So I've been very fortunate that while Covid has created a rough outdoor social life, my remote gaming life has gotten better. For the first time I've gotten to play a 5e campaign and a pathfinder 1e campaign at the same time. Its been a fun and interesting experience playing both, and of course you inevitably want to compare and contrast them to ask...who did it better? So here are a few notes:
Pathfinder Strengths
1) Skills: I think Pathfinder hit a good middle ground between 3.5's sometimes clunky class/cross class system and 5e's "fire and forget" skill design. In Pathfinder skills are pretty straightforward but you still get more of a progression and a sense of evolution compared to 5e. It also helps to make Int less of a dump stat.
I will disagree here. I think that 3.x and PF's skill systems give a false sense of progression and risk pushing bonuses off the die. Having +20 by level 10 is just silly, and while the game tells you that DCs are supposed to be fixed, in reality they just aren't. Knowledge, lock, trap and search DCs increase in modules all the time as level increases, so you do have to keep investing just to keep up. And in the case of opposed skills, it's essential for you to keep investing to keep up. I also think PF has too many skills, and that PF's skill system benefits multiclassing, and I'm not a fan of adding even more benefits to multiclassing. It's been awhile since I played PF, however, so I may be misremembering how the skill system worked. The game still has the problem that untrained skill checks were
worthless after about level 5.
I do agree that Int is a dump stat in 5e and that that is a design problem.
2) Monster Design: My notes here also stem from my long dming experience running 3.5 and 5e games. In general, 5e monsters suffer two main issues:
a) Easy Mode: Monsters at base simply do not have enough offense... I routinely have to upgrade my own monsters to be even remotely threatening to a party, or I have to use lots of monsters which slows down the game. But in general, I find most monsters in 5e are hilariously under CRed once your working with level 5 or higher parties.
b) No big "punch" abilities: So I had an interesting direct comparison on this one, as I fought a vampire in each campaign. For the 5e party...it was just another monster. In pathfinder, we were terrified. We planned special tactics, special buffs spells, the works. It wasn't a fight, it was survival. In other words, I miss negative levels. Now, pathfinder improved on 3.5 in this manner, Negative levels for example can for multiple days depending on roles, but are never permanent. This creates the horror factor for the party without the risk of permanently screwing them.
Funny enough the closest equivalent I have seen in 5e is fatigue, and that comes up in monsters very rarely (if at all). 5e ability are short lived, and don't have the same bite. Consequently, while not all fights are the same, the monster design doesn't shake up combats in the same way they do in pathfinder.
I tend to agree. 5e's design is to direct DMs to nickle and dime the PCs with small encounters so that they will be more likely to take short rests. That's necessary because if all your PCs do is long rest, then Fighters, Warlocks and Monks don't get as many ability uses as they ought to. The game chooses to make encounters easy (and therefore boring to some tables) in order to facilitate the inequalities of the rest mechanics. It's not a design without merits, but it's still deeply flawed.
3) Gold: Simply put, as a player, finding ways to spend your loot is a lot of fun. There is a fun "metagame" where between sessions you dream of what badass items your character is going to buy, its just a good, fun experience. Gold has very little value in 5e, and I have never really cared much about its acquisition.
I agree that there's very little to do with gold once you've bought full plate in 5e, but I don't agree that allowing the purchase of magic items is better. I think that makes the players extraordinarily greedy, and while that might be realistic it's not really the kind of emotions I want my game to be based around. I don't think giving the PCs a giant catalog of abilities that are only limited by their access to in-game currency is a good model. I think the 3e/PF model makes it much more fun to build a character, but I don't think it makes it more fun to
play a character. I actually think that's a pretty consistent criticism of 3e/PF in general. And 4e, for that matter. 5e is the first edition since 2e where playing the game is more fun that making a character.
4) Spells: Sometimes going on a buff fest of spells is just a lot of fun. I understand 5e's desire to curbtail this, especially at high levels.... but you know it feels so powerful and cool to get 3 or 4 buffs through on your character and feel like superman for a few minutes. I think 5e lost that a bit with an overly restrictive concentration mechanic.
I'm also dissatisfied with concentration. I'm okay with being limited to one buff, but I don't think the 5e designers spent remotely enough time on spell design. They just made everything (virtually everything) that has a duration require concentration without really thinking about it. I think my real problem now is that while I think allowing concentration to be spoiled by damage is a great rule for NPCs, I think it's a terrible rule for PCs. I also think that it's a bad design to create spells that require an attack roll or initial save, and require concentration, and then grant a save every turn. It's so, so easy for 5e casters to use a spell and have it do literally nothing at all. That's such bad feels.
5) Archetypes: Something Pathfinder introduced was the Archetype concept, which basically is almost like a sub sub class. Effectively you trade a few class abilities for a few other abilities, otherwise the core class chassis remains the same. Several of my fellow players have archetypes, and I think its a great way to shake up the core classes in a way that doesn't break the bank.
I think this is coming to 5e in the form of alternate class features. However, on some level I like that 5e doesn't put so much effort into the character building minigame. I think that's a little detrimental to the game.
However, I think the real problem is that the game has moved away from granting abilties as a result of things your character did in game. Instead, you gain new abilties because of external books and system mastery. That's rewarding from a game-lover's perspective, but not everybody playing D&D loves to play games. I think that's why 5e did better; it's a good game and not a good game for gamers.
5e Strengths
1) Feats: My god, does Pathfinder have a lot of crappy feats. So...many....crappy feats. There are feats in there that are so watered down and specific that I wouldn't give them to my most niche one off NPCs, let alone a PC. 5e feats are generally meatier and more interesting.
Agreed, although 5e's feats also have a very wide range of potency. I think feats are essential to keep the Champion Fighter interesting in actual play, but beyond that I actually kind of don't like that they're there at all. I think I much prefer the idea of alternative class features.
I would like to see all subclass selection moved to level 1 so that every subclass could modify a class's proficiencies and skills without being weird in actual play. I think that's a clear, if trivial, design error in 5e.
2) Combat Flow: Its amazing to me how 2 little rules changes can make such a big impact:
a) A player can take their action at some point in their move, and then continue the move.
b) A player can do 1 object interaction for free every round.
5e combats feel like more of a dance than pathfinder's. The players just "do things", and they happen. I have watched so many pathfinder arguments about X square, and this position, and can I open the door and run out and attack, and xyz. Those two little rules changes fixed at least half of the rules arguments I have seen at the pathfinder table. I feel like this is an area where 5e's "rule" removes so many other rules, and really for the improvement of the game.
Agreed, although I think the item interaction rules in even 5e are a little too strict if taken literally. Namely, thrown weapons and multiple attacks is pointlessly nerfed by the item interaction rules. 5e correctly moves away from being a strict minitatures combat game and moves back to "eh, there's a referee at the table how about we let him be a referee?"
3) Magic Items: I do think Pathfinder still suffers the 3.5 legacy of "you get a belt for this, and a hat for that, and shoes for X", that even by 5-6th level you already look like a christmas tree, with a bag full of scrolls along with it. 5e magic items are intentionally rarer and often more interesting, and I think the game is better for it.
I would agree, but in the last few years the official modules have been ridiculously stingy. Exploring a dungeon with only gold and consumable items for loot feels awful when gold has no use. It feels like, "why am I still adventuring here?"
I will never get over the fact that we got to like dungeon level 8 or 9 in Dungeon of the Mad Mage and the only things we had found were:
(a) potions, (b) scrolls, (c) a wand of detect secret doors, (d) a wand of fireballs, (e) a sword of sharpness -- which is an awful magic item in 5e, BTW -- that was sentient, stuck in a green dragon's head, and that green dragon was the ally of a druid who lived like 500 ft away who could cast like 8th level spells, and (f) half of a boots of elvenkind. Yes, just one boot.
4) Spells: While I don't like concentration, I do think 5e improved spells in a number of ways over pathfinder. I think removing caster level from range and duration was a good move. Pathfinder is a little more dynamic with this at the beginning (going from a 1 round duration to a 3 round is a big deal)...but in the long run, I like that in 5e, I cast my spell, it lasts 1 minute (aka a combat). Simple, fire and forget, let me return to what I care about. Same with spell DCs and ranges... our poor pathfinder DM keeps having to remind people "now remember that's a second level spell not your third one, so the DC is 1 lower". The mechanics of spellcaster in 5e are just smoother.
Yeah, this is a major improvement. Having spellcasters have 4 or 5 ways they improve was not a good design.
5) Range: The problem with range has traditionally been... it makes half of your party feel weak/useless (unless you have a party of archers). Now when your ranges are in the 150-200 ish level, well then your melee guys can rush in and combats still are dynamic. 5e recognizes this, and attempts to keep most ranges within the 100-150 range (bows are the exception and honestly I really wish they were shorter, 300 would be fine... ask any professional archer, they will tell you that 600 feet hit ranges are just ridiculous).
But in pathfinder you can still get long range spells from 400-500 feet away which creates a lot more weirdness and sometimes boredom in the combat.
I can't say that I ever had this problem on a consistent basis.
Overall
In general, I think 5e is the more polished system, its cleaner and smoother. However, 5e also tossed a bit of baby with its bathwater, and there is a wonderous variety of options in Pathfinder that as a player you do start to miss. From a DM standpoint, I think 5e is the easier system to run, and I think its the harder system to keep it fresh and engaging for veteran players (with pathfinder you can simply find a new monster or item to create a radically different combat or experience).
All in all...they are both good, it just depends on what you are looking for. If I was going for the "perfect version"... I think I would take Pathfinder as the base (with its loads of options already provided)...and then start systematically swapping out components for 5e rules (such as the combat rules I mentioned, those could be easily adapted to the pathfinder chassis). You could probably keep most of what makes Pathfinder fun, but easily remove its biggest blemishes with a few key 5e inspired rules changes.
I wouldn't run Pathfinder anymore because the DM overhead is too great for NPCs. I don't want to play the 3e/PF character building minigame every time I want an NPC. Don't get me wrong, I think that 5e needs more and better and better organized NPC blocks even after Volo's and Mordenkainen's, and I think 5e needs more 4e style NPCs and less "oh and also it's a 5th level spellcaster".
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