D&D 5E Character Advancement versus Pathfinder

[Ath'kethin]

Are you well-versed in any edition of D&D?nis your group?

Of the answer is "no," I'd say go with 5e. You could, as has been pointed out, even try the 5e version of The One Ring.

I recommend 5e over Pathfinder for D&D noclvices because it requires very little mastery to, well, master. And if you accustomed to a more narrative-driven game, 5e will be a good mix of storytelling and mechanical crunch.

Which isn't to say you can't have narrative-driven Pathfinder games, but the learning curve is much steeper for that system.

 

[pogre]

If you are leaving One Ring primarily to have more character options - the Pathfinder may be the better choice. Caveats mentioned above about system mastery and bad choices are well explained above.

I prefer 5E for the play experience, but that is very much an individual choice.

 

[hastur_nz]

Kudos to the great answers above. I'd just add that from a DM / GM perspective, the difference is probably magnified even more. 5e is pretty easy to DM, at least for a good number of levels. Pathfinder, I'd say, quickly becomes quite a burden in terms of the number of rules and complexities that your average DM is expected to try and juggle. D&D 5e hasn't tried to make the DM rule-set quite as simple as it was in 4e, but it's at least struck a better balance - monsters are only just complex enough for the few rounds they will be alive, not overly so. There's not a lot of other complexity for a DM to manage in 5e, everything (except magic) is kept quite simple and logical, you don't need to be constantly referring to a heap of books for rules.

Although I've never played Pathfinder, I've followed it from inception, and know people who still play it; I was sick of 3.5 by the end, especially as a DM, so am very happy with 5e, which makes life as a DM much easier. In fact, for a long time I DM'd 5e knowing very few of the rules, I never even read the PHB for a couple of years, I just replied on my players knowing the rules well enough to clarify anything I wasn't 100% on. A game like Pathfinder (which is just 3.5 with some changes then heaps of new add-ons), with so many options and complicated interactions, and terribly complicated monster stat-blocks that refer to countless spells and feats etc that need cross-referencing; these are a real burden on the DM to try and keep on top of, which most never do so in most cases the players stomp over the top of monsters because the DM misses half of their abilities in play. The higher level you go, the worse it gets, in that regard (I could never run a high level 3.5 game without taking hours to highlight and scribble notes all over adventures, especially stat-blocks).

 

[TheSword]

I played Pathfinder from the launch of 4e to about two years ago when our long time group made a wholesale switch to 5e. For me Pathfinder got very muddled with lots of OP and broken feats and abilities. Characters turned into collections of stats and modifiers, combined in ever increasingly niche ways to play the character you want. A lot of the feats have individually minor effects that improve exponentially when combined with other individually minor abilities.

For instance, playing a spell-thief (magic using rogue) requires multiclassing and carefully shepherding your character with feats, traits and stats to finally get good at magic at about 6th/7th level. On the flip side at 3rd level the equivalent archetype lets you cast spells without losing what it means to be a thief. In that sense 5e is ‘cleaner’ for me and less convoluted.

As people have said, it’s far easier to break Pathfinder than 5e and as a DM I much prefer DMing the latter.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Pathfinder is in the running, but so is D&D 5. The main thing we're looking for is something to help strike a balance between the players who want to have a lot of options for character customization (min-maxing) and those who are just there to have fun.

Both are poor choices, but 5e is surely the leser evil in that regard.

Pathfinder is in the lead because there is, apparently, a nigh-infinite number of ways to customize one's characters, but I understand that the rules for 5E are a little easier to follow.

A nigh-infinite number of those ways of customizing your character in PH are 'traps,' too. And 5e isn't really any easier to follow, from the player's side, there's just a lot less of it to follow, and it's much easier for the DM to, I guess you could say in contrast, 'lead' the rules where he wants them to go.

Can any of you please speak to character advancement options in 5E versus Pathfinder? Are there a lot of options or are the classes pretty narrow? Thanks!

Hands-down, PF gives you more options, vastly more. They're wildly imbalanced, though, and even if you trim it down to PH-only, they remain so. 5e gives you far fewer options, and they, too are imbalanced, just more by class than by system-mastery-enhanced 'build.'

The gulf between the 'min-maxing' and 'just wanna have fun' players is going to be bad in both games, but far worse in PF. We're not just talking light-years to parsecs, either. More like AUs to parsecs. What's more, the PF DM has limited options to compensate for that gulf, while in 5e, the Empowered DM can use precisely-targeted magic-item drops, ad hoc rulings, narrating success/failure, and carefully-crafted campaign situations to establish & maintain a balance among the players in spite of it.


TL;DR: Of the two, 5e. No contest.

 

[abirdcall]

5e doesn't have as many buttons on the character sheet but it makes up for this by having more choices in play.

Feats and special abilities are not required to do all sorts of things in combat and out.

5e is also faster to play so characters do more per session.

 

[Wiseblood]

If you want a rogue play 5e. If you want ridiculously powerful casters play Pathfinder. As a DM you will have an easier time with 5e. Pathfinder is a lot more work as a DM unless you create excellent heuristics for short cutting the onerous ruleset.

 

[Mort]

If you want a rogue play 5e. If you want ridiculously powerful casters play Pathfinder. As a DM you will have an easier time with 5e. Pathfinder is a lot more work as a DM unless you create excellent heuristics for short cutting the onerous ruleset.

This has absolutely been my experience as well. Pathfinder favors casters a lot.

Pathfinder and 5e start at about the same level to DM (though, especially if you are new to the system, Pathfinder has a larger learning curve). As the levels increase, however, pathfinder gets exponentially more work intensive - both the characters and the monsters are just so much more fiddly.

 

[ShorelessSkies]

I really appreciate all the responses!

 

[Ymdar]

After years of playing pathfinder we recently changed to 5e because the classes are more balanced. I started to poke my mates to do this after someone created a character who was able to do 49 damage on level 2 (or 3). So definitely 5e maybe with the official pathfinder (Inner sea?) setting because that is awesome.