There is still a day to get the Pathfinder 2 Humble Bundle, and you can pick up the PDFs of the remaster books and support charity. I bounced off Pathfinder 2 pretty hard; the learning curve here, especially for a solo player, is significant - especially if you run multiple characters alone.
Learning and mastering GURPS was far easier for me because all characters in GURPS work the same, and there isn't specialized lingo and class mechanics for every class. The game was better for group play. If all you play is bards, then all you have to worry about is understanding and playing your class, and you can contribute to a group much better.
I am still trying to figure out how to learn this game and play it solo. There is a lot here.
The one thing that sets Pathfinder 2 apart is that the game delivers on the original promise that D&D 3.0 made in 2000. For 25 years, Wizards has been flailing, trying to provide the "balanced tabletop dungeon game" that works from level one to twenty, that provides tactical clarity and options, where every choice is valid, and that plays the best on a map.
With D&D 5? They gave up. The fifth edition is a glorified story game. They were burned by D&D 4 and abandoned tactical play. There isn't any "tight map play" where the choices you make on your character matter that much. The action system is soft and better suited to the theater of the mind. The resting system is far too generous. Resources constantly replenish. Nobody dies.
If you want a tactical dungeon board game with roleplaying class builds, you play D&D 3.5E. There isn't getting better than this, and you could say D&D 3.5E is "Advanced D&D 5E." Just open the D&D 3.5E book, and you will see grids, line-of-sight charts, spell templates, examples of on-map play, and diagrams that help you play the game. It isn't a coffee table art book with pretty filler and fluff.
But, like all Wizards games, it must be fixed past level 10. You homebrew, patch, ban builds, and begin repairing the game now, and you are on your own. If you love the game, great, you accept this and make the game your own creation.
With Pathfinder 2, someone finally "did it."
They delivered a tactical dungeon tabletop game, with every choice valid, no broken high-level play, and adjustable difficulty from trivial to near-impossible play. Granted, they needed many rules, structures, tags, conditions, and rules inside classes to pull this off. The work required to deliver that "dungeon board game" dream, and the number of interactions between layered rules, is pretty hefty.
Spending time mastering D&D 3.5E could be better spent learning something that works and delivers on its promise. This is true if nostalgia weren't a thing. D&D 3.5E is just as in-depth, with many more modifiers and special circumstance rules than Pathfinder 2E. The design of D&D 3.5E needs to be more streamlined and unified, whereas Pathfinder 2E is designed as a solid, sensible core system.
And there is no need to fix the game. Someone isn't going to walk into your game with a cheese build they read on an Internet forum, or it will happen a lot less here. There are "whirlwind attack" cheese builds in D&D 3.5E that do hundreds of points of damage per turn, and people think they are brilliant for wanting to develop and use those in your game when all they are trying to do is waste weeks of your time building to the moment they wreck your game during one session and laugh.
D&D is notorious for these "thank you for wasting our time" builds that ruin the investment, time, and enjoyment of everyone else at the table. They are a real problem the company refuses to address and, in some cases, encourages to get more book sales. The overall health of the D&D game could be improved.
Pathfinder 2 gives you greater "idiot protection" than D&D 5E or D&D 3.5E. I hate putting it that way, but it is true. If I am playing at a hobby store, with random online others, or with people I don't know as well - Pathfinder 2E is the better choice. People's choices are protected; no one is going to "cheese in" and ruin the game for the table, and the game will work all the way to the highest level, thus protecting the time investment of the table.
The remaster player guide cover sums it up best. That dragon that barely makes a lick of sense, how does it live with those horns and the jagged, spiky, threatening design? That isn't a dragon. That is a loudmouth, rules-lawyer, cheat-the-game idiot trying to ruin your table's game. The game protects you from that threat heroically.
But the rules say I can!!!
Is Pathfinder 2E perfect? No. People still complain about a few classes not living up to their ideal of how the class should play or the role they want it to take. "It isn't like what the other game does" is a common criticism of the classes and their roles in PF2E.
Pathfinder 2 is better than the alternatives and much better for groups than any of the D&D games.
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