D&D 2E Which is the better fantasy rpg and why: D&D 5e or Pathfinder 2e?

[generic]

This one is complete.

The thread?

 

[dave2008]

And then we ask, after almost six years: If the rules options and expansions people are looking forward to are developed at such a slow pace that we may well see a new edition before this one becomes "complete", are their developments worth taking notice? This is the question bugging me right now... :/

That is something each person needs to ask themselves. Personally, this edition was as complete as I need it to be out of the box. Besides I prefer to drive the car than be a passenger.

 

[Coroc]

Mmm. It's slightly different with RPGs. I think that the best way to to think about it is, well, are you familiar with the game Cosmic Encounter ("CE")?

Yes what do you expect if the game title already is "Chaotic Evil" ?

 

[akr71]

I cannot comment on PF2E because I have not played it and likely won't. Not because I have anything against PF or any other game - it is just that it so easy to put together a 5e game. Players LEAP at the chance to join a 5e game - I have to sell anything else to run it.

I think WOTC has done a wonderful job with 5E. The level of complexity and release schedule has made getting into D&D pretty easy these days. The people complaining are largely hardcores who want more options and rules.

I'm on the opposite side of the fence - I would be fine if they did not release another player option and/or monster and concentrated on quality adventures. BTW, I know I am very much in the minority on that point of view, particularly on ENWorld.

D&D 5E would not be my choice for an RPG of the fantasy genre. However, it is certainly my group's choice and that is what matters to me.

I agree with this 100%, especially the no more player options. I'm good and anything I need, like really need, I can homebrew myself. There are things I'd like, but they don't seem to bother or interest my players so why fix what ain't broke.

 

[GlassJaw]

5E isn't perfect (no system is obv) but it strikes an extremely good balance between mechanics/options and narrative play. PF certainly has customization in spades but it suffers from all the problems that 3ed did.

PF2 looks like it has an interesting evolution of some mechanics but the books are a chore to read.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Warhammer, for example, had a very different feel then D&D and the mechanics supported that feel vs. Big Tent D&D supporting a wider variety of styles.

Honestly I find that one of my objections to D&D is how generic it isn't. With the highly specified riskless magic, the absurdly scaling hit point, the level and spell slot system, and so on the only type of fantasy I find most versions of D&D to support is either based on D&D or based on D&D at one remove - CRPGs/MMOs like World of Warcraft. If I want to reproduce almost any literary or even film settings Warhammer, the far grittier game with characters living in their setting, and magic that doesn't always work the same way I find fits far better. And this is Warhammer - a pretty specific system and setting.

5e has the benefit, however, of being generic and what everyone knows and plays.

4E was spamming out stuff as fast as 3E, it didn't last long enough though to hit the same bloat levels.

This is arguably not so. 3.0 hit the reset after just two and a half years, to be replaced with 3.5 - and 4e lasted longer than 3.5. 4e also spammed out stuff to the point there were more official feats in 4e than 3.5. (Before you say "Essentials", there was a lot more both of reprinting and backwards compatibility breaking involved in 3.0 -> 3.5 than there was 4e -> 4eE)

I don't really agree and I feel like you're being facetious! Shocking I know!

2E was in a great place, I would argue, in 1999, mechanically. You had tons of options and they were presented well in a modular way. Some of it was silly but it was easy to pick and choose.

The problem was that by that point you couldn't just pick up 2e in a couple of books and play it there - and also that things like THAC0 and kits were pretty arcane. Part of the reason fo rthe resets is this complexity creep.

The original post said editions 1e-5e.

1e? You had 1e? Luxury! Back in the day we just had the brown box and we liked it!

 

[generic]

1e? You had 1e? Luxury! Back in the day we just had the brown box and we liked it!

The brown box? The brown box?!? Back in my day, we had John's Xerox copy of Chainmail, and had to figure out the rules of D&D by ourselves, through advertisements.

Entitled kids these days.

 

[Tony Vargas]

And then we ask, after almost six years: If the rules options and expansions people are looking forward to are developed at such a slow pace that we may well see a new edition before this one becomes "complete", are their developments worth taking notice? This is the question bugging me right now... :/

One idea of the 5e approach to optional rules and lack of errata is that the game is a starting point, and they want to keep it safe & practical for you to keep going off in whatever direction you chose once you left those starting blocks, that means not changing the core rules (the PH, less optional rules like Feats & MCing, for instance) underneath you, and making new additions to the game optional, and resting only upon that core.

Which may also protect the game from some of the deleterious effects of 'bloat' - that is, if it ever fills out, let alone gets bloated - at this rate, it'd take decades...

...which brings me to the other point: we may not see another edition for a very long time. Maybe another 10 years, maybe never. Or, when a new edition does show, it may be mainly cosmetic. Like a 50th anniversary edition filled with classic art and surviving-TSR-era-folks' commentaries and retrospectives in an appendix, but basically the exact same game content as 2014.

 

[Bacon Bits]

The brown box? The brown box?!? Back in my day, we had John's Xerox copy of Chainmail, and had to figure out the rules of D&D by ourselves, through advertisements.

Entitled kids these days.

I think you misunderstand. He's clearly talking about the Kriegsspiel brown box.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This is arguably not so. 3.0 hit the reset after just two and a half years, to be replaced with 3.5 - and 4e lasted longer than 3.5. 4e also spammed out stuff to the point there were more official feats in 4e than 3.5. (Before you say "Essentials", there was a lot more both of reprinting and backwards compatibility breaking involved in 3.0 -> 3.5 than there was 4e -> 4eE)

Essentials was prettymuch all politics. It avoided being a "half-edition" or "money grab" by remaining fully-compatible, anything from before or after Essentials was useable in 'Essentials+' mode, in part via nigh-game-breaking errata to all that came before. It appealed to returning fans with a purely cosmetic take on the old 'Red Box,' and pandered ineffectually to h4ters by making the new default versions of the Fighter and Thief into DPR grinders and the Ranger back into a part-caster. It was the worst of everything extracted from the cacophony of edition war nerdrage. On the surface. Underneath, it was still 4e, and 4e was robust enough to survive even the inclusion of intentionally bad designs like HotFL/FK/S.
But, even granting Essentials as part of 4e, 4e barely went longer than 4 years, the last supplement even nominally for it came out in 2012. 3.5 went 5 or 6, and, really, in total, 3.x/PF went about 20, as did AD&D (1e & 2e).