Hello, for the last 3 years I’ve been running a Dnd 5e campaign, due to recent events with wotc we’ve decided to stop supporting them and switch to of 2e. Are there any good resources for switching? I’m under the impressions that some systems are similar while others are completely different.
Does something like a switching guide exist or is it best to just start from scratch and learn as we go?
I would recommend starting over at Lvl 1, because characters get quite a lot of options over the levels, so starting with only the Lvl 1 options can simplify things quite a bit. Though I know that some people have done a “You are depowered for some reason” or “You are dreaming of a time when you weren’t as strong” period to somewhat quickly level up from one to where you were. If you do this, be aware that characters will end up differently than your 5e versions, and that pf2e expected certain magical items at certain levels, such as Potency and Striking runes for martials and Wands and Staves for Casters.
Yeah the plan is to start at level 1 again as the current campaign will come to an end this or next week (depends on if they die to the bbeg or not)
I am planning to run a completely home brew setting again as I didn’t like running a predefined adventure too much. I’ve created a setting in 5e before wich worked really well.
The setting originally was planned for 5e so I’m just gonna port it over. There was a mechanic planned that heavily used the exhaustion mechanic as a kind of stand in for a really bad disease. The pf2e exhaustion does not seem to have levels like that where it gets progressively worse. How would you create such a mechanic. The idea is that you’ll go from healthy to dead in roughly 20 days, originally I was thinking on giving disadvantage and exhaustion levels at certain points (don’t worry I’m not planning to take pcs out of the action for too long). But I have no idea if that would be too harsh in pathfinder or not. Could someone with more experience weigh in?
Pf2e actually does have a dedicated disease mechanic, which is essentially to structure the affliction as a set of stages with defined lengths. At the end of each stage’s length, you make a new save against it, and reduce the stage by 1 if you succeed or increase it by 1 if you fail (2 if you critically fail). Here’s the existing diseases you could copy from, including for example malaria). In most cases pf2e’s DCs are scaled to the level of a creature or effect, meaning that a level 1 character has about the same chance of beating a level 1 DC as a level 10 character has at beating a level 10 DC. What that means though is that +1 and -1 bonuses are pretty strong, and inflicting the kinds of penalties 5e’s exhaustion has would probably quickly lead to a TPK. Hope that helps!
One big difference between DnD and PF on a more meta side is that all the PF rules are legally FREE! Only the lore stuff (Lost Omens) and the adventures are copyrighted, but the rules, character options, monsters, etc are all FREE!
You can read everything on here: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx
And this is a nice free character tool: https://pathbuilder2e.com/
In a nutshell, Paizo wants you to play their games, while WotC wants you to pay their games first of all.
Thank you for the resources, on the topic of character creators and editors. Is there one where you can generate a campaign and the players can create them in there? Best case would be if I could disallow some races as they wouldn’t really fit into the setting like skeletons. It would be amazing to import them automatically into an encounter tracker but I guess that’s asking too much ^^
Is there something like encounter+ though for iOS as I run the sessions from my iPad?
i know that demiplane is working on basicly dndbeyond, but for multiple games, starting with pf https://app.demiplane.com/nexus/pathfinder2e
but idk if you can disallow certain ancestries or anything like that 🤔 and idk anything that would specifically work with apple products
i just use FoundryVTT for everything, but that’s specifically a VTT and not very tablet friendly
Hmm I do own foundry and could easily host it. The integration is good then? I might need to look if it is possible to optimize it for tablets. Thanks for the idea.
PF2e is the BEST on Foundry! the team that maintains the system is just amazing and they keep improving it all the time! plus, there are tons of QoL modules specifically for PF2e. can only recommend that, if it’d work for you ^^
Foundry is the only vtt which is regularly recommended for pf2e pretty much everywhere. It had excellent integration from what I hear (though I haven’t tried it myself other that a one-shot)
As for resources how it’s played on YouTube helped me a ton.
Other than that I got one tip for players and one for GMs each.
GMs trust the system. Coming from 5e I was used to having to make up my stuff because it either doesn’t exist or doesn’t work. In pf2e encounter building works, items have levels and the reward structure works. So before you change stuff, give it as go as written.
Players should know combat is about team work. Even if every individual character is trying to do their individually best thing, it’s likely so much worse than having a strategy as a group.
