So, I've been reading a bit about Pathfinder 2.0. Years ago, a friend started talking about running a Pathfinder game - this was prior to D&D 5th Edition, when the common wisdom was that Pathfinder was the better game. Not having had any TTRPG experience, I had no idea what the differences might be, and so I said I'd make a half-orc beast master in an effort to play against my usual types (which tend to be very arcane, urban-friendly, and plate-wearing if I can manage it.)
Now, I'm about four years into a very deep delve into D&D 5th Edition. I have sixteen official D&D books, plus two Kobold Press books (Tome of Beasts and Creature Codex) as well as a pre-ordered Eberron: Rising from the Last War not to mention a strong inclination to get Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus (you had me at Infernal War Machines.)
While I've been experiencing major campaign frustrations lately (we've played less than once a month this year) I'm nevertheless steeped in D&D - its mechanics, and increasingly, its lore (though given my homebrew setting, which even has its own outer planes and gods with no real crossover with the D&D canon except Great Old Ones like Tharizdun whom I reason could cross between multiverses as a being of the Far Realm, it's more for inspiration than real background.)
Those books are, honestly, a rather significant financial investment in D&D, even if I've tended to buy them on sale (feeling guilty for supporting Amazon rather than my local game stores, but a 40% discount is hard to pass up.) And that's not to mention the huge time commitment as well - it's hard enough to corral players together for my game without learning and then teaching them a whole new game system.
And yet, there are intriguing ideas I've read about in Pathfinder Second Edition that make me want to take a look at it.
The first thing that struck me is that the concept of "race" is replaced by "ancestry." Now, while this might in practice be merely a semantic change, it's something I appreciate. For one thing, the edition seems to be emphasizing that none of these peoples are inherently evil. In the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, they justify non-evil Goblins and Orcs by suggesting that Eberron is more distant from gods like Maglubiyet and Gruumsh, whose evil filters down to their people.
But I'm always uncomfortable with the idea that any person is truly evil based on their ancestry, given the rather obvious real-world racism such beliefs mirror. To be certain there are some cultural practices that are passed down that I'd consider evil, but it's not in the genes (it's also important to note that every culture has its evils, and usually the way we demonize others is by minimizing our own flaws while magnifying others'.)
There seems to be a lot more freedom in Pathfinder both for building characters and taking actions in combat. In the latter, it appears that feats - a "potentially every four levels or so if you want to give up an ASI" thing in D&D - are the main way that you build your character. It can mean the difference (I think - again, haven't read the book) between something like a Fighter versus something like a Paladin. It's how you multiclass. It's even how you say that your character is a half-elf or a half-orc - apparently half elves, for example, are humans with a feat that denotes their other heritage (I'm curious if you can do it the other way - be an elf with a feat denoting human heritage.)
In combat, the way it seems to work, you get three actions per turn - but no specific allowance for movement. Which seems to suggest you can attack more if you plant your feet.
My sense is that Pathfinder 2E is more complex than D&D 5E, being less beginner-friendly but also letting greater customization.
What I don't know is if those rules get complex everywhere.
See, here's the thing: one of the things I like about D&D 5E is that a lot of the stuff you do in game doesn't need to have specific mechanics. You can boil down almost everything to skill checks and saving throws and then have the DM just sort of "yes, and" the party.
I know there are rules written for stuff like downtime, with tables to roll on and the like, but to a large extent I like to just run it logically as a story.
It's only really combat where I get very strict about rules (and I'm willing to bend those when it makes for a good moment - like letting someone cast Mage Hand and pour a healing potion into the mouth of someone who's about to die.)
And I get that people have different ways they like to interface with the game. If I want strictly rules-based gaming, I tend to go for video games. There are a lot of options for rules-tinkering strategy. Indeed, while I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Magic: the Gathering, higher level play (which, playing Online, it all seemed to be) sucked some of the fun out of it, when I was more interested in coming up with fun, flavorful decks. In fact, the release of the Ravnica book for D&D was really exciting for me because I love that setting (and ok, loved that set as well in large part because it was much more balanced than the previous ones) and I was (and am) excited to play through stories set there.
Again, I'm speaking from kind of a place of ignorance - I don't really know enough about Pathfinder to know whether I'd like it more or less (or equally in different ways) than D&D 5E. But I'm also wondering a bit whether it would even make that much of a difference.
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