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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 8101690" data-attributes="member: 6801252">One thing that I want to comment on is that in my eyes, Pathfinder 2e does a really good job on the complexity vs. depth ratio, and I think some of that is because it was willing to go a little more complex than it's fifth edition competitor (which incidentally, I think fails on the complexity vs. depth test.) Let me explain by contrasting the two games, 5e does indeed streamline, but it suffers from having cut back too much in some areas (customization, modifiers) while not cutting back enough in others (take its standard/bonus/move/reaction action system, or its encumbrance, or the way its modifiers work.) There's also a lot of rules text, you don't make choices, but you still get a bunch of features. You make one choice and the game hands you a bunch of rules to operate your character as you level up. When we switched to Pathfinder, we discovered that while we were making our choices, the players who had the most trouble in 5e knowing how their stuff worked were having an easier time because choosing their abilities made them more invested in them, and they weren't just receiving things buried in a wall of features from a subclass. In 5e, the lack of modifiers makes the game a little quicker on the math/tracking front, but you lose a great deal of mechanical differentiation because you can't build things more than once. If you applied one effect that gave you advantage, the benefit to using more such effects immediately dropped off. This reduces the tactics, as we observed ourselves to be getting advantage through some relatively easy means, and then ignoring further tactical options because all that was left was to pile on. Compare to our Pathfinder game last night, where one player made a creature they couldn't flank flat footed with one effect, while another frightened it. Our abilities stayed useful, and the added complexity let the players feel rewarded for their choices, both in the traditional character building sense of creating characters who could do that and capitalize on it, but also in the tactical sense of using the options they were given in combat to do that. It makes a lot of depth off of that bit of complexity increase. In other cases, Pathfinder streamlines things 5e doesn't, the action system is way more intuitive than explaining to people about bonus actions and how you only get to use it if you have one (which is a newbie trap, incidentally) and you can't downgrade your standard action into two bonus actions if you want to, and no you can't attack more if you're not using your move at all. In pathfinder, its just three actions, some neat things you can do cost more than one, its brilliant and tactically satisfying, that's another thing my 5e players with rules-difficulty like. This is exacerbated by the fact that 5e isn't really a simple game, not like other games we've played are-- Kids on Brooms, and Masks: A New Generation, both come to mind. Its still super crunchy, its just that the crunch is kind of bland, and the game's core engine doesn't work that well (bounded accuracy creating weird swinginess, or players handling way above their pay grade, super powerful magic, broken martial feats.) Its like you're doing most of the same amount of rules, with like less than half of the customization. I can't even say character building is faster because we used tools for both, and Pathbuilder 2e nukes beyond's character builder from orbit in terms of speed. From my game, I can say the subsystems (like crafting and medicine) seem to work better than the posters in this thread are advertising. Crafting is useful ebcause settlement level doesn't really tend to scale 1 for 1 with you, meaning job level tends to be at a delay unless you go out of your way, and not all games have easy access to magic item shops (though thats a much more viable proposition than 5e supports), I've typically run magic item sales as having to track down a seller for the item they want with checks, in settlements of high enough level to support them (I guess the DC would get harder if you're in a lower level settlement? it didn't come up.)  Add to this the lego brick approach to every aspect of character building, and you wind up feeling a lot of depth and customization, but we aren't significantly doing more work than in 5e, heck, since we actually leveraged that systems 'homebrew advantage' to make up for lack of options, its less work for me as GM, since I don't have to trawl homebrew sources for balanced content, or rule on things my players found somewhere, and might need to interact with other homebrew. I did it, we enjoyed it- i even would write my own options, which made the rounds in various homebrew communities.  I'd rather do less work while keeping my players happy and pathfinder 2e lets me do that.</blockquote>

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