How Different are D&D 5e and Pathfinder 2e

Another benefit of 1s and 20s changing degree of success rather than auto-crit is when you're facing things with a decent level difference. If your party ends up facing a bunch of level 1 goblins at level 5, for instance, they can't just randomly crit you. In fact, they probably need a natural 20 to hit at all. And if a natural 20 just means they don't crit fail, then they really shouldn't be fighting you.

Not a D&D player or Pathfinder player yet, but Pathfinder 2e sounds like it has the better game design. Not to mention characters can chose archetypes to add more individuality.

This is a great explanation video! I'll pass it on. From my experience with 5e and hearing from others, the slowness of advancement is deliberate, to make those levels last longer because high levels in 5e are pretty broken and/or hard to run. Similarly, levels 1 and 2 are made to be very quick. They're both kind of like band-aids. I enjoy the fact that pf2e succeeds at making all the levels balanced and rewarding in their own ways. Plus, leveling up is exciting when you do it!

Honestly, someone (maybe even Paizo) should make a short video series specifically aimed at teaching 5e players how to play PF2E. I have so many buddies that were reluctant to learn PF2E even though they love 5E, and when I finally convinced them to sit down and let me explain, they were shocked how similar everything was and how few rules you really had to learn when coming over from 5e.

I'd add from a GM perspective the encounter building being balanced is and enormous weight off your shoulders. You can spend a lot more time creating interesting encounters without worrying about manually balancing them. Plus having items have a corresponding level makes rewarding players much easier, and it makes player shopping a lot more exciting and far less of a headache especially involving magic items.

After the whole fiasco with the ogl im very interested in potentially switching my group over

I have a feeling this video is going to be very useful given OGL 1.1

Very informative for a newer player. With the upcoming One D&D Microtransaction hellscape that is about to be unleased by the suits at Hasbro, I'm really looking at making the switch to PF2e. I just hope Paizo can survive the coming storm because even if WoC lose a million players, they are going to make gobs of money with VTT and digital MTX. I just knew they were going to 'Video Game' the TTRPG market sooner or later, I'm kind of shocked it took this long.

I'd say the coolest difference is the action economy! In 5e you only have one standard action so it is critical that it is used optimally. Every single option has to be weighed against just attacking or casting fireball again. You want to do this cool thing, but it will never be as valuable as just dealing more damage. In PF2e you get 3 actions to be used for anything. Attack three times to deal the most damage? Sure, but there's a multiple attack penalty. It's actually more optimal to do those cool things to buff your attacks or your allies. The whole system encourages you to use tactics and use more character options instead of just stand and slap.

This is a really great explanation video and you've laid out the differences very clearly. It's a shame because I far prefer Paizo as a company to WotC but tbh most of the differences you list do make me want to stick with 5e. D&D is already a fairly crunch-heavy game and my players do tend to get pretty bogged down in it. Part of the reason we left 3.5 behind was the sheer number of small modifiers accumulated from different sources weighing sessions down. Still, the proof will be in the pudding and I'm looking forward to giving it a spin.

The 3-action economy is the biggest difference. It makes gameplay so much more interesting. When 5th edition first started they wanted "Bonus Actions" to be very rare but power-creep has made them mandatory. Going back to 5th edition, if you play a character without a useful bonus action every single turn (or even a martial character who hasn't gotten Extra Attack yet due to multiclassing) while everyone else does it basically feels you are doing half as much as everyone else and being half as effective as everyone else. That isn't fun for a game. In PF2 you are guaranteed your 3 actions every single turn (barring negative conditions) from level 1! The martial classes don't need to wait until level 5 to feel effective. Now of course newer players might be wasteful of their 3rd action which is similar to the bonus action problem but it is just so much less punishing. The other big difference is the critical system. I feel like it is overall easy to understand but it is hard to understand how much impact it has until you actually play. It makes every +1 and -1 so much more impactful! In my 5th edition campaign I am actually pretty liberal with giving out big bonuses to hit but giving out a +5 to hit for surrounding an enemy. And yet that +5 to hit in D&D is so much less exciting than the mere +1 to hit in PF2. In D&D it just means the low chance of missing gets even lower. But in PF2 it means a bigger chance to critically hit! In D&D we have had people buffed up from multiple sources that hit 20 above their AC! All for a normal hit, no greater chance of a critical hit despite all those many bonuses. Criticals are fun! Customization is better. Every single time you level up you get SOMETHING! higher levels of D&D there are lots of levels where you get nothing! Spellcasters get new spells but even that doesn't feel like a great achievement. It is always really exciting to level up in Pathfinder. Something else I like about the customization is that in Pathfinder your ancestry (/race) gives you new powers at high levels. D&D is shifting towards this a bit with giving more racial spells at 3rd and 5th level. I really like more than only just your class providing you new abilities as you level up. One last highly subjective thing to throw out that probably isn't mentioned enough is that Paizo started off writing adventures and they are so good at it! I'm currently only played through 1 Paizo-written adventure for PF2 but it is so much better written than any of the many published adventures by Wizards Of The Coast I have played. I have no idea what WotC is so bad at writing 5E modules. As someone playing since 3rd edition I don't know why they declined so badly. But 5E adventures all feel half-finished and expect DMs to write the rest. PF2 adventures (at least for sure the one I am playing through) just seem so much more GM-friendly and complete.

This vid might get a boost now, considering the circumstances

I was happy with 5e but started missing the level of customization that 3.5 has and now I am back to a 3.5 game. Pathfinder 2nd sounds good. I will look into it more.

The more I learn about it, the more I am thinking of changing over to Pathfinder 2e.

Super helpful video! And the little subtle bits of editing added a lot. For future videos, could you maybe do some overlaid graphics for bits like the PF2E XP table you were talking about? Cheers, Anto!

i too am going through a similar journey from 5e to pathfinder. and i used to dm professionally for the past couple of years. what i really like about pathfinder is the combat mechanics and how the combat can help setup your damage dealer by inflicting debuff penalties to ac so that you can help setup your friends to crit. which forces you to play the game fundementally differently than 5e. you can be more tactical. it also teaches you to never leave an action unused. you should always be doing something with that extra action i.e recall knowledge. where you can learn about vulnerabilities and as a free action tell your party what youve learnt. that isnt built into 5e other than the dm giving a nod as to when they have discovered it through damaging the creature. or intimadating them to give them the flat footed condition. and having flanking as a core rule to gain another flat footed method. i just love how you can stack a situational penalty and conditional penalty with a situational bonus and then that +10 needed for that crit comes down to a +3. and if you dont work together in this way the game punishes you from the monsters being strong. its just really good game design. another thing from a dm stand point is having limitations on things like cantrip healing and guidance. giving you a 1 hour cool down on immunity to guidance or the effect you used on a spell. it just shows theres more thought put into the system overall. and if im really honest even tho theres more mechanics in pathfinder its because of the mechanics i will have less load to think about or improvise and i can focus on running the game and being more consistent. whereas people who say dnd is rules light is just a facade because you have to make rules where there are none and thats why the dms guild is so succesful. also politically i align with paizo because they are unionised probably the first ttrpg place with a full union making sure their artists and contirbuters get paid fairly. this in conjunction with wotc releasing racist content recently with the hadozee debacle just made me wanna switch even more. sorry for the rant but tldr im really enjoying pathfinder and the amount of attention to detail thats in the system thats lacking in 5e has won me over.

Super informative video, loved the graphs! What would you say is the best on-ramp for a GM trying to bring a group along to try and transition? PF2E Beginner Box or is there a better path to jump into?

Looking to get into pathfinder now, thanks for this video!

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Pathfinder 2E here I come, bye Wizards of the Past.