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Hi guys, thanks to Hasbro's greed I am wanting to shift my campaigns over from DND 5th edition to Pathfinder 2nd Edition.
I can find guides to convert from 3.5 to 1st and also from 1st to 2nd, but is there anything to help conversion from DnD 5th to P2?
Thanks in advance.
Regards
Adrian
That's a very good question. I don't know DND 5 at all so I can't help you, but I really think one of our beloved guide maker should take a look at this problem as it may become common in the very near future.
As a side note, I sometimes convert things from PF1 but without even looking at conversion guides. PF2 is very easy to convert because there are strong guidelines on how to run it. For example, for skill DCs, there are clear values that you should definitely use. So you don't need to come up with specific skill DCs for a task, just look at the number in the book, add or substract a few points if you want the task to be easy or hard and it's done.
And if you want to create specific monsters, I use this tool which is super fast once you get the use of it.
I'm not sure it helps, but that's my 2 cents.
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I like Lizardfolk with the Adopted Ancestry general feat for Kobold or a planar versatile heritage to fill the dragonborn niche.
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Yes, it is an ancestry feat. It also has follow-up feats as well for making it stronger.
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The is also the battle zoo ancestries dragon if you are open to using that.
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Does PF2E have an official dragon person race? Because one of the obstacles right now to my D&D5E campaign transitioning to PF2E is that one of my players (my husband as it happens) is playing a Dragonborn.
Official, no. This is one of those things that WotC's trademarks has made Paizo very leery about making their own version of. Well, that and they also claim to not want to do it specifically to distinguish their brand from D&D.
But if you're open to using third party content, my suggestion would be Samurai Sheepdog's Ancestries of Omen: Drakorin.
Hi guys, thanks to Hasbro's greed I am wanting to shift my campaigns over from DND 5th edition to Pathfinder 2nd Edition.
I can find guides to convert from 3.5 to 1st and also from 1st to 2nd, but is there anything to help conversion from DnD 5th to P2?
Thanks in advance.
Regards
Adrian
This question comes up a lot on the PF2e subreddit lately. I think you'll find a lot of resources there. You would also find a lot of help via their Discord too.
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I think the most important advice for a GM is: pay more attention to level.
1. The character's level is added to virtually all checks and DCs. Combined with the bigger proficiency bonuses, this means the difference between what a level 1 party can handle and a level 5 can handle is much more significant than 5e. This is important for points 2 and 3.
2. Pay careful attention to the encounter budget, because it largely works as the rulebook says it should. The relative level of your enemies to your party is the most significant factor for encounter difficulty most of the time.
3. Use the level based DC chart if you need a DC tied to something with a level. Otherwise, use the simple DCs. (Get the GM screen for PF2 so these are always in front of you.)
4. Use items levels when deciding what magic items you want to drop. Also, DROP MAGIC ITEMS. They are not optional and your characters will die without them. Your party should also be able to purchase or craft them, but for new players dropping what they mathematically need is usually better.
5. Firmly root for your players. PF2 is a harder game and gives you a lot of tools to keep players from trivializing your challenges. Other games might require you to be a hardass to avoid one PC derailing things. Here, let the system be the hardass instead.
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Battlezoo has a great dragon book!
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An addendum to #3: Single-enemy combats will always be swingier than combats where there's about as many enemies as the PCs. Be careful with them! They've always been a risk in encounter design, but perhaps especially so in PF2.
Your best help will be the PF2 Gamemastery Guide.
It makes adjusting things easy. And reskinning is another quick way to handle things.
PF2 is very, very easy for GMs to move things to, in my opinion.
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I think the most important advice for a GM is: pay more attention to level.
Or play with the Proficiency without Level variant rule.
Does PF2E have an official dragon person race?
Draxie Sprite?
Yeah, probably not. Way too much of a size difference.
And pretty much the answer is that no, Paizo doesn't currently have one in their own books. But there are several 3pp products that do.
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I honestly wouldn't recommend any major house rules for a first-time GM. Maybe the Extra Archetype house rule, since that's pretty simple and makes things pretty fun for the players (and doesn't kick in until level 2).
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I don't recommend new GMs create their own impromptu chases even though that is a core rule. Maybe get a few games worth of experience before trying it out on your own.
And there are some variant rules that could be just as complex to introduce.
But I think that Free Archetype, Automatic Bonus Progression, and Proficiency without Level are all generally simple enough to handle from the start. A few strange edge cases like bombs not getting their item bonus, or particular archetypes that don't have enough low level feats to fill all of the Free Archetype slots. But nothing unmanageable.
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I am speaking purely for myself, but Automatic Bonus Progression had me a little stressed out--it really requires you first understand the normal Wealth By Level system. Proficiency Without Level, likewise, has me blinking rapidly. It massively overhauls the numbers and itself acknowledges its adjustment system can't account for certain monster difficulties (which is a problem, since a new GM won't know how to jury-rig that).
Again, I'm just speaking for myself, but I feel pretty comfortable with the system right now and I feel a little daunted by those rules. PF2 is already a huge adjustment.
These variant rules aren't super complicated by PF2 standards, but I think they require at least a little literacy with the game.
Archives of Nethys is also a great resource to find and compare like mobs or Paizo's version.
Archives of Nethys - Creatures
I am speaking purely for myself, but Automatic Bonus Progression had me a little stressed out--it really requires you first understand the normal Wealth By Level system. Proficiency Without Level, likewise, has me blinking rapidly. It massively overhauls the numbers and itself acknowledges its adjustment system can't account for certain monster difficulties (which is a problem, since a new GM won't know how to jury-rig that).
Again, I'm just speaking for myself, but I feel pretty comfortable with the system right now and I feel a little daunted by those rules. PF2 is already a huge adjustment.
These variant rules aren't super complicated by PF2 standards, but I think they require at least a little literacy with the game.
Yeah, that's fair. And it is always good to hear both sides of a discussion.
Personally I wish that the Automatic Bonus Progression rules just referenced the Items by Character Level table and did away with money entirely too. That is what we are considering for an upcoming game. The GM can hand out cool items as loot during adventuring, and while in town we can buy with untracked money any items that we have open loot slots for as well as a reasonable amount of consumables.
But maybe that is a bit more of an advanced alternate rule to run with.
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I would also like to add the shift in how the crit system works changes combat numbers in an interesting way. By and large in 5E a group of lesser
level enemies can be more dangerous that one equal to higher level enemy. They opposite is true by and large with Pathfinder 2E. Do to the crit system players will crit more often against the lower level mob and finish them off quicker. While fighting an equal to higher level monster will be much more of a challenge as the pcs will crit less and the monster will crit more. So a GM should be a bit more aware of the attack vs armor ratio when creating encounters.
Hi guys, thanks to Hasbro's greed I am wanting to shift my campaigns over from DND 5th edition to Pathfinder 2nd Edition.
I can find guides to convert from 3.5 to 1st and also from 1st to 2nd, but is there anything to help conversion from DnD 5th to P2?
The concepts of ability scores, character class, character level, ancestry (race), background all can be translated roughly one for one from D&D5 to PF2.
You can find a near equivalent for each flavour wise.
The feat system in Pathfinder is much more detailed. The mechanics of many of these feat also depend on the 3 action system and the proficiency system. This is different to D&Ds action/bonus action/free movement and proficiency. As a result you really will need to choose your new feats from scratch.
Ability score generation in Pathfinder interacts with class, background and ancestry. So not everything you want will be always possible and you may need to make some compromises.
Skills are different.
The long and the short of it is Pathfinder has far more options so you will be able to do something reasonable. But it is a different game with different mechanics so there is not always a one for one match for particular powers. If you are learning a new system you will be far better off starting at level 1. Converting a higher level character will involve you making choices you won't really understand till you have a session or two under your belt.
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If you have a specific character to convert, then just submit it to a forum and it is very likely people will just respond.
I may have a go at a guide but it is going to be tricky and inherently incomplete. I have a fair bit to do for work before Monday .....
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Usually the Advice forum for help with creating characters, enemies, or campaign plot equivalents.
And the Rules forum for questions about how various actions, skills, abilities, spells, or items work.
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Also, welcome to Pathfinder =)
There are some good things in this reddit thread
This post is a start. But no real mechanical information.
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I think the biggest issue that will come up is 5e multiclassing to PF2 archetyping. 5E ends to be additive while PF2 tends to be a side grade as it costs class feats.
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Work got cancelled
:)
Here is my fist attempt at a guide for moving from D&D 5 to PF2
It only contains ancestry information at the moment and needs feedback
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Thanks a lot Gortle.
I can't really help as I don't know 5th Edition, but I hope we'll be able to quickly make a community based guide to help former D&D players.
I just saw one mistake: You say there's no elephant ancestry, while speaking about the Kashrishi earlier. So I'm a bit puzzled :)
Also, there's one thing that I think we should be clear about: PF2 is far harder than D&D5. A Severe encounter is severe, it's not just mildly challenging, it'll certainly put at least a character unconscious. An Extreme encounter is one you should nearly never use as you'll face a TPK 50% of the time.
If you are used to D&D5 difficulty, adding an extra level to the PCs is an easy way to keep the same difficulty in PF2.
I think it's important to speak about difficulty because I've seen a lot of complaints about it from new players (especially those used to the previous edition).
I just saw one mistake: You say there's no elephant ancestry, while speaking about the Kashrishi earlier. So I'm a bit puzzled
Are you thinking Xyloshi?
Kashrishi are Rhino likeI rather cheekily suggested Kashrishi for Giff which are actually hippo based
I just saw one mistake: You say there's no elephant ancestry, while speaking about the Kashrishi earlier. So I'm a bit puzzled
Are you thinking Xyloshi?
Kashrishi are Rhino like
I rather cheekily suggested Kashrishi for Giff which are actually hippo based
You're right, I was not awake this morning. Ignore this comment.
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Work got cancelled
:)Here is my fist attempt at a guide for moving from D&D 5 to PF2
It only contains ancestry information at the moment and needs feedback
Simic Hybrid should definitely be paired with Fleshwarp, IMO. Pathfinder Changelings (hag-blooded folk of any Ancestry with some witch-y magic) are also nothing like D&D/Eberron Changelings (a unique species of shapeshifters, related to doppelgangers; 5e made them fey), so I'd advise against that pairing.
Otherwise, this looks killer! I'm glad you shout out the existence of all the plant people.
Work got cancelled
:)Here is my fist attempt at a guide for moving from D&D 5 to PF2
It only contains ancestry information at the moment and needs feedback
Simic Hybrid should definitely be paired with Fleshwarp, IMO. Pathfinder Changelings (hag-blooded folk of any Ancestry with some witch-y magic) are also nothing like D&D/Eberron Changelings (a unique species of shapeshifters, related to doppelgangers; 5e made them fey), so I'd advise against that pairing.
Otherwise, this looks killer! I'm glad you shout out the existence of all the plant people.
Noted. Thanks. About half way through the classes now...
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In addition to many good points already raised above;
Embrace flexibility For players, PF2 has good retraining rules. Feat isn't what you hoped for? Do a bit of retraining before the next adventure and take a different feat. Weapon isn't as good as you thought? You can transfer runes to a different one, you haven't lost all your money.
For GMs, try out how hard a game the players like. Try easier and harder encounters, try encounters with few and many monsters. Just be easy about letting the players run away if it seems like you overshot it. You don't have to run everything at default difficulty; I think most groups like it just one inch easier. They do stuff like Free Archetype (make the characters a bit stronger) or running a 4-player difficulty adventure for 5 players without applying the suggested difficulty increases. Or for skill challenges you set the DCs 2 lower than typical ("Easy").
Try out the monster design guidelines the chapter in the GMG explains how monsters are designed. This is how the official monsters are designed too. It gives a lot of insight into how stuff is balanced. And it's surprisingly easy. There are really handy tools for automating most of the grunt work, letting you focus on key flavor decision.
Trust the game when it says Hard is Hard. Normal DC actually means somewhat challenging for someone of the appropriate difficulty. Hard means really hard. Very Hard means ridiculously hard. It's almost never necessary to give something hard+ DCs, the usual DCs are difficult enough. Likewise in encounter design, especially in the beginning, Moderate difficulty encounters will often still feel challenging, and Severe ones as quite punishing. It's already possible to TPK on a Severe encounter if the players are unlucky and/or not working together. You probably don't want to use Extreme encounters before level 5.
Teamwork makes the dream work Teamwork between player characters is very important. For example, rogues get extra damage against flat-footed enemies (sneak attack). But other classes might be really good at making enemies flat-footed. Fighters for example have Snagging Strike, Combat Grab and Knockdown Strike, all of which can make that rogue much more deadly. There's a lot of these cross-player combos built into the system for players to discover. And more generally, working together to debuff enemies works really well. Setting up flanking, or using Intimidate to debuff enemies, has a really big effect in PF2. A -1 penalty on an enemy doesn't sound like much, but it's a lot more than you'd think.
I said before that PF2 has generous retraining rules. Players working together to get these combos together is a good way to use them.
Magic items are important, but not difficult to plan There's a table in the GM part of the CRB showing how many items of what level the party should find over the course of a level. So as a GM you can just look at that and say "this adventure is supposed to take them from level 3 to 4, so I need to put in two level 3 permanent items and two level 4 permanent items". And then you just put them in whatever room/monster/reward from grateful villagers seems reasonable.
In general, look at the PCs and pick 50% to 75% "central" items they'll find useful. Fundamental weapon and armor runes are pretty important. Martials care most about the weapon runes, everyone cares about armor runes. If you make sure there's enough of these in the loot, things will go better for the party.
Notice that the table tends to give the party a few level+1 items each level. So a level 3 party could find a +1 striking weapon (= level 4) which at level 3 is pretty powerful. It's higher level than what you can buy or craft. So adventuring pays off.
However, suppose an item gets stolen, destroyed, or maybe the party never found it? In the short term they're weaker. In the longer run, they get new even higher level items, so it's not so bad. It won't ruin a character for the rest of the campaign.
And it goes the other way around. Suppose the party does really well and you give the level 3 party a level 5 item reward. In the short term they're rich and a bit more powerful than they should be. But by level 5, they're pretty comparable again to standard group. So as a GM it's not so dangerous to give out a slightly better item sometimes. Because in the long run the economics of the system get you back to balance again.
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My guide on Converting D&D5 Characters and Races is ready.
Primarily is is full of this is the closet Pathfinder thing to that Dungeons and Dragons thing. The mechanics are different enough that actual conversion will be hard in a lot of cases. But this just gives people the right names and places to look.
Feedback is welcome.
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My guide on Converting D&D5 Characters and Races is ready.
Primarily is is full of this is the closet Pathfinder thing to that Dungeons and Dragons thing. The mechanics are different enough that actual conversion will be hard in a lot of cases. But this just gives people the right names and places to look.
Feedback is welcome.
Yoink.
(although I really wouldn't recommend Changeling for Changeling. If you're open to recommending 3pp, Mark is working on Doppelgangers which should come out later in the year)
Yeah, Mark Seifter has said himself to avoid going off of the names, and to instead focus on what you truly want your character to be good at and go from there.
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My guide on Converting D&D5 Characters and Races is ready.
Primarily is is full of this is the closet Pathfinder thing to that Dungeons and Dragons thing. The mechanics are different enough that actual conversion will be hard in a lot of cases. But this just gives people the right names and places to look.
Feedback is welcome.
Yoink.
(although I really wouldn't recommend Changeling for Changeling. If you're open to recommending 3pp, Mark is working on Doppelgangers which should come out later in the year)
Look it is what we have, but you're right it doesn't cover their most iconic power. I'll restate that more clearly.
Thousand Faces and Form Control are the best option here for now.
Yes I know these recommendations in general are far from perfect. But people do want to recreate characters across systems even if they would be better starting again. This list is really to point them in some possible directions where they may be able to get some of what they want.
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My guide on Converting D&D5 Characters and Races is ready.
Primarily is is full of this is the closet Pathfinder thing to that Dungeons and Dragons thing. The mechanics are different enough that actual conversion will be hard in a lot of cases. But this just gives people the right names and places to look.
Feedback is welcome.
Yoink.
(although I really wouldn't recommend Changeling for Changeling. If you're open to recommending 3pp, Mark is working on Doppelgangers which should come out later in the year)
Look it is what we have, but you're right it doesn't cover their most iconic power. I'll restate that more clearly.
Thousand Faces and Form Control are the best option here for now.
Yes I know these recommendations in general are far from perfect. But people do want to recreate characters across systems even if they would be better starting again. This list is really to point them in some possible directions where they may be able to get some of what they want.
A kitsune with Shifting Faces seems like a fairly good fit. "When you Change Shape into your tailless form, you gain the effects of 3rd-level illusory disguise for 1 hour or until you shift back, except it's a transmutation effect rather than an illusion."
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If I wanted to find a way to imitate a changeling in PF2, I would probably recommend a kitsune coupled with investments in Impersonate. PF2 changelings literally have nothing in common with Eberron changelings except the name. At that point, you're better off just saying, "there is no counterpart". Guiding people towards an ancestry that doesn't fit at all won't help them much, is the thing. :P
Otherwise, thank you for putting this guide together!
A kitsune with Shifting Faces
Thanks. There is only so much I can remember
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Yeah, Mark Seifter has said himself to avoid going off of the names, and to instead focus on what you truly want your character to be good at and go from there.
\
True but people want different things.
Example. The D&D Warlock has the flavour for the PF2 Witch with a Patron etc. But it often plays more like the Psychic with reduced spells and good cantrip blasts.
So I try to include both. If I think of it....
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Lots of excellent advice above.
2 little things :
1. Consumables can be quite useful and the cost is negligible after a few levels. Lower level consumables with effects that do not depend on level are great usually.
2. Consistent with what has been stated above about encounters' difficulty : do not merge encounters because "it makes sense". That is the easiest way for TPK.
Even wave after wave encounters are extremely hard to design properly.
And a third bonus one : the party should have a costless way to heal to full (taking time to do so) between encounters. Encounters are budgeted based on this.
Welcome to the game and to the community.
Yeah, Mark Seifter has said himself to avoid going off of the names, and to instead focus on what you truly want your character to be good at and go from there.\
True but people want different things.
Example. The D&D Warlock has the flavour for the PF2 Witch with a Patron etc. But it often plays more like the Psychic with reduced spells and good cantrip blasts.
So I try to include both. If I think of it....
PF2 Changelings have neither the flavor nor the mechanics of Eberron Changelings, though. There isn't any link other than a name in common. The latter are a true-breeding species of natural shapeshifters, none of which is true of PF2 Changelings or reflected in any of their Feats.
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And I've updated them twice since we started this thread. The document is a lot better thanks to the feedback here.
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We appreciate the trouble you're going to, Gortle!