Pathfinder

Beginner of RPG table top gaming here, pathfinder has been suggested to me, looks interesting. What are your opinions on it?

This is bait.

This is a shit post

rapeable elf out of 10

It's fine, but I find it somewhat dated, since it's built on a system nearly two decades old. If you want something similar but a little more modern in its considerations, you can try D&D 5e, which is a very beginner friendly game.

Thanks for being the first person who gives a proper answer. Now I have watched a few comparisons between the 2 systems, and DND 5e seems to have an already developed universe and that takes the fun of creating your own universe and is also pretty simple. I am still inclined to pathfinder even if it requires more math. Now do you consider pathfinder to be too "rules heavy"?

I should also mention that I prefer "theatre of the mind" over battle grid

It has several broken rules, major balance issues, and is a band-aid on the base edition's more glaring faults faults. It's literally 3.5 with 300 pages of errata, and was shoved about because people overreacting to 4e's issues, hence why I call it 3.butthurt edition. It's quantity over quality and it shows.

If you want to play d20, play 3.5 with the following tweaks.

>Trained or not skill system variant from Unearthed Arcana
>Ban core classes, all of them, they either suck dick or are outright broken
>Allow Tome of Battle and Expanded Psionics

This yields great results.

Pathfinder also has a premade setting (Pathfinder was a setting for 3.5 D&D before it became it's own system). Nothing is stopping you from making your own setting in either, they're both specifically designed to allow it.

The only difference is that one of the 2 is actually fun to play.

Pathfinder also has a developed universe (Golarion), but in both games how much of the setting you use and how much you invent is all really up to you. You really don't need to worry about that at all for either game, and really most editions of D&D which are designed with multiple settings in mind.

I wouldn't call 5e simple, though it is simpler than PF.
Pathfinder has one of the largest rule sets of any game (if you include the largely compatible material from D&D 3.0 and D&D 3.5), but learning enough to play isn't too much of a task. You can probably learn how to play and get a session running without tremendous difficulty (the math is pretty simple and not really a concern if you're actually worried about it, it's just that there's a lot of potential options and material to sift through). Still, as a brand new player, it's hard to recommend it to you, since the game only takes half-steps towards making itself accessible compared to later editions of D&D such as 4e and 5e, and a GM has to be rather flexible with it which new GMs are somewhat hesitant to be.

Go with your gut, in any case. You sound like you might need to play a few roleplaying sessions before you can really make an assessment for yourself, so go ahead and give Pathfinder a try.

d20 material tends to be inherently compatible with any other d20 game with minimal tweaks. I once ran a Phantasy Star game with a homebrew class that had access to both psionics and vancian casting (but could only pick arcane, divine, or maneuvers and only one per level), and plenty of d20 future content. It was bloody awesome and worked really well.

The negative part about it is that at the end of the day you still have to play a d20 system.

Ah, /v/-style banter.

Sorry I've just played so much d20 that I just can't not be antagonistic about it anymore. It's an incredibly boring ass system and a pain to play almost all the time.

>I just can't
I'm betting you could. All you'd have to do is remember that your personal opinion really is just that.

Well, thanks for the insightful answers so far, but holy fuck there are so many versions of this system. So 5e is like an introductory version, previous versions are harder to get into. Is it best just to "craft" your own edition and just take rules from every version to your liking? This is table top after all and improvisation is a way of handling the game

user DON'T PLAY 5E. It's heavily unbalanced unlike Pathfinder & has no variation or cool classes (the game is literally just play wizard or bard to win). If you want to homebrew I would say at least play the core systems first to see what you like & don't like and then change the rules to how you see fit.

Are you possibly trying to suggest that my opinion is not objective and literally worshiped by the masses of this shitty image board? Heresy!

Trying to homebrew your own is a recipe to get your shit fucked. Pick one and try it.

Lol'd

lol

I wouldn't call 5e an introductory version, since it's still more complex than a fair portion of the roleplaying landscape, and it's really a bit skewed to compare anything to Pathfinder/3rd Edition, because it's one of the largest.

As far as "crafting" your own edition, both PF and 5e provide variant rules to allow you to alter the game to match your play style, and the ultimate complexity is really up to how much material you decide to use. And, beyond that, you can change anything that you don't like, whenever you like. But, it's probably best to learn more through playing before you decide to introduce too many changes, since it's not good to go into a game with too many preconceptions on what will work well and what doesn't work well, since it's all too easy for preconceptions to twist the game around themselves.

What you probably should do is just try a few games, figure out what you enjoy from them, and save and big decisions for after you've had some firsthand experience with the systems.

I really enjoy Pathfinder (one of the few who do, I know.) The main problem with it (for people just starting out in it specifically) is the insane amount of rules that go into it. If you want an example of this, you need only look at the whip.

>can't deal damage to foes wearing medium+ armor
>15ft reach, but no attacks of opportunity unless you take two feats
>attacks of opportunity only extend to 10 of its 15ft
>get +2 to disarm and trip attempts
>scorpion whip is introduced as an alternative whip that can damage foes wearing armor
>scorpion whip gains bonuses to trip and disarm, only when using it as a regular whip which negates its ability to deal damage to armored foes
>scorpion whip does not have reach

(Scorpion/regular whip are two separate weapons, but I included it into this clusterfuck because it inevitably gets brought up any time the whip rules do, so at this point they're pretty much stuck together. )

And I'm pretty sure I'm missing a few things about it, too.

Hmm, also it is really important to me that the actions happen mostly in theatre of the mind, the concept of imagining everything is pretty much the main feature of table top RPG that drew me to this genre

Then don't play D&D. Play a more narrative focused game. Try FATE or something.

If that's a big deal for you, 5e is built around not having to use a grid, while it's rather important for PF, though perhaps not as much as it is for 4e.

If you really want to focus less on combat in general, might be worth taking a look at. Fate Accelerated is worth looking into, because it's very quick to learn and easy to adapt to just about anything (though it's big weakness is that it has very loose rules and it doesn't do combat particularly well, making it perhaps not the most optimal choice for new players).

Anyway, I will do what most have suggested and try each version and decide afterwards which one will be the definitory one (seemed obvious but I'm autismo). Thanks so much to everyone for explaining everything to me. Pretty much this is the conclusion. Now, Farewell and good rolls