Apr 20 2022

More Rambling About 5E vs. Pathfinder 2E

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Brother Drang summons lightning against the cave leaper. It's SUPER EFFECTIVE.

Some follow-up to my last post on this topic, I’ve had a few things keep coming back to me from the things fans of PF2E have said. Specifically, “martials who don’t suck,” and “all levels matter.”

You’ve Been Bushwhacked, Martial!

Martials occupy a very weird space in 5E. In the grand tradition of “linear fighters and quadratic wizards,” martials are generally quite strong at low levels, but quickly become overshadowed by the casters at higher levels. This trend is not absolute and can be very muddy, as there is literally no completely non-magical class in 5E. (Sub-classes, yes. But every class has at least one and usually multiple magical variations.) And it has certain outliers that have to be accounted for. Every fight in my Tomb of Annihilation campaign has to be balanced around the barbarian, who does “every hit point in the Universe in damage” every round. A different barbarian in my upcoming Red Hand of Doom is literally resistant to every kind of damage, except psychic… effectively giving him a d24 hit die. Paladins go supernova. Monks stunlock boss monsters and turn apocalyptic encounters into trivial surround-and-pounds.

(Sorry, fighters and rogues. Being dependable over the course of 6-8 encounters per day is not the selling point 5E’s design seems to think it is.)

PF2E‘s approach to this, as far as I’ve gathered from my research, is to balance around encounters rather than days (which as I mentioned in my last post, has its dangers), and to hit casters with a nerfbat.

I am fine with hitting casters with a nerfbat.

I am very, very fine with hitting casters with a nerfbat.

So if that’s actually true, well… it does sound appealing.

But then I hear about PF’s classes have things like the Gunfighter holding a sword in front of the barrel of their gun so the bullet splits in two and hits two different targets, and I’m just like… “Really?”

So. I dunno.

Dirty Secret: 5E Only Has 7 Levels

It is a truism (and not without reason) that 5E kinda goes off the rails somewhere around 10th level. It’s not impossible to play by any stretch, but everything has to be extensively customized to the crazy abilities of your specific party, and you have to design enough flexibility into every fight that the monsters will last more than a round and a half, but can’t one-punch half the party. This is why published materials tend to stop here, the work-to-reward ratio of building those adventures doesn’t outweigh the fact that fewer campaigns actually get there… which turns into a downward spiral, since there are fewer adventures, so fewer people play, which causes them to make still fewer adventures…

But this is just half of the picture. 5E is designed with the idea that levels 1-2 are “trainer” levels, with characters who are extremely simplistic to play, and are also extremely fragile. More experienced groups are low-key expected to just always start new campaigns at 3rd level, when classes really “come online.” (And a lot of multiclass characters don’t really reach their intended “build” until 6th, 7th, or higher.)

So effectively, D&D campaigns are only expected to be levels 3-10.

In our group, we lobbied InkBlitz to only award 1/2 experience for the campaign Shade-Of-the-Candle is in, because we want it to last! But at the same time, we do kinda feel like we’re languishing in the 5th-7th range (and I think Blitzy’s getting bored there). Imagine how much better it would be all around if we could keep leveling up without being afraid that this level will be the one that kills the campaign because it becomes unmanageable?

Now, this is mostly theoretical, and the only evidence that Pathfinder is any better is, well, PF fans saying so. I can tell from just looking at the math that low-level PF characters are sturdier (my PF Shady build had 20 hp at 1st level), but low level monsters hit harder, too (a 1st level hobgoblin does roughly 8 points of damage per hit and has a good chance of hitting twice per round). But creating a 1st level PF character is a fairly lengthy process that involves choosing options for your background, your class, your ancestry, a personal feat (which can be mostly flavor) and any archetypes (how PF handles multiclassing, “half-” races, and other mix-and-match abilities). So there’s already a lot of customizing going on right out the gate.

Whether this extra mental investment translates into more fun, probably depends a lot on what you want out of the game. I love to build “exactly the character I want,” so there’s a lot for me to chew on there. Some of the other players are much happier with a pushbutton game where they don’t need to think about the rules—which is an understandable side effect of having to do a lot of adulting all the time, and just wanting your D&D night to be fun with friends.

And, well… do I really care about getting to play 20 whole levels of a game? I’m feeling a certain amount of fatigue from my Tomb of Annihilation game, but that’s also because it’s one long single narrative that has taken a year and a half to get through. My Storm King’s Thunder campaign was much more rambly and episodic (at least until the end), and I’m looking forward to going back to that.

It’s 11th level… we’ll see how playable it actually is. >.> It would certainly be comforting to have confidence in the system underneath it.

-TG

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