Pathfinder or D&D 5e

So I have been playing roleplaying games for years. I have played with D20s and Dark Heresy, however the only fantasy I have played to this day is D&D 3.5e

Now before everyone flames me for playing that edition, I have been playing 3.5e ever sense it came out. Its really old and I feel the need to buy a more modern RPG.

So shall it be Pathfinder? Which took a road similar to 3.5 Or D&D 5e because it is still a D&D game?

I usually a DM, and based off that my friend keep pushing me to lead another game, I can only assume I am decent at it. Either choice I will study and read the book using them as guide lines for my games.

They're both shit. Pathfinder is 3.5 with a slightly different coat of paint. 5e is 3.5 with most of the numbers filed off.

For a fantasy themed RPG, what do you recommend? I am genuinely curious and looking for a new books.

5e is fine. Most of the people that hate 5e are Pathfinder drones, or people who hate Pathfinder and think 5e is the same thing. That or they're memesters just spewing the same uninformed opinions on repeate ad infinitum.

Pathfinder is 3.5 copied by people who understand the system even less and "fixed" in a way that made wizards even stronger and fighters even weaker. Not to mention fighters being balanced around the abilities of some guy sitting in front of his computer and trying to catch his mouse by pulling at the cord.

5e is WotC's desperate attempt at reclaiming the customers they lost to PF while simultaneously not losing its 4e customers. As a result, the system is aggressively mediocre without any clear purpose or goals.

The problem with recommending a different system is that there are quite a number of vastly better systems, but they all serve different purposes. So we'd need to know what you want and expect from the new system.

>Now before everyone flames me for playing that edition,

Is this really how bad those idiots have gotten?

Fuck, we really should have called you faggots out before you settled yourselves here.

Fuck off, you retards.

5e. It'll get you all the flavor options of D&D, has a decent number of builds/options given its limited releases so far, and is way, WAY more balanced than pathfinder ever was or will be.

If not that, try 13th age. it's made by the guys who made 3rd and 4th edition, and so it mixes influences of both. It has its faults as well but overall is breddy gud.

Pathfinder:
>Broken core mechanics, honestly pretty mediocre rules as a whole that are complicated and crunchy in places they don't need to be.
>TONS of splats, support, 3PP, and player options, to the point where if you will probably never have to make the same character twice, and if you use the official setting/lore, you can run games forever without repeating style/tone/setting much, if at all.

5E:
>Average core mechanics, basically the same D20 system with some random parts that have been chopped out and replaced with "lol DM makes it up" or just Advantage/Disadvantage. Seriously, 90% of the game is just doling out advantage/disadvantage, so there's no reason to buff-stack or prepare.
>No support at all, no splats, 3PP is DM's Guild only, so most of it is shit but you'll have to pay to find out what is and what isn't. No support or expansion or player options coming in the future, only more full-length campaign modules.

That's it in a nutshell.

The biggest strength of Pathfinder and D&D5 is the consumer base and published materials. You can always find people who play it and adventures to run.

If you're playing with friends who aren't attached to any particular set of mechanics, you should feel free to check out Fantasy Craft, FATE, 13th Age, DW, or any of a dozen others with varying degrees of narrativism or crunch. But really, having people to play with is way more important than arguing over mechanical systems.

>As a result, the system is aggressively mediocre without any clear purpose or goals.

The goal of 5e is to make it a fun Roleplaying game that introductory level players can quickly get comfortable with. And to give DMs relief from Munchkins pummeling them with splatbook ideas for their unbalanced special snowflake creation.

>But really, having people to play with is way more important than arguing over mechanical systems.
Which makes 5e objectively best, because it's far easier to introduce to new players who aren't jaded Rules Grognards, like the ones on Veeky Forums who complain that they can't find (keep, really) a group.

If you liked 3.5, Fantasy Craft is definitely something to check out.

Literally no contest. 5e blows Pathfinder out of the water. The only thing Pathfinder has over 5e is more content, and since 2/3rds of that content is shit, it's not even an advantage.

>This shitty system is bad, so play this other shit one that's marginally better

dumb jojoposter

If OP seems intent on playing one of two shit systems, what can you really do other than guide him to the lesser evil?

Not OP but:
Used to play some 3.0, lots of 3.5 and 4.0 afterwards. Not playing for some years now.
Group of friends all want to really play D&D for years now, tell me I should be DM. I suggest 5e. People are reading stuff and creating characters, mostly new players and me as 'experienced' player but actually being a newbie DM. I'm asking my mate really good DM for some info on what should I do and reading the DM Guide.

But let me ask you Veeky Forums, do you have any tips for a level 1 adventure? How do I start, what are the most important aspects of it, what should I focus on preparing, how should the adventurers meet each other?

Lead him to better systems. 13th Age, Savage Worlds, and Fantasy Craft do everything 5e and PF do way better.

Pathfinder and 3.5 ain't bad.

>This is not a memepost.

Name one thing they do that Fantasy Craft can't do better.
>Hard Mode: Don't mention number of players

Wizard Supremacy.

>fantasycraft
>better than 5e
Pick one.

Technically correct, if you want unbalanced spellcasting then 3.pf is the way to go.

>5e
>better than fantasycraft
Pick one.

I read the rules for Fantasycraft, and I wasn't impressed. It's just another needlessly complicated D&D ripoff that could benefit from some serious streamlining. Oh, and let's not forget the retardation that is their statlines and choice of core races:
>it literally lists "dragon" as one of its core races
>ogres are stronger than giants and orcs are stronger than ogres, and they're all core races!

Pathfinder is bad but fun, 5e is bad and boring. If you have to play one or the other, play Pathfinder.

My favorite is 3.5. I never really got around playing PF because I somehow never ran into a pathfinder group myself, but it's nearly the same, matter of a session or two to adjust to slightly different balance.

5e is ok, though a bit boring when compared to 3.5. 3.5 is slowly becoming a dead game though, so a session of 5e is better than no session at all, or session of 3.5 with people who don't know the rules at all. 5e is blatantly simple at least.

I also glanced through the handbook for fantasycraft and saw nothing that would make it better than 3.5 for me. Never cared about it ever since.

>Better skills system
>Better class system
>Better combat
What didn't you like?

OP here
I find all this discussion to be rather interesting and it helps me understand the differences between the two systems. But even more still is that I find most of you telling me that it doesn't matter what system I play as long as I got a group to play with. In that, the urge to jump into a newer system seems to have washed off.

However. I do still have a desire to modernize my play style and stop defaulting to an old system when new players want to start their RPG experiences.

At the moment I have one game going with mostly new blood and one veteran. It is working out well with 3.5. However a group just came up, they never played and TG game. Ever. I have feelings of offering them 3.5 when it is dying.

As someone who's playing both editions in different games, it really depends on what you want from your system.

Pathfinder is the most similar to 3.5, with much of the system shock deriving from how the classes work. Mostly, you could find the similarities between the two, the turns are split up similarly, caster level works the same, and movements and bonuses are largely similar. If you can get used to the differences, the jump should be easy. The largest difference is that Pathfinder's design document probably has something in it saying how players should feel more powerful, so there are a lot of ways to munchkin out characters without too much effort. In my Skull & Shackles sessions (think pirate based games), we've hit 8th not to far back and every character has over a +20 modifier to whatever role is the area of their expertise. I'm playing a brawler and now I'm able to throw out near 100 damage per round.

5e really throws the brakes on munchkinism, putting some hard ceilings on there and cutting back on how much death players can output. Even if you munchkin it out, there's a limit to how effective any one character can be, even in the area of their expertise, so it's at least good for keeping players from stealing the spotlight consistently. However, the system has a lot of differences from 3.5, such as the complete abolition of the move action. Some major changes with the buffs are that, essentially, casters can only really give one at a time, and you'd be hard pressed to find one that wasn't either the advantage/disadvantage mechanic or straight up giving resistences.

Either way, it's really up to you in deciding if you want your players to be very powerful, but very specialized, or to reel it back on them and keep them more in line.

If you want to "modernize" your play style, what you do is not pick up just another D&D game.
You pick up a completely different game and run it for a session or two.
And then you do that again with yet another game.
And if you're feeling adventurous, you rinse and repeat.

Once you're done with that, you probably won't want to play 3.5 again.

I also like and play FC.

Or legitimately find 5e boring as fuck. Cuz it is.

This.