the options and combos simpler to track this far.
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With hero lab, a 1st level character is a ~9 minute task. Coming up with a path you want to go down in the future would take a whole lot longer.I reviewed the steps of character creation and for me, a big slowdown is writing all the decisions and minor calculations in pencil on a paper character sheet. Going electronic is not much of a speed-up, because I type up my NPCs in a text file in stat-block form and it is still a lot of typing small entries. I lack character-generation software.
However, the biggest slowdown is optional: reading in detail what feats and features do before I select one. Take rogue for example. I read the full entries for Ruffian, Scoundrel, and Thief rackets and ponder for a few minutes which one better fits my character concept. Then I have to go through four 1st-level class feats. If I already created a rogue or two, then I would have this memorized. If I already created an alchemist, bard, druid, monk, and wizard, then the options for rogue could still be a mystery for me.
Likewise, chosing appropriate equipment is slow right now, but I should memorize the options after a few more characters.
As for planning a path for the future, I design for the theme of the character and I can read up on higher-level options that fit that theme later. If nothing beyond 1st level fits the theme, then I would be disappointed, but I am willing to take that risk. If I build a character at higher level than 1st level, character creation is slowed down as I scan from the higher level on down and then build from 1st level on up.
Pathbuilder in one hand and the CRB in the other is how I create my characters these days. AoN is good too but I prefer the CRB pdf for the time being.
How many minor calculations are there to make? The attribute system you just do tally marks and thats your mod at the end. Everything else will be either your attribute or your attribute +3/5.
From the first page of the character sheet:
33 minor calculations = 6 (ability score modifiers) + 1 (AC) + 3 (saving throws) + 1 (hp) + 1 (perception) + 1 (class DC) + 2 (two melee weapons) + 1 (ranged weapon) + 17 (skills)These calculations are trivial, but writing down the results of 33 calculations takes time. In addition, I have assisted players who could not memorize their abilitiy scores modifiers in just a few minutes, so they had to keep looking back to where those modifiers were written to use them in the other calculations.
From the second page, add up the bulk of all gear to see whether the character is encumbered. This calculation is less trivial.
I am recently new to DnD, by that I mean I've only played once (as a dm). I started playing the most recent 5th edition. I have heard many references to Pathfinder, but I don't know what it is. Sorry if this sounds like a noob question but I would really like to know. Thank you in advance.
Quite possibly the greatest game ever made.