Re: Pathfinder 1E vs D&D 5E
After running 2E for awhile and 1E for a long time here are the rundowns in no particular order
1) Races have been divided up into "heritages" which allows you to half-breed just about anything. Want a tiefling elf or an aasimar orc or a half-whatever? Easy peasy.
Your "species" is now built on three parts: A race (ancestry as they call it), a heritage (this is along the lines of some of the old racial abilities/alternate abilities) and ancestry feats that you get periodically (a combination of old racial abilities plus some old "race specific" feats).
2) No more point buy or dice rolling for character creation (unless you want to). Instead you pick a combination of Background + Race + Class and that provides you with opportunities for stat bumps. It makes figuring out your abilities super easy and helps direct new players "hey, it says fighters should get a +2 to STR or CON, those are probably important to that class)
3) Magic is divided into 4 categories: Arcane, Divine, Primal (think Druids), and Occult (catchall for Witches and Bards etc.). No more class specific spells lists, every class just points at one of those 4 categories.
4) Level is VERY important as it provides pretty much a flat bonus to everything. Skills, saving throws, to-hit etc. This means that even a non-optimized higher level character is going to inherently be better at combat than a lower level one. This is a big difference between D&D 5E because 5E very much limits accuracy so even low level characters can hit and damage high level characters but in 2E once you get past level+4 the monsters will just trounce you even with action economy.
5) 3-ACTION SYSTEM - probably the most important one but I put it here. You get 3 actions a turn. You can attack 3 times, move 3 times, open and shut a door and then open it again. No more "action types". It is either an action or a reaction. Multiple attacks do take progressive penalties (-5 to 2nd attack, -10 to 3rd+ attack) so it encourages you to do other things then just stand there and swing your sword. Spells typically cost anywhere from 1-3 actions to cast and some are "chargeable" so magic missile for example produces 1 missile per action used allowing a lot of flexibility for casters. Typically spells are usually 2-actions to cast but the old "full round" stuff can be 3-action casts.
6) Trait System - everything, and I mean everything, has a "tag" associated to it. So a Stride action that allows you to move has the [Move] tag associated to it. As does picking up a dropped weapon which interacts with things like AoO which says "when an opponent takes a move action, you can react and attack". This trait system really cleans up the rules because you can divorce an action from the effect so you don't have to have a ton of custom rules for every single thing. You can just say "Vampires do Bleed 1 Drain 1 damage" and you can find out exactly what that means and also understand exactly what interacts with that effect.
7) Gold has been reduced by about 1/10th PF level. It's not a direct 1:1 but pretty much drop a '0' from Pathfinder 1E to 2E. I think this is just to make gold pieces a bit more special at lower levels and to ordinary peasants.
8) Archetypes are now built into classes so when you pick up a class you may have areas of interest that you can go down via selecting class options and class feats. Instead of them just giving you class abilities and then having 1,000 archetypes take them away again, instead every couple of levels you can pick from a list of things related to that class to add. It is like the old Rogue talents but for every class now.
9) Multiclassing is super easy. Instead of picking a class feat you can instead pick up a "wizard" class feat and bam, now you can cast 0-level cantrips. Then next class feat you can pick it again and now you have access to 1st level spells etc. etc. Your main class is now what you are start to finish but you can "dip" a bit. Unlike 1E classes are not front loaded so it requires a real commitment if you want to multiclass. No more min/max builds that have 1 level dips in 10 classes.
10) Perception is now an inherent part of the character and not a "skill" per se. It just is a nod about how this was the key trump stat in every edition prior so they just removed it from the typical "skill choice" list and it is now built into your race or class.
11) Magical weapons now have runes on them. Some just add to your to-hit while others add dice to damage so while a regular sword might only do 1d8 a +4 sword now does 5d8 damage. This is a huge boost to non-spellcasters as this plus better to-hits and multi-attacks lets them keep up with spellcaster damage output (even if they can't necessarily match the versatility). What is also neat is now different materials have different "rune limits" so to speak so the limit on your weapon enchantments isn't just how much gold you have but also what materials do you have to build that sword out of. Armor now bumps both AC and saving throws.
12) Feats as a whole are split into Race Feats, Class Feats, Skill Feats and General feats and they flavor them throughout the level so pretty much every level up you pick something. At level X you get a general feat, next level you get a skill feat, next level you get a class feat so it helps smooth the curve and makes it so every level up is interesting in some way.
13) HP isn't rolled, you automatically get max HP. Starting HP adds a bonus amount based on your heritage so orcs start beefier than halflings. It's small but nice.
14) CRITS...this is what I should have mentioned earlier. In addition to the natural 1 and natural 20s, if you exceed a roll by +10 then it is a crit and if you fail by -10 then it is a crit fail. A LOT of stuff now has explicit info on what happens if you crit. So for example if you crit fail a reflex save the fireball does double damage but if you crit pass it it deals zero damage. A lot of the old "save or suck" stuff is put into the crit failure section so while failing a save might give you some temporary problems a crit fail is BAD. For example a Disarm action inflicts a -2 on their next attack roll with the weapon but if they crit fail then they are disarmed and lose the weapon.
15) Poisons & Afflictions are more like the unchained rules. Poisons and diseases now have different stages so if you fail the first or second roll it might not be full effect but if you fail a bunch in a row poisons get really deadly really fast. It is a nice balance between poisons being stupid and poisons being too dangerous. Also poison no longer deals attribute damage but instead is just straight up HP damage now.
I'm sure there is more but that is a random rundown off the top of my head.
This message was last edited by the user at 19:54, Tue 25 May 2021.