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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 8175074" data-attributes="member: 6801252">I will point out, in comparing the Starter Set of Pf2e (Menace under Otari) and the two for 5e (Dragon of Icespire Peak and Lost Mines of Phandelver) in terms of content, while the PF2e offering goes to a lower level, the levels in the two games are paced differently-- 5e has its Experience Point scaling system where the game shuffles you very quickly through the first few levels, whereas PF2e utilizes an entirely flat curve, DOIP is even more aggressive than 5e usually is about leveling characters up with its quest milestones.[SPOILER="Dragons of Icespire Peak Spoilers"]While it varies by quest, going from level 1 to 2 in Dragons of Icespire Peak is very little actual content-- if they take Umbrage Hill for instance, the players have to deal with a single Manticore, and that's literally it; The Dwarven Expedition quest is like, 3 Ochre Jellies (if the players find the secret room at all, otherwise its 2) and some Orcs. Completing any of these is a level, the later quests are only a little more extensive in terms of content, though some of them have extensive maps, they're dramatically lighter on fights, traps, and puzzles.[/SPOILER][SPOILER="Menace Under Otari Spoilers"]Meanwhile, Menace Under Otari (ignoring the accomplishments, since I ignored similarly non-time consuming content for DoIP) has you Fighting 4 Giant Rats for 80 Experience Points, Fight or Sneak Past a Spider for 40 Experience Points, Destroy 4 Skeletons and a Zombie for 100 Experience Points, Fight 4 Kobolds for 80 Experience Points, A Puzzle they can solve for 80 Experience Points, Overcoming Kobolds and Traps for 136 points, Fighting more Kobolds 80 Experience Points, Encountering and Defeating a Cinder Rat for 80 Experience Points, Defeating Xulgaths for 120 Experience Points, Disabling or Destroying a Complex Fountain Trap for 80 Experience Points, Fighting a last group of Kobolds for 120 Experience Points with an opportunity to earn more depending on what they do at the end of the fight. At the end of that last encounter there's a sidebar notifying the GM that depending on some of the optional Experience Points, the Players would level up. There's a few encounters (2-3, including a Dragon Fight) remaining after this in the adventure as a whole, thought it does end after like 2 more major encounters, though the book encourages the GM to use the additional enclosed content to make their own adventures to make up the difference (or buy Troubles in Otari), which Icespire Peak doesn't really have. [/SPOILER]From this we can see that the actual amount of adventuring content in the two books isn't that different (though for all that I will say the Essential's Kit is currently much cheaper, though for the life of me I remember paying more at Target when it came out, I think its specifically a loss leader product whereas Paizo can't quite do that to the same extent, the Essentials Kit is barely more expensive than a single set of chessex dice) If a GM does accept the invitation to start homebrewing from there (something the Essentials Kit doesn't really provide is guidelines and resources for this), there's actually quite a few sessions to play through before the players exhaust the content of the Beginner Box from a player perspective, since every level in Pathfinder 2e is that same 1,000 experience points, so a similar amount of material content as I listed above for that level 1 adventure, while 5e doesn't slow down leveling until a little later, and even then its much quicker (intended to have players leveling every other session, rather than every 3-4 for Pathfinder 2e.)</blockquote>

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