I’ll just say: my first RPG was 4e, a bit over a year after I started playing that, 5e came out and I immediately switched.
I’ve played a bunch of others here and there, but the next relevant one is Pathfinder 1e. I hated it. After my brief experience of that, you could not pay me to play 3.5 or PF1 again.[1] But I switched to PF2e in 2023 after disliking the direction 5e was moving in (including but not limited to the OGL drama), and I absolutely love it. It feels like it gives me everything 5e was supposed to.
It has vancian spellcasting, which I don’t love, but have to admit at least provides more legitimate diversity than 5e’s quasi-vancian system. (With true spontaneous casters mixed with true prepared slot casters, and archetype choices that allow a more 5e-style approach, for the cost of an archetype feat.) Apart from spell slots, there isn’t much that prevents a party from keeping going forever. Healing is pretty readily accessible, and most other stuff recharges on a 10 minute rest, if not instantly. Outside of spell slots, there isn’t really any sense of attrition.
The three-action economy is a genius solution to a number of awkward design problems in 4e and 5e (and, from what I gather, 3.5/pf1). Though as a GM, I tend to be relatively generous in terms of what I count as costing an action, because RAW is a bit onerous at times (one action to get an item out of the bag, then another action to use it? Nah, no thanks. Players have a hard enough time deciding to use expendable items as it is.) 4 degrees of success is excellent and should really be the bare minimum going forward in most RPGs with a “success/fail” mechanic. And while I’m not a fan of the inevitable consequences (large numbers of weak enemies have zero chance against a party, and sandbox type worlds become impossible to run, with challenges needing to be tailored to within 2 or 3 levels of the party to be achievable), or the burden it places upon GMs (a requirement to give out a pretty specific progression of magic items, unless you use a variant rule that does away with a lot of the flavour in order to automate the maths), 2e’s maths ends up really tight, and it feels really good when you are designing challenges specifically for your party as it currently stands.
PF2e has a lot of rules for specific things, but to be honest, outside of combat I tend to do it the same way I did in 5e and 4e. As GM I see what the players are trying to do, I decide an appropriate skill and DC, and I have them roll. I rarely bother with more complicated specific rules and subsystems. This is the same reason I genuinely quite liked 4e and never had any time for people who argue things like “it should have been called D&D Tactics” or “it was only a combat game, not a roleplaying game”. I want rules to be light outside of combat.
you could definitely pay me. But the point stands: I really did not like it and would not easily do it again. ↩︎
I’ll just say: my first RPG was 4e, a bit over a year after I started playing that, 5e came out and I immediately switched.
I’ve played a bunch of others here and there, but the next relevant one is Pathfinder 1e. I hated it. After my brief experience of that, you could not pay me to play 3.5 or PF1 again.[1] But I switched to PF2e in 2023 after disliking the direction 5e was moving in (including but not limited to the OGL drama), and I absolutely love it. It feels like it gives me everything 5e was supposed to.
It has vancian spellcasting, which I don’t love, but have to admit at least provides more legitimate diversity than 5e’s quasi-vancian system. (With true spontaneous casters mixed with true prepared slot casters, and archetype choices that allow a more 5e-style approach, for the cost of an archetype feat.) Apart from spell slots, there isn’t much that prevents a party from keeping going forever. Healing is pretty readily accessible, and most other stuff recharges on a 10 minute rest, if not instantly. Outside of spell slots, there isn’t really any sense of attrition.
The three-action economy is a genius solution to a number of awkward design problems in 4e and 5e (and, from what I gather, 3.5/pf1). Though as a GM, I tend to be relatively generous in terms of what I count as costing an action, because RAW is a bit onerous at times (one action to get an item out of the bag, then another action to use it? Nah, no thanks. Players have a hard enough time deciding to use expendable items as it is.) 4 degrees of success is excellent and should really be the bare minimum going forward in most RPGs with a “success/fail” mechanic. And while I’m not a fan of the inevitable consequences (large numbers of weak enemies have zero chance against a party, and sandbox type worlds become impossible to run, with challenges needing to be tailored to within 2 or 3 levels of the party to be achievable), or the burden it places upon GMs (a requirement to give out a pretty specific progression of magic items, unless you use a variant rule that does away with a lot of the flavour in order to automate the maths), 2e’s maths ends up really tight, and it feels really good when you are designing challenges specifically for your party as it currently stands.
PF2e has a lot of rules for specific things, but to be honest, outside of combat I tend to do it the same way I did in 5e and 4e. As GM I see what the players are trying to do, I decide an appropriate skill and DC, and I have them roll. I rarely bother with more complicated specific rules and subsystems. This is the same reason I genuinely quite liked 4e and never had any time for people who argue things like “it should have been called D&D Tactics” or “it was only a combat game, not a roleplaying game”. I want rules to be light outside of combat.
you could definitely pay me. But the point stands: I really did not like it and would not easily do it again. ↩︎