Why Pathfinder 2 is better than D&D 5e (and why it isn’t)

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My favorite thing about PF2 is not having to worry about the Pnkerton Group breaking down my door and steeling my home-brew. Also, I hear they hate cats.

For me, the difference is this: Wotc wants you to give them money. Paizo wants you to play the game.

I’d assume the reason WotC didn’t provide their “secret sauce” is because they don’t have any. Everyone there is just taking turns throwing in spices until something vaguely palatable comes out. Otherwise, we’d be able to rely on their difficulty system.

Just turn your Kobolds into a swarm! Now you have a lot of low level monsters attacking as one higher level monster :D Bonus points if you give your Kobolds trenchcoats so they can attack in swarms of 3.

Re: #3 for D&D - Pathfinder has retraining baked into the rules as written. If you miss a feat you wanted because you forgot to take a prereq, you can fix that during 'downtime'. And because of that, it's not that uncommon for GMs to just... let you do it between sessions.

Something nuance I want to add is just how good Paizo adventures are written compared to recent WotC adventures. Most 5E adventure feel only half finished to me with the intention of, "Just make up the rest as you go." A lot of the encounters are weak and filler. The treasure is lackluster. They just feel like a ton of work! For Paizo's PF2 adventures I need minimum prep time because I can trust that I can nearly run it cold with how good the flow and pacing. I don't need to modify everything to fit the party, they are just great adventures as written for everybody.

PF2e offers solutions to some of the problems you mentioned: Bounded accuracy: There is a rule called "Proficiency wihtout level" in pf2e that subtracts level to all stats in the game. With this rule AC, for example, scales from ~14 to ~28 instead of from 14 to 54, giving you a greater breadth of encounters . Building characters: Pf2e has a mechanic called "Retraining" where you spend some downtime switching one of you class/skill/general feats for another they even allow you to switch learned spells and class features (although they mention it should take longer and maybe have some narritive implications). Adventuring day: While adventuring day is a thing in 5e and pathfinder 1e and not in pathfinder 2e I'd argue that adventuring day is most of the times a flawed metric. 5 medium encounters followed by an hard encounter is much different than 1 hard encounter followed by 5 medium. And all of this depends on the type of party of you have 5 martials can probably do more encounters than 5 wizards. As such pf2e opted for describring relative difficulty by saying for example that if you throw a sever encounter at your party " lack of resources due to prior encounters can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters" and moderate encounters are described as being used to deplete resources so you should be mindfull of throwing sever encounters after multiple moderate encounters or your party will probably tpk. I think most of the times gms want a number to make them feel confortable even if the number is meaningless. Everything else I felt was well put, Great video 👍.

18:18 Honestly D&D5 is so easy to play, that i'm geting bored of it; and so hard to GM that I nearly rage-quit several times.

Another big plus is that there is a steady flow of new content for PF2e.

You said what I've been saying about both systems since my group stopped playing 5th ed due to the OGL debacle. 5th ed is more difficult to GM, and Pathfinder 2e is more difficult for the player. My group initially gave a lot of pushback when I switched to Pathfinder 2e. It's been about 8 months now and they stuck with it and are having much more fun as they become more familiar with the rules.

PF2 has pricing for magic items!!!

You might want to check out the Proficiency Without Level variant rule if you miss bounded accuracy, it keeps DCs contained between 15 and 30

A missed positive is that there's clear, official pricing on magic items and clear guidance on loot progression. And okayish rules for homebrewing items. Including neato relic items. Loot and loot progression is a vital part of this kind of game and 5e kinda expects you to figure it out on your own and only gives you broad pricing suggestions that aren't fine tuned. The 5e revision is allegedly going to change this though.

Speaking of leveling up, 5e has dead levels, where you make no choices about your character's progression. This is not true in P2, where every level you have a choice to make. This means characters of the same class and level in 5e are very much alike, and this is far less true in P2.

PF2e character levelling is generally easier than 5e. Because you can, per the rules, take the new features out for a test drive. 5e does not allow retraining (I think there may be some "ask your GM" bit in there, but effectively, no). Pathfinder has a robust retraining system. If you, at level 7, realize you need something you passed over at level 4, you can spend a bit of downtime to swap that level 4 feature, and then take the level 7 feature you actually want. The only time this fails is if you are on an adventure chain without any downtime.

I'm heading into the end-phase of my 5e campaign that has run for about 18 months now. I have taken a couple breaks due to IRL issues, but I am just burned out from the lack of DM tools that 5e provides. Creating encounters, trying to manage giving them meaningful loot when gold is useless and you don't want to go crazy with magic items. I am ready for a long break after. I have been looking into PF2 a lot lately, and everything about running the game as a DM sounds like a dream come true!! I am definitely going to give this system a shot when my turn in the DM rotation comes up again.

About your point regarding the Kobolds, while you can't throw them at high level players as is, they do give you the tools to make your own beefy versions relatively easily,like homebrew elite kobolds,kobold subraces or something similar as you mentioned about using the GMG to homebrew,thus scaling them up

For me 5e has just enough rules to hang you without giving the dm proper support. If I want an easier game to intoduce people to the hobby I'm busing out a powered by the apoclypse game or Savage worlds. I've always found the lack of options in 5e to be a huge turnoff, even if it is technically easier. In Pathfinder, whether 1e or 2e, there is always a meaningful choice that you will be making for your character and that makes leveling exciting.

This video was so thoughtful from top to bottom. You did such an excellent job of laying out both of the systems strengths while airing out some of their issues. I love 5E for getting me into the hobby, but as a chronically ill person who loves to GM PF2E is my system of choice. As you mentioned in near the end of the video, it's a system that is much easier to run, while being a bit more difficult for players. PF2E encounter building and magic loot with levels and costs let's me spend my energy on telling a compelling narrative rather than desperately trying to balance the game. :) As for PF2E vs 5E for new players. I play with a good number of 50-70 year old players and I've found those older players have a much easier time grasping 3 actions than action/bonus/move. That's just my experience though, every group is different. ♡