Why is It Usually So Hard to Convince People to Play Pathfinder 2e? 

What’s the best way you’ve found to convince people to try new games? Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership! www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike

The "cost" in "sunk cost" is not only, or even primarily, money. It's mostly time and effort. I've only met a single person who started with 5e and didn't want to switch to a different system, and his argument was specifically that he'd spent a lot of mental energy learning 5e and didn't want to "waste" that.

Don't debate people about Pathfider, just invite your friends to play because you like it and want to share with them. People kind of shut down when it's presented like a challenge.

Part of my issue with people not trying new systems is due to the groups I grew up with. Everyone I used to play with (pre-5e) were just super interested in trying *any* new system. Didn't matter what it was or how complex it could be. I feel that *that* love for ttrpgs in general is gone. I haven't met a group that does that since those old groups, since 5e became *THE* game people play.

The one point you brought up that I don't really mentioned elsewhere was that, for some people, D&D is just a casual hobby that they play _maybe_ 4 hour a week, at most. It took them how long to learn 5e? Are they really going to do that _again?_

The reason I haven't bothered learning Pathfinder is that it doesn't seem to do anything for me. I've tried CoC and Edge of the Empire, because those games allowed me to play a game that is totally different to 5e. This is the advantage other TTRPG's that are focused outside of the fantastical setting have, D&D can't compete because it isn't a horror game or a sci-fi game. Trying to get my players who already struggle with the rules of 5e to learn a brand new system to go on the same types of adventures feels like a waste when we could aim for a totally different experience.

For me, the OGL nonsense was the first D&D drama I actively engaged with. During it, the future of a game I enjoy was in a difficult and uncertain spot, so I bought 3rd party books, and I bought 3 new TTRPGs, Monster of the Week, Call of Cthulhu and Alice is Missing. The biggest factor that decided which ones to invest in wasn’t just price, it was interest. I was interested in trying other genres that D&D wasn’t a good fit for. And I talked with my group. I informed them that I wanted to start investing in other TTRPGs and sent them ideas for what would interest them. Now, on days when people are unavailable for our normal sessions, we use that time as a testing ground for other RPGs. Cthulhu was a huge hit with my players and now we are about to start our first campaign. It’s very likely that inbetween campaigns, we will try Monster of the Week and Pathfinder, or Numenera or any of the other myriad of PDF TTRPGs my group has picked up. We likely won’t drop D&D anytime soon, but we are playing it less and less often as time passes.

I found the one thing that worked the best for trying a new system, or campaign setting, with a pre-established group is basically going "Hey, there's something I wanna try, anyone wanna do a one-shot?" Ironically, it's how my group and I got into PF2e, though it helps that most of them were PF1e players before they got tired the power creep. The Power of the One-Shot adventure can be strong, because all you have to commit to is one session if you like it more than that you can keep going, if you disliked it, well you only committed to one session.

In general there's an actual play network I really like if you wanna showcase a bunch of different systems. It's called the Glass Cannon Network. Their flagship shows and podcasts are Pathfinder, both 1e and 2e, as well as a Starfinder campaign but they make content with a bunch ofbdifferent systems to showcase them for people, including a couple dnd 5e mini campaigns, Call of Cthulu, Delta Green, Blades in the Dark, and many more! If people are interested in a sampling of different systems I highly recommend them. They're also really funny and entertaining

My favorite part of this video is you saying that this was all about how we need to get off of Twitter. You are right and I am glad I understood the purpose from the get go😂

I DM pathfinder on a VTT but in person. I feel like a VTT would really help sell PF2e to a lot of people. VTTs do the math for you and remember conditions for you, so you dont have to do the number crunching that some people complain about.

I actually started with Pathfinder 1e and moved to 5e. You hit the nail on the head when you said that consideration of what someone is looking for is so important. I can say with confidence something that I'd like to encounter more to be sold on learning new systems (which I'm truly loathe to do) is having people have more focus in being enthusiastic over the characters and stories I want to tell over the mechanics of a system. I completely understand and want people to be excited over a system that they love-but I find it very hard for myself to enjoy getting into it when I'm bombarded by the crunch of a game. That's just not fun to me-especially since my character creation style veers towards focusing on flaws. When I'm helping friends build characters in 5e, I just like asking them character questions and we have so much more fun talking about that. Asking: "Do you think they're harder to hit or they do get hit but are harder to down? What fits from your backstory?" versus "This is what AC and HP are and how they work and what they do, which do you want more of?" I just find it more engaging.

Pathfinder is a complex system with a lot of granularity and seems well balanced. That's a strength and a negative. The complexity is a barrier to me learning the system enough to play it or run it even if I think it looks great. DnD 5e was remarkably simple for me to pick up and run a game. If I didn't know a rule, it felt intuitive to come up with something and I was often right or close. Pathfinder has a lot of crunchy rules which has high value for folks but it's still a barrier. WOTC can bugger off as I can run what I like with the books I have already.

Here are some of the positives of TTRPG games I've played, starting with Pathfinder 2e and ending with 5e - As a GM, Pathfinder 2e is a breeze to prepare for. I get so much faction politics and RP planning done during prep because I'm not spending all that time tinkering with combat balance. For combat I just follow the encounter creation guidelines and it gives me more or less the experience I want. Also magic items, rewards, downtime ... everything just works. From the player perspective, someone else in the comments compared PF2e's heroes to Navy Seals (as opposed to superheroes) and that description is apt. The threat of death is present at all levels, but teamwork makes the dream work. On the other end of the spectrum, Freeform Universal is a fantastic rules-lite narrative engine. It's six degrees of success are so intuitive, I can (and have) built one-shots on the fly for it. Avatar Legends has more narrative guidelines and its balance mechanic is super faithful to the characters in the show. Dungeon World is the familiar fantasy lite. Outside of the core mechanics, it has great advice for the GM to keep narrative beats going. Shadowrun 5e - dice pools are fun. Also, it has probably my favourite lore. Wanderhome - diceless RPG about Studio Ghibli-esque travels. It's all about that semi-nostalgic wanderlust mood. I've also used its character-ties mechanics in session 0 for other games. Fate requires a high trust in your GM and players, so I wouldn't play it with strangers on the internet. But if you have that core group, it's mechanics can be versatile and fit into any genre of any game. Finally, DnD 5e, my first love. It is bonkers fun! A well built wizard can trivialize pretty much every fight. A well-built ranger/fighter can one-shot I think any monster in the OG Monster Manual. The divine soul sorcerer can pump out 300hp of healing on a single turn by level 13. While this can be (is) frustrating for the DM, as a player there are few highs as great as bending the game completely in your favour while being entirely within the ruleset. [Bonus shoutout to Fantasy Age for its stunt system. But since I haven't played or run it, it'd be disingenuous to include it here.]

I think my friends took so long to try (just before the drama) because pathfinder 2 looks more filled with responsibility of the balance. Not just in the system, bur for players, including dm. It looked too... Precise to be comfortable. At least from the start

I know we don't talk about sunk-cost fallacy, in this video, but because you still talk about it a bit: 2:00 They do. Why do you think bad gotcha games work? They try very hard to make the beginning as stimulating as possible and then keep people with the suck-cost fallacy. Not only in money, but also time and emotional investment. Finding something you like can be hard for some people, and "betraying" it in search for something better can be hard. I am so impressed at how empathetic you are to all sides. Giving your advice to better advertise other systems, without condemning people who try to get people to switch or the people who don't want to switch, is quite impressive

This topic is very reminiscent of the one MMO players also experienced in the last few years since the Blizzard drama helped sink World Of Warcraft's player base and allowed the next largest competitor (Final Fantasy XIV) to rise. It took one too many horrible things done by Blizzard to finally get people to branch out from the mainstream choice, but even then, they just flocked to the next biggest game with an extremely similar system, rather than the smaller games that stood more apart (Deja vu). I have personally not played Pathfinder 2e yet, but only because the people I have played Pathfinder with ran 1e exclusively. Pathfinder 2e is a game I definitely wouldn't mind playing in the future (if asked) cause I do like what Paizo has been doing as a company, but I doubt I would ever want to run it myself (just because I am not overly enamored with D20 systems in general). One D20 system is enough for me. The only reason I run D&D 5e is if I want to use an official D&D (IE Dragonlance or Ravenloft) or Magic The Gathering (IE Ravnica or Theros) setting. Otherwise, if I am looking to create a game around a custom setting or something from another media I usually prefer Savage Worlds or Green Ronin's AGE system. My favorite games tend to be the more story-focused, skill-based, dice pool systems instead of class-based systems with a more binary pass or fail system. Regardless, it is definitely an uphill battle to convince anyone to play a non-D&D system, so I empathize with this topic.

I played pathfinder 2e for 2 years and had the same problem two other players in my group had while the other players were fine. I found that choice in gameplay is very limited. Or more accurately, you feel punished for doing something you didn't take a feat for. Whereas 5e just doesn't feel that way. You might say that its not a punishment, but negative numbers just always seem to feel that way. The people liked it for that reason though. Everything mattered and your choice of build mattered. Two different playstyles. Some of us liked having more choices while playing the game, others liked having their build choices rewarded when playing the game. I stuck it out cause the people were great to play with but man I really grew to hate pathfinder 2e. A couple others from the group had the same response. Eventually fell apart due to some of us just not liking the style of pf2e.

Years ago, I wanted to start a Dragonlance campaign. Being a Pathfinder1e player, and appreciating all the good work (and distrusting WotC since D&D4e, and how they cancelled Margaret Weis' Dragonlance's license, I was deeply in favor of using Pathfinder2e... Until I realized that it still used vancian clerics and wizards, unlike D&D5e. This is why the Dragonlance campaign is using D&D5e, today. We will be moving to Pathfinder2e eventually (our first initiation game was last week, actually, and everyone was very happy with the results), but that's how vancian magic in a 21th century RPG was a showstopper.

The video specifically refers to PF2e, but this applies to PF1e as well, and a host of other games. There's this running question of "Why do people keep playing 5e homebrews instead of playing an actual game suited to what they want?" and the answer is that _those people like 5e._ My group is in the midst of pivoting from 5e to PF1e and I'll be honest, I feel like the only one who isn't vibing with it. I dropped out of one game and while I'm tentatively going to be in the next one, I really don't know if it'll stick there either. I'm in another PF game and I've lasted better there... but it's a total Monty Haul game and my character is one of the more "powerful but simple" classes, and we're all so hilariously OP that my frustrations with the system are easy to ignore. I walk up to the monsters, I click the row of macro buttons at the bottom of my Roll20 screen, and the monsters explode into a fountain of gore. There's also a particular upcoming plot beat that I want to see through, but when that's done, I dunno whether I will be too. But my character sheet is a giant Google Sheets document with multiple pages and a fuckton of encoded calculations that I don't understand, and I have to get someone else to help me with it whenever I level up. My numbers are bigger, but so are those of everything I fight, so it's a fairly lateral move. My choices with character building feel much more linear, like there's a "Right" way to build anything, and the other options are wrong. It's so much crunchier, and I never wanted or needed more crunch, so that's more of a detriment than anything else. And, on a purely selfish level, the things I play RPGs for, the heroic fantasy story and the fights, are the things D&D does well enough on its own. The things where it doesn't excel rarely come up as an issue for me, personally, outside of a general "I want the people who _do_ prefer those things to have fun too." But in a situation where I'm the one not enjoying things, my usual response is to just not continue that thing and leave everyone who does like it to continue without me. I'm not about to sit there and try to force them to play 5e. If they don't want to play that, and I don't want to play PF, then I'm the odd one out and the onus is on me to either suck it up or not be involved. I think you made a very good point about comparing the PF fandom's antics to proselytising, because proselytising doesn't actually work. Not at its stated goal, anyway. The success rate of God-fearing folk going out to spread the good news is extremely low. The conversations end up uncomfortable and awkward because humans don't like it when you try to impress your views on them unsolicited. But in the current context, proselytising was never _meant_ to succeed. It's not a recruitment tactic, it's a reinforcement tactic. The people who tell the faithful to go out and spread the word aren't stupid. They know that proselytisers aren't well-liked by the general public. People ignore them, react with hostility, slam doors in their faces, or even start fucking with them and making jokes about being Satanists. This is the point. Proselytisers are sent out with the purpose of getting rejected, belittled, mocked, and insulted, because it pushes them further into the in-group and helps convince them to stay. It reinforces the idea that the world really _is_ cruel and hostile to their faith. It's why the denominations that do it are the smaller, more cult-like ones. The big, mainstream Christian sects don't _need_ to send out Door to Door Jesus Salesmen, they're big enough and ingrained enough that they get plenty of people through the doors on a Sunday. With that in mind, adopting their tactics and expecting it to work on 5e players isn't exactly a winning strategy.

I have some experience playing and attempting to GM Pathfinder 1e. While the systems are quite different, I feel like 2e suffers from the same issue I had with 1e. WAY too much for my ADHD brain to keep track of, and way too many numbers to crunch. I came here to have fun with a roleplaying game, not keep track of five +2 circumstance rolls that I WILL forget. Someone tried to sell 2e as a GM on me by saying there are several more Conditions to keep track of. I already have a hard enough time remebering which Conditions do what in 5e, I don't need more. It's not the fault of the game designers, it's just when it comes to what I enjoy in this type of game, more math is not one of them. That said, I've ultimately decided that if I do play Pathfinder 2e, it'll be as a player, and not a GM.

The main reason is people are so used to 5e. That any other rpg just seems like its pointless to learn. in my experience. When I wanted to run some cyberpunk and coc games I've had people want me to run it in 5e! Getting my group into 2e was even harder until I actually had to sit them all down and explain why I was so tired of playing 5e for nearly 6 years. So far were in a year of our longest campaign yet

all i can say is, i like a little from both and can go with either system...

I think a big issue with switching to PF2 is that it's a hard sell, especially for people who started playing with 5e. There's a lot of stuff to keep in mind where 5e is super streamlined and easy to learn. I've tried to convice my group to try it and my players have experience with 3.5 and PF1 and they are still not interested because they just prefer the simplicity of 5e.

I'm the forever DM of my group and the most passionate for the hobby. The OGL drama did nothing for us since it really only affect 3rd party creators that sell content. Your last point hit right in the spot, I'm always looking and reading other systems, but my players never want to try any because they are already comfptable with 5e and they just say "We can do that on 5e". Even with rules light systems where I tell them that they only need to create a PC and I can handle the rest of the rules is just more reason to just stay with 5e for them.

I feel its a matter of comfort. I know someone who played 3rd and 5th edition and went straight back to 1st ed advanced dnd. He was too comfortable in that game to really give anything else a go.

My issue with Pathfinder is the over aggressive fans, whenever i see a discussion about D&D i see half the comments being "play pathfinder", or "pathfinder is so much better" to the point where i becomes their identity. It gets tiresome when all i'm looking for is advice for homebrewing alchemy rules, or suggestions for creating an epic encounter to end a quest. I end up thinking why would i want to play with these people? Or play the game these people like? I find that this is a common problem with a lot of the alternative brands the fanbase runs off more people than they draw in by there over eagerness, for example back in July of last year Kat Denning tweeted that she watched pro wrestling (WWE's Summerslam event) for the first time and enjoyed it, and there were no less than 1000 comments telling her to watch AEW (the new upstart company) as it's so much better. It was cringy and again i was thinking why would someone want to associate with this? Sorry for the ramble but it is just my 2 cents.

Yet again, one of your core themes/mantras comes into play (no pun intended) here: communicate with your group. Asking if folks are open to trying new/different systems is an ideal way to start. During my time in the military (and while I had no real relationship responsibilities), we gamed almost every weekend. Sometimes it was DnD, other times it may have been Shadowrun, Battletech, Rifts, or a variety of other games. These were also great opportunities for others to run a game, which helped deal with DM/GM burnout. Also, not sure if intentional, but you telling people to get off of Twitter smells a bit of you saying someone's fun is wrong. Thanks, as always, for the insights and conversation.

Before watching the episode: my issue with DnD 5e is that the mechanics are so wonky, and the solution would be better mechanics, not just more mechanics. I've GMed a bunch of sessions of both PF2 and Starfinder, and found them lacking. They just retain too many of the core problems from DnD 3e. So while I've dropped the idea of ever running 5e again (which was easy for me since it was never my only system), I'm instead moving to other games that have rules built on a better core.

Pathfinder 2e is a bit more complicated as far as character builds go, though you get much more choice. For the 5e players that really don’t like the amount of rules as is, it won’t be for them. The way I got my table to try new systems is that about a year ago I said “I’m freaking done with 5e. I’m a hollow shell of a GM. I need to either try something new or step down.” So we’ve tried a few things including Pathfinder 2e and we’ve really enjoyed it!! I do generally have to do the learning and teaching, but that’s fine for me. The easiest way I have found is “let’s do a short adventure (one or two sessions” in this system. I’ll make some precons or here are the tools for you to make your own character.” Basically do as much of a low commitment easy entry point suggestion as possible.

The Matt Colville example I think you misunderstood, in that video he's talking about a video Zee Bashew made where Zee talked about running a Blades in the Dark setting. A bit of a complex setup so totally understandable error, and the point's still there - Zee talks in his video about how Blades in the Dark has a ton of heavy setting stuff that is very tied in with the mechanics, making onboarding more difficult. Zee did clarify he really enjoyed Blades though. 😄

Hey I'm a recent 5e player, and this video is exactly why I'm currently playing 5e over other options. I would absolutely be open to pathfinder or another interesting system some day once I've had my fun in 5e, but I just haven't stopped having fun with 5e yet. The stories it facilitates are still exciting to me and my first ever game I'm DMing is less than 1 year old. I hear people call 5e "rules light" and respond "thankfully" because I'm new and the "light rules" of 5e matches my capacity to run a table for the first time. Plus my friends play 5e and I mostly just want to play with my friends. Also, a really fun and entertaining actual play show will some day be the perfect way to get me into a new system, but I'm not bored of critical role and dimension 20 yet and actual play shows take up a crazy amount of time. Every episode of critical role is as long as a LotR movie and I have other hobbies too so I don't want another actual play show... yet. I did however stumble across a pretty cool pathfinder channel on youtube and am both interested in and intimidated by the much more in depth builds that pathfinder fosters. Pathfinder gang, just give me some time. I'll totally play with you some day.

I enjoy that you don't overtly hide your political ideas, but also don't focus on them. We need more content creators that normalize having opinions about things without trying to pander or evangelize.

As a 5e player, here's my take on Pathfinder (and other different systems). I don't enjoy DMing/GMing at all. If somebody in the group says, "Hey I was thinking about running Pathfinder, what do you think?" I'd be onboard and happy to try it. I've played dozens of different systems over the years. But if I suggest a new game, I'd feel obligated to be the one that has to learn it, teach it, and run the game. Plus I and the groups I'm in are enjoying 5e. And yes, I have seen plenty of Pathfinder players that instead of saying hey Pathfinder is great, they start by saying 5e sucks. Which is an immediate turnoff.

I strongly believe, that one day... critical role, will release "Critical Roll" the Critical Role TPG system, based on 5e but massively improved, and it will turn D&D into a crater

I had to be convinced to learn 5e, since I've been playing Pathfinder 1e since the early 2010's. Figured out I liked Pathfinder more, and switched right back to it

I stopped playing 5e years before the drama came around, and I never had any interest in Pathfinder, since it is not different enough fro D&D for my taste.The system I design is so far at the end of the spectrum to the narrative side that I am not even sure I can even still call it a game. And I am aware that what I am working on is very niche, thus I feel my target audience might end up be more people from fanfiction writing communities than from the TTRPG crowd.

Our group had switched to PF2E from 5E as one of our members was vocal about it being better. It was alright, not bad, but it didn't set my world on fire. I felt it was more or less more of the same, but with a few differentiating things at the same time. I'm not one stick in the mud with different TTRPG's, ill try them all, but my true love will always be 3.5E D&D. The others are easier for new people to get into, but after you get into it, it left me wanting more. It watered down skills and other things for me. Does that make the game more tedious? Sure, and it has it's own issues as well. However, once you get the swing of it, it goes by fine. 3.5E is the one that started it all for me, and it's the one I will always want to go back to. Also, the small handful of times I have played 2E was great. I really want to play more of that as well. Different strokes for different folks and all that is the spice of life. Just don't hammer that yours is the best, and everyone else is wrong, because it may not be for everyone. That hampers more than helps the possibility for others to want to try it. Good video, something that I feel more people need to hear.

I don't play much DnD, I stick to Cyberpunks red and 2020, VtM, and Fate, but I do have a few friends who play DnD and pathfinder. Why have I never tried pathfinder? It's always been described to me as "Harder DnD." I'm DnD neutral, but the issue has never been that it wasn't difficult enough or complex enough. I know that's not a great explanation of Pathfinder, but it's not a great way to get people on board, unless their complaint about DnD is that it isn't complex enough

i never felt like Pathfinder had it's own identity outside of "5e but it makes more sense!"

Honestly the problem to me is that I just don't like Pathfinder. I don't like the fundamental design principle of super granular character building, fishing for small bonuses in character creation, tracking whether a creature is flat footed, taking huge penalties for attacking more than once... etc. No amount of proselytizing is going to convince me to 'switch'. I may play in a game if someone I know to be a good DM is running, but the game just fundamentally isn't my cup of tea. I'd much rather spread the word about systems that do things very differently than D&D than systems that do D&D, but more complicated.

As someone who has been a fan of non-D&D systems since the 90s, I’ve come to understand a few things about getting people to try new systems: Much like how each class has a core fantasy, each game has a core fantasy. D&D is about epic fantasy monster fights. Vampire is about isolation and moral corruption. Star Wars is about epic space battles and fighting evil with plasma swords. And, just as not every class is going to appeal to every player, not every game is going to appeal to every player. (I *hate* Vampire, for example.) Second, if you want to get someone into a new game, get them excited about that core fantasy; if they aren’t already interested when you start explaining the rules, you’re going to lose them. Don’t get your squee for the game all over them, but show them *why* the core idea is cool. (This is why Twitter sucks; you can’t explain anything well with that kind of character limit.) Some of this is timing: right after the first Matrix movie was a great time to recruit people to Mage, because they had much thematic resonance with each other. Show them media that has the resonance and themes of the game you want to play. (They don’t even have to be the same genre; most vampire movies are terrible examples if you’re trying to get someone interested in Vampire: the Masquerade, for example.) Lastly, accept that “No.” is both a valid answer and a complete sentence. Trying to push someone into a new game doesn’t work long term; we’re here to have fun, and being pressured into something is never fun. That’s all I got. Enjoyed the video, and looking forward to the next one.

I've dropped WoTC completely but I prefer the simplicity of the 5E system compared to pathfinder, it's much easier to homebrew for and so I do just that. Place my own homebrew spin on everything. All spells in my game are now named after famous authors, Gygax, Greenwood, Salvatore, Weis and Hickman. Instead of WoTC wizards, and there is something so cool about Salvatore's Sword and I even gave Matt Mercer a nod with Mercer's Magnificent Mansion. But the real reason I dont go over to Pathfinder is the crunchy nature of it's system, leaving 3E for 5E was a breath of fresh air, and I was a fan of Pathfinder 1E for cleaning up 3E, just not interested in its' feat trees or 3 action system.

Never seen someöne compare Dungeon Crawl Classics to Fast and the Furious before. Lmao

For me, it's not the sunk cost, it's the up-front investment. Learning a new system is a huge time and resource commitment with no guarantee that it will pay off. The OGL fiasco was enough to make me take the risk, and I'm glad I did. I think 2e is a far superior system and I've been playing since AD&D

With my group at least, all you really have to do to get people to try new games is offer to run them! We've played a few systems over the years and I'm currently GMing PF2e and I think everybody's having fun. That being said I know that PF2e is a better system than 5e for me, in that it addresses the sort of things I have problems with in 5e (DEX being a god stat, the relative lack of character options, multiclassing and all the issues that comes with etc.), and it does the combat a bit neater in my opinion. If your issues with 5e are not similar to my issues PF2e is probably not the game for you, and that's OK, things like Dungeon World and the OSR exist (as does 5e...). No RPG is perfect, they just have flaws that you don't care about. No RPG appeals to everyone and if one did, it'd probably be super bland.

Holy cow, love the Man from UNCLE shoutout. That movie rules

I got the physical copy of PF2e back in 2019, as I really wanted to play it. It took until the Humble Bundle this year to finally accept my fate and offer to run it and hey look there is a Humble Bundle! I may never get to play it, and part of me thinks I'd have an easier time DMing 5e (it's issues from the DM side of things never really bothered me, who cares about CR anyway), but we'll see how things turn out, by the time I've finished running Abomination Vaults I may feel differently.

Get off Twitter, Twitter is terrible, got it. Good message, good video.

after trying pathfinder, it honestly felt like playing a 5e game that the DM homebrewed the shit out of. It never felt like a different game, just 5e but at some point you get a random rule incorrect.

As far as the group I game with, their reason for not wanting to try Pathfinder 2 was their disappointment with the PF2 playtest. They can't see past the problems with the playtest, even though the official release of the game did a good job of fixing those problems.

Pathfinder 2e needs a computer game. Right now lots of PC players know a lot about D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder first edition. So when given a choice between the first and second edition they will pick the system they know, which will be the first edition, even though 2e is more streamlined. Things will change, but that is a pretty big barrier to overcome as of now. People that already are familiar with table top role playing games are more easier to convince, they will appreciate what has been done with the second edition.

Honestly, Mike, if you're open to more diverse games, I can't recommend Exalted enough. The main line (3rd edition) is wild and creative, with one of the most diverse settings in fantasy, but we're right on the cusp of the general release of Exalted Essence, a streamlined alternate ruleset using the same setting/lore as Ex3 but fitting the broad scope of all the various character types into a single rulebook.

I've played several different systems. D&D is my favorite, although not the only one I love. One thing that really irritates me is people who love saying, "There are other RPGs besides D&D." As if the only reason people play D&D is because we're unwilling to try something new. It seems absolutely incomprehensible to these people that I've played lots of games and yet still enjoy D&D. And really, I'll play whatever the people I enjoy playing with are running. If my current DM wants to switch to Pathfinder, or something vastly different, I'm on board. But I do find Pathfinder people particularly irritating with the way they seem to only push the game they like by crapping all over other games I love. *Obviously the above is generalization, not at all applying to everyone.

I have complex thoughts on the issue. For the record, my group regularly tries out new systems, and we're simultaneously playing a 5e and a P2e campaign. My experience with the online pathfinder community is really hostile towards anyone who isn't a diehard "Only Pathfinder!" player. They see the game as _objectively_ better than anything else, or at the very lest 5e is _objectively_ worse than everything else, and think you're stupid for not seeing it. Personally, I don't particularly like P2e. The main reason is its depth to complexity ratio, and the sheer level of obtuse minutia that seems to me to be completely unnecessary at best is a large contributor to this. This, as far as I'm concerned, is a "game-feel taste" issue. If others want to play the game until they drop dead, all the power to them. My big turn-off event was the sheer level of gate-keepiness surrounding the great 5e exodus. You may remember the reddit mods having to pin a post telling the community not to hate on and harass new converts from 5e. The attitude was that P2e is perfect and how dare you try to hombrew it, and the very fact that you're asking about this is insulting, and so forth. The unwashed masses were infecting their pristine community. Beyond that, the annoying "just play pathfinder" reply to _any_ complaint about anything to do with 5e is both tiresome and frustrating. Especially when it turns out they actually don't want you playing Pathfinder, or so it would seem. I like 5e precisely for the reasons that I think they don't: its modular, and there's a strong element of randomness to it (but not too much) whereby the dice create their own kind of drama. Its not so bounded as to be predictable, but enough that it doesn't feel arbitrary (and I want to emphasize that I this is purely _my_ experience). Further I can remove and rebuild any parts I don't like, and add things that I want without much-if any-trouble, once I understood the "source code" of the game, which is really quite simple. Lastly, there is an elegance to its mechanics. As the perfect microcosm of this, is the example of the fact that I find advantage/disadvantage vastly superior to the three categories of stacking bonuses and penalties in terms of personal game-feel preference (like, +1 to a roll where the DC is 24 feels like _nothing_ ). I'm quite sure that 5e has its fair share of douchebags as well, and I'm not saying its "better", I'm saying I like it more, and the online Pathfinder community was a significant turn off for a game that I already didn't particularly like. That's all.

I feel that some Pathfinder fans are in denial about the fact that Pathfinder is more complex. That does not make it better or worse than 5e but it does raise the bar of entry. It may also be too granular during actual play. This might be what Pathfinder fans really like and that is just great. But they should please stop claiming it is easier than 5e. It is not. Personally what have attracted me to Pathfinder has been the great adventures they made. Especially during those times where the WotC modules were a little lackluster.

6:13 I'm not sure if you meant to invite recommendations for Pathfinder actual play shows. but on the assumption that you did, try Dice Will Roll! The DM is an old friend of mine (from waaaay before the show was a thing), and I haven't met the players personally but they seem wonderful. Admittedly I haven't listened to very much of it, because I have a hard time making my brain sit still and listen to audio-only content, but I've thoroughly enjoyed it. And yeah, it's got the funny and emotional and LGBT+ themes. (There are *a lot* of episodes, though, so unfortunately it doesn't tick the "only 35 eps" box. But hey, some people like a big backlog!)

I have 2 reasons that I haven't tried pathfinder. 1. The genre. It's medevial fantasy just like dnd. I've tried multiple systems and games, but each one was a unique genre or setting from each other. 2. Number crunch. Not just 5e, the other systems that I really enjoy are looser, more story focused, so the heavy detail is a big barrier to entry

I just hate the math simulator that Pathfinder 2e is/becomes. It's no fun when it stops being simple math and now you're reaching 30s but thats just a normal hit, and if you wanted to crit the monster you have to hit a 40, which might be mathematically impossible for you to do at some points. I've also seen people fail at being able to homebrew anything monster wise in Pathfinder simply because of all of the working parts of the monster that can break the encounter. One of the few things I do like is that spells aren't just a make it or break it and have various degrees of working, where even on a success something still happens that's impactful. However, it's still a point where magic is underpowered to the point where it's just more efficient action wise to be a fighter and hit 3 times in a row.

I think 5e was pretty much accidentally made to resist the pressures of a simple PF2e sell. It's complex but the moving parts are simple and obvious that homebrewing and houseruling gives you obvious results. So a person can create or buy content to fix issues they have and get nearly exactly what they want.

Most of the people who have tried to get me to try Pathfinder have said something along the line of, "It's like 5e, but with more rules and bigger numbers." and that just doesn't sound like fun to me.

Interesting topic. I'm not very far through the video yet but here's my own experience as someone who played a lot of D&D 5e and only recently tried pathfinder. First off, as with all non-D&D systems, it was harder to find a game in a language I speak. I did know a group playing pathfinder but I also knew I wouldn't mesh well with their style of play regardless of the game. The second barrier for me though was the bigger one: pathfinder just didn't seem to offer anything truly different. When I look back at the other game systems I tried out each of them was offering something outside of that (european) psuedo-medeval fantasy. City of Mist was a modern noir mystery. GURPs had a level of flexibility nothing else did which let me run game based on anime my players enjoyed. Vampire the Masquerade is horror, as are the Chronicles of Darkness systems (we play a mixed monster/splat group so we get a little of everything in that game). Traveller is an excellent sci fi system (I'm still struggling to figure out how to run the module but that's on me). A lot of the time the non-D&D games I've been drawn to and tried have been.... just really different to D&D on a mechanics and setting level. Pathfinder, weirdly, suffered from being too similar.

Thank you for actually point this out. I had noticed this fustration of my own after I dealt with a channel (there were other issues with it that caused me to leave, but this contributed to part of the reasons) was that when people did try "new systems" they were just 5e clones more or less. So had me wondering why even complain about 5e when you're not willing to try something *actually* new. When I tried to create a group for DCC just so I could play games, I was hit with pushback. Not because I was insulting 5e (I actually wanted to use the DCC experience for me to play 5e in a better understanding of the system in both it's flaws and strengths. I only started to "insult" 5e because I was fustrated with all the pushback I was getting and it was in private now looking back on it. Because I wanted to bring back that Magic I had during the 5e Beta game I played in Pax East), but because I would get the push back of "Oh this is stupid" or something akin to it that they found issue with it without actually *trying* it. It wasn't until I actually got people who heard of DnD but never really *experienced* it having a postive reaction to my discription of DCC was where I saw the issue. Those other people were far too comfortable with what they had, and their complaints were honestly purely cosmetic in the long run where they could fix it by doing houserules. The average person actually were curious because it didn't sound exactly "rehashed" due to the popularity of 5e. You can take a lot of things from DCC and apply it to 5e if you wanted to change the cosmetics aspect of 5e. I have seen people literally take the magic system of DCC and applyed it instead to the magic users of 5e, making the consquences of magic a bit more dangerous than one would do with the Wild Magic system. both are valid but one has a different feel to the chaos magic can wreck havioc on. DCC is also a great teaching tool for DM/GM/ and Judges that you are allowed to give consiquences to your players' actions, or how you could handle Problematic players who are trying to ruin the experice of other players with their actions. After the postive response that I got when I was doing an art stream while I explained DCC has me excited and wanting to open up "Open Tables" for people can join in and try DCC without the worry of a long compaign as I would use Funnels mostly, with maybe one or two higher level games. But for the pure goal of showing people that you don't have to just learn 5th edition to have fun. (Honestly WotC really should consider doing Open tables to introduce people into table top hobby and swag for something akin to Goodman Games' Road Crew to encourage people and show it off more, but that's not going to happen.) I also want to eventually learn PF2e and Barbarians of Lamaria.

Comment based on the title alone: I just started playing PF 2e. It’s… fine. I was resistant to it because I’ve been playing DnD for years (played at least a bit of every edition from 3e through 5e). I don’t get to play much and didn’t want the hassle of learning a new system. But everyone else in my group (who had played PF 1e) wanted to switch to Pathfinder, so that’s what we did. And it’s fine, but I’m not wowed by it like everyone said I would be. The class balance is a bit better, but the number of fiddly rules is tiring. I seem to spend an awful lot of time cross-referencing sections of the book to figure out precisely what the language of my spells means-or waiting for my DM to cross-reference things. I keep calling it “DnD for people who need everything to have a written rule.” I play with some very rules lawyery types at the moment, so I can see why they enjoy it, but it breaks my immersion. DnD feels looser and more open to interpretation to me. Maybe that’s a side effect of who I’m playing with rather than the system, but I’ve played DnD with this group as well and didn’t have the same issue. EDIT: I just want to say how gratifying it’s been to read the comments and see a whole group of people who seem to have the same issue with PF that I do: there are too many granular rules, and it ends up feeling like DnD, but more complicated and with more math and less roleplay.

Good analogy between the movie and TTRPG industries. I have been keeping quite with my group about fantasy AGE which I really want to play. They were not receptive to PFe2 when our DM brought it up. Some useful tips in your video about how to go about getting people to try.

The Fast & Furious joke made me laugh loud. I'm so eager to play Pathfinder but at the moment I don't want to learn a new system as a DM. I'd like to some friends make a game and play it as a character.

I'm glad to see the "You can play 5E without supporting WotC" stated. Because that's been my stance. I'd like to try some other rpgs, but honestly I like 5Es system just fine for most parts of play that I've dealt with

I think that "You stick with it if you like it" is a very good angle for this. I am german and I kinda found a lot of german players to be more comfortable with trying out new systems. That's because most of us start off with DSA 4.1 and come to one conclusion: We like the world (mostly because we know it and it's nostalgic) but don't like the system that seems to be designed to say: Nah. You should not be having fun! If people actually like the system of DSA (which is fine) they do stick with it and don't branch out. Most people I play with have at least tried out Cthulhu, World of Darkness and probably one or two more narrative systems. Or something with a different flavor - Cyberpunk, Traveller, StarWars. Nowadays I mostly play 5e, but I would not be against playing something else. But I am also kinda used to getting into new systems and I know by now which ones I get into quite easily and which ones are complicated to me (even though they are easier than DnD on a surface level) and what kind of mechanics I just don't jam with (please burn all the strange picture dices from StarWars).

The feeling I always have as a GM is that 5e is simplified and streamlined to a point, where it actively hurts my time AND interest. I was already struggling to build challenging encounters in PF1e (so basically 3.5e) and hated it. So when I got into watching guides and tips on how to run 5e I was actively discouraged. It also doesn't help how 5e's community is so player-based and most media I've seen revolves around broken combos, unbalanced multiclassing, holding narrative above everything else or OCs. 5e GMing was about everything I disliked but worse than 3.5e. PF2e on the other hand fixed most of the issues I had with PF1e and seemingly 5e. I've never had as much fun GMing. So in the end I have the exact same feeling about people promoting 5e (direct or indirect) than 5e players have about people promoting PF2e. Much of what they want to sell me as positives are net-negatives for me. And when I try to follow discussions between 5e players on social media I sometimes get actually angry at their takes. So it feels to me like the PF2e community and 5e community are distinct for a reason. They seem to have severely differing opinions on what constitutes as a good TTRPG experience and it shows. Just try to compare the PF2e subreddit and the 5e subreddit.

As for me, I'll cut over to PF2 as soon as they have a Beyond-equivalent. I play exclusively online these days and Beyond has been a lifesaver. I'm keeping an eye on Demiplane for this reason, it's just not there yet.

Could have gone without the super depressing comment about the grim reality of american politics... but that's the cost of being American right now. Love all your videos. Am an avid pathfinder 2e system lover living in a 5e house. Unfortunately, the comment/concern I've most often received is: too much math :(

Also a lot of us Pathfinder players still play PF1. So you have to specify Pathfinder 1st edition or Pathfinder 2nd edition, you can't just say 2nd edition, because even with context, that's D&D 2nd edition.

When selling the concept of 2e to people, I lead with the 3-action economy and the four degrees of success and the emphasis on movement. Those are fundamental ways the system differs from 5e without getting into minutiae.

My first group that I played with wanted to play through Dragon of Icespire Peak using PF2 rules. And I took a good look at the rules and quite early decided that PF is not the system for me. I rather go for rules light than PF :P

I personally do not like the philosphy of PF1 or 2. The philosphy of balance at all costs. One could argue that i can run pF2 with whatever balancing i prefer. But the the balancing is one main reason why people play PF2. Another thing that drives me away from PF2 is that i reject the idea of 'building' a character opposed to 'writing' a character. Something that both 5E and PF1/2 suffer from. I recently introduced my players to my mix of Knave/Deathbringer/Five Torches Deep - Much simpler OSR clones. I backed Shadowdark now and super look forward to it. In short I just used the OGL fallout to get my players back to Horror-Surival rather than Power-Fantasy. And i wanted to get away from rules over rulings and put the master back into dungeonmaster.

A lot of the problems on the Player side of the screen really come down to how gamist do you like your "D&D"... meanwhile tghe big reason I've never wanted to is that somehow Palladium, LotFP, heck even PF1e have homebrew setting support, both officially and from their communities, meanwhile EVERY SINGLE piece of advice from the PF2e side is either Play in Golarion (or Golarion with Rarity changes that don't actually matter in play) in the Video Game Plot (Adventure Paths), or just reskin anything from Golarion, because you can still tell that Paizo makes everything from the Adventure paths side of their business.

I think a certain part of this all is that pf1/2e and 5e cater to different play styles. I play in two different groups. The 5e group is extremely RP and lore heavy. I think we've gone 5+ sessions without a combat encounter and our characters are largely built on backstory over mechanical abilites. The 5e system suits this group really well because it's lightweight, accounts well for play outside of combat and leaves room for situational interpretation by the GM and party. The other group is currently on pf2e, but has played pf1e, tried 5e, then switched back. Why? They preferred the more hardline framework of pathfinder, and tend to really enjoy focusing in on the mechanical part of building characters. Pathfinder is better for that, and the 2e action economy is genuinely phenomenal. But as pointed out elsewhere in the comments, it comes at the cost of being more intimidating to prospective new players who are used to 5e and the play style it encourages. Is either of my groups' fun wrong? No. They're just different games.

I can tell you that every time I hear a 3.5 or pathfinder player shit on 5e and talk about how it's 'so easy you might as well play WoW' or go on about their super over-powered build they made, then complain that they can't make it in 5e, my urge to play 3.5e or pathfinder goes down GREATLY. Don't shit on other peoples fun if you want them to play your fun, guys.

The main reasons I don't want to try pathfinder, or any other ttrpg is because 1. I like 5e just fine, 2. I don't want to have to read through some huge book to work out if I want to play a game or not. TTRPG rulebooks are DRY. I'm not changing unless I have a really good reason and 3. I can homebrew whatever I want, it's not that hard once you're familiar with the way the rules trend.

I haven't played pathfinder yet but i love call of cthulhu and as my current 5e campaign comes to an end convinced my current group to try a short COC campaign to test the system. Honestly while i haven't played pathfinder i do have similar feelings regarding the war games warhammer and malifaux I've played both but generally prefer malifaux, and unfortunately it is so difficult to find players in my area to play malifaux with

We have a saying in Germany that roughly translates to "What the farmer doesn't know he won't eat." I might add "never change a winning team". If a system works for you, if you enjoy something, why change it? People in general like stability. And the more they have invested in this stabiity the less likely they are to try out alternatives. Plus a look at PF2 character sheets evokes aexistential dread fromt he design point of view. I have looked at many alternatives that do not remind me of the color of what food we have eaten eventually turns into, but even black and white character shhets just feel so cluttered and, as pathetic as it might sound, make me feel uneasy. I have thought about an own character sheet that just sums up the final numbers without all the little tickboxes here and there and everywhere but I'm just not technically savvy enough to do that. And I really shy away from all these conditions and having to stack various group abilities to fight a monster. I like systems that allow for more individual actions in combat.

I disagree. Ive been trying to gwt into pathfinder for while so trying to convince people to play it was something i was very interested in. So i know that "insulting peoples taste" isnt the reason why people dont jump ship. Pretty much every single person ive talked to agrees that pathfinder is probably better. Not that ive insulted the system but when venting about a systems problems we always cpme to the conclusion that pathfinder did the exact same thing only better. Thats never been the issue. The issue is the mental commitment. People dont want to jump ship because jumping ship is mentally and emotionally complicated. Maybe your financially committed and the sunk cost fallacy really is some of it, i know it is for a few people ive talked to. They pretty much told me as much. Maybe you dont qant to have to learn new rules, they want thw same rules but better. Thats also something people have said to me. I mean it was a huge mental and emotional commitment to get people to play dnd in the first place, so path finder is litterally a percentage of a percentage of people youre trying to convince. I think we should listen tp what people are actually saying instead of making assumptions that they subconciously feel like youre insulting their taste.

Sunk cost fallacy isn't just financial, it's also emotional and temporal. The time and effort that they invested into 5e would feel wasted if they just switched systems. And these are most often new players they haven't gone through an edition change before, so the idea of shelving almost a decade worth of rules and experiences for a new (hopefully) improved set of books is pretty foreign to them. All that hesitation to reinvest their time and effort in a new thing falls under sunk cost fallacy.

I think PF2 is cool, but it's a MUCH crunchier game than 5e at a time when most of the growth in the hobby has been theater kids focused on RP, rather than power gamers or wargamers.

MAN FROM UNCLE WAS SO GOOD, FUCK Anyway play Pathfinder 2e it's a lot of fun

Pathfinder sounds like everything I hated about D&D 3.5e, dialed up to "11". Hard pass.

I picked up the book for Pathfinder 2e, and it definitely has a few things going for it, but it also has that dumb "+n*Lv" modifier on everything. I really liked that 5e did away with that and used bounded accuracy so that crowds of commoners are any kind of threat.

Pathfinder is too crunchy…..I wish there was a system as simple as 5e and had as many options as pathfinder 2E. Some of the rules in pathfinder….just a little to odd for me.

Personally I'd love to try out new systems, but I feel a bit too overwhelmed with the amount I need to learn or what I imagine others want me to know on top of finding it hard to find a group of like-minded people that want to spend 4 hours a week with me to get through the campaign. Sadly enough it is not as cut and dry as not having enough people interested in a product, but sometimes the way to enter into the space is not as smooth as people like it to be, so they stick to what they are comfortable with. I hope to one day find a group that just wants to play Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu and other systems just as much as 5e just to so I can try out these things in as comfortable of a space as it can be, but we all know it can sometimes be a bit harder then we'd like with these steps in a gaming sphere of such magnitude as the TTRPG community as a whole!

For me Pathfinder 1e was a way to avoid 4e and I loved it, but in the end the system was too noodley - and the adventure paths were too narrow and never really worked for my groups. Pathfinder 2e looks a little better than 1e but that is not compelling in any way to move from 5e.

A realization I had about 5e vs Pf2e is that 5e is a system built mostly on vibes while Pf2e is mostly based on math. The reason 5e became so popular is that its a simple system to do what you want with. Pf2e you can do a lot of things but its harder to get into with how specific the rules are. You don't usually break 5e by ignoring certain rules. You can easily break pf2e if you ignore certain rules and mechanics though.

Pathfinder is "the dragon game" just as much as WotC D&D is. Both are derivatives of the same source material.

In my personal experience, Pathfinder is its own barrier for entry. I've not looked a lot into the second edition, maybe ti's better, but everything I've played of the first is more complicated and more difficult. Micro-managing action economy and ensuring optimal build set-up to survive low-level published adventures isn't the vibe any of my tables go for. While it might have some cool ideas, everything feels more daunting to get into. On a personal note, I've been playing since the late 90's and hate running 3.5 with its highly exploitable skills and systems, which makes me disinterested in running a game based on it in Pathfinder.

I don’t know how many times my friend group just refers to any TTRPG as “D&D” or homebrews 5e to a point where it’s just a new system. Finally getting a chance to have them play Starfinder and PF2e because there was an opening. It’s worth a shot!

What made me interested in PF2 was Ronald the Rules Lawyer selling it to me as a GM.

I have been unfortunate enough to know a few people who are EXACTLY the kind of toxic PF2 "ambassadors" that just go "PF2 gud, 5e bad". I'm sending this video to them because you articulate everything that frustrates me about their approach. Thank you for making this!

Hi! I never comment on RU-vid, but I wanted to let you know that I've spedrun all of your videos and loved getting to know your insight. You've inspired me to create more characters and helped me come to terms that my PC dying wouldn't be the end of the world, just the beginning of a new adventure! Now I want to read all the class and subclass features under the sun, your enthusiasm for TTRPGs is infectious. Plus, you seem very genuinely nice and willing to help. Please keep doing what you do!

OK now I've watched the whole thing- I think that if you approach people with the system first 9 times out of 10 that fails. It's better to find out what people like in a game and approach it like that. 'Do you guys wanna play a heist/murder mystery/horror/puzzle game?' 'Hey I figured out how to run FullMetal Alchemist in GURPs, anyone want in?' etc. But mostly I had more luck playing different systems by playing with a variety of people, having several regular and irregular groups, and not being wedded to any one system. I'd never have tried GURPs if the GM who ran my Vampire Masquerade game hadn't wanted to try it. You try more stuff when you're not wedded to one system and are open to shorter games as well as long term campaigns. It's fine to love a system. It's fine to prefer long campaigns. But I think you become a better player and GM by experimenting and trying more stuff. Not all groups are open to that. If you're willing to take the time (and willing to GM) you'll find people to try it with tho.

I don't see Pathfinder as any better at providing the fantasy I'm looking for, and 5e is infinitely more hackable.

Happy Almost Birthday, Mike!