DnD Players Try Pathfinder 2E Beginner Box

hey remember this bad boy Pathfinder 2E beginners box we reviewed this a little while back alongside the Dungeons and Dragons starter sets stormwork Isle and we believe this one so we wanted to give it a fair shot and actually play through it and then give our full thoughts and review we are DND players and we have dared to dive into the Pathfinder y'all been talking about this for a long time in the comments section on that Pathfinder versus d d solder set box video we're here to deliver we're here to let you know what we think we actually started playing this long before the ogl nonsense started happening but there was a lot of uh things happening with our group it was holiday season people were getting sick so we haven't been able to finish it until now and we are ready to bestow a verdict upon this glorious beginner's box which we were so infatuated with first I'm going to start off by letting you know how I felt as a player playing Pathfinder and then wolf is going to tell you how he felt being a game master so I'm gonna get up out of here and let kamo take control of the video and he's gonna give you a deep dive into how it feels to be a Pathfinder player stay tuned if you want to hear my thoughts on game mastering this beginner's box and then at the very end we will come back in Voltron into a finale and give you our final thoughts right get the out of here hey everyone I'm kamo and I'm a DND player hold on and I played Pathfinder for the very first time and I gotta say I really was surprised everyone says the Pathfinder comes at you hard and it's real crunchy but I really found this to be quite appetizing and palatable it feels more like a board game at times there is a lot less pressure on the player the way it was presented it sets you up with pawns it sets you up with a map to look at it sets you up with character sheets where your characters already built it already has a backstory the pressure is completely off I don't have to come up with or create anything if I'm a brand new player that's not something I gotta worry about the great thing is like if you do want to worry about those things if you do want to be creative then this even provides options for you to be able to make your own character start on a character sheet and make something new I played ezrin the wizard and I had a really fun time jumping into the role because the backstory was there for me it was already spelled out I'm the kind of player that is experienced with role-playing games so not having the option of choosing who I wanted to be and what my back story was I didn't really matter to me just playing the part was fun enough the amount of character information that they give you for any of the characters is just enough that little pinch of salt perfect for jumping into if you want to role play when you open up the character sheet it could look a little daunting at first but everything is added there to make things easier for you there's highlighted subjects there's highlighted areas like the armor class is highlighted and your specific skills are in bold so they're easy to see I was never really questioning what I was doing on each of my turns playing the game as being the experienced player in our group I really wanted to choose the wizard because it's typically the most experienced class to play right you have to think about what spells you're using the whole spell system in any game is really this additional thing that can be kind of complex but it was so refreshing in this game I I was almost expecting it to be harder I was expecting more I'm like what am I missing and it was because of the action economy in this game that really sold me on the spell system three actions one two three and that is the most simplest form of playing this game you don't need to know much more than that you just know that your spells can't either be cast with one action but magic Missile can be cast with one two or three for however many darts you throw you can cast however many spells you want as long as you use the three action economy to cast them so I actually felt like a wizard I always felt like I was doing something different from my party I never felt those times where I was only casting the same spell because it was the most powerful spells the easiest to cast right and the powerful spells sometimes you can only cast them once if you've prepared them once and then you have to do something else you you can't do the same spell over and over five times in a row so it makes you think differently as a spellcaster in d d fifth edition it can be really hard to keep up with things like bonus actions um spells that have concentration rules on them you're worried about what you can concentrate on and if there's another spell that is concentration does that supersede the first one I cast and you know I have to turn off the other one but in Pathfinder the way I understand it is very different the way I understand it is that you can use concentration spells and maybe multiple but it uses the action economy to keep those concentration spells going so say you have like a flaming sphere spell and every turn you have to spend one of your three actions to keep going well maybe you have another spell that you wanted to cast at the same time like magic Missile you wanted to use the last two remaining actions to fire off two magic missiles while you're still holding the the sphere out that's so cool it makes you really feel like this very strong learned Caster specifically about this adventure it's a very simple dungeon dive I enjoyed it very much and it should be enjoyable to brand new players I'm talking about players that have never played a tabletop role-playing game I can see them jumping into this very easily and getting hooked on something like this one of my favorite Parts was a puzzle where we entered a room and there was a statue there holding his hands out like a scale and he told us there were coins in front of us and he told us that one of the coins was fake and we had to figure out which coin was fake a lot of the times when players come into something like a puzzle they can break out of their character because oh now we have this situation this puzzle on the table and we as people are just trying to solve it right but I really felt comfortable enough to be able to just continue playing my character while figuring out this puzzle because it felt like it was in the world it felt like it was a real situation going on that was a real fun Breakaway it felt like we were really switching pillars we came we're not doing combat we weren't talking to anybody we just had to come put our heads together and figure out a problem I also really love how kobolds were introduced in this beginner box it really described it to us as if we had never come across this creature before in our lives and of course we knew what we what they were even though our dungeon master was not allowing ah dungeon master no game master game master sorry d d brain even though our game master was describing this to us we knew exactly what they were but so fun having them described as lizard children but my expectation versus reality was surprisingly very different I was going into Pathfinder thinking that I was going to have to sit down and read a lot more and try to have to comprehend a lot more of what my character could do and that wasn't the case there was some reading and no more than there was in the DND starter set I didn't really have to refer back to my character sheet very many times after that I started learning my spells I started learning exactly what my character could do and they were easy things to remember that used their three-action economy so how can I convince 5e players to try this I've been convinced I really thought it was going to be difficult and crunchy as I was told and I love rules you know I love to dive into rules and I was kind of excited for that as well but I was met with something very different I was met with a system that was kind of simpler to understand the other thing in d d fifth edition is like once you've chosen your subclass then every other character choice is pretty much automatic you get you know specific set skills abilities at certain levels you get ability score increases where you can choose a feat and that's really your only chance to choose something at any one time but in Pathfinder there's a choice to be made at every level you go up so anytime you reach a new level there's a choice to make There's Something New Direction you can go well what if your character changes halfway through the campaign and it becomes some one different something different and you want to reflect that in how you're playing your character uh in Dungeons and Dragons you jump into multi-classing I gotta pick a whole you know different multi-class that's the only way I'm going to get different options is if I do that where this is already built to do that and you feel unique and different than any other player we're going to continue playing Pathfinder and I'd love to see what's coming up in the future I'm wolf and I used to be a DND 5V dungeon master hi wolf I heard there'd be pies and soda I thought that running Pathfinder 2E was going to be a nightmare but I'm happy to report that I was wrong this thing runs silky smooth as a game master this is like a sports car that runs like a dream I couldn't be happier about my game mastering of this beginner's box recently paizo has gone on record saying that they have sold through like eight months worth of their core Rule books in about a few weeks time which is amazing it means people are flocking to Pathfinder I wonder why but you don't need to buy that core rule book instead spend your money on this get the trouble in otari adventure that sort of is the brother sister product to this and maybe a game master screen you could play Pathfinder 2E for like six months to a year with just those products and it is the easiest and best starting entry point that you could possibly have for this game I want to take a second here to address the massive tarasque sitting in the corner of the room I know I can hear you out there in tabletop role-playing world but Pathfinder 2E it's so dense it's so crunchy I've got news for you fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons is just as crunchy and just as dense as Pathfinder 2E if you and your group have taken the time to learn that game you're perfectly fine and you're perfectly capable of playing Pathfinder 2E I guarantee it the reason I feel so confident that you can pick up Pathfinder 2E is because if you've played 5th edition the same core principles are at play you're going to roll a D20 add any applicable modifiers and you're hoping to be a DC that is higher than what the dungeon master has set before you so if you've played any addition of Dungeons and Dragons in the last like 20 or 30 years you know the core principles at play in Pathfinder 2E that has not changed if you've never played a tabletop role-playing game before I'm not gonna lie you're gonna have a slight learning curve but thankfully the adventure included within this box does a fantastic job of teaching you how to play the game whether you're a game master or a player speaking of the included Adventure I just want to forewarn you that this is not going to be some grandiose epic adventure that you and your friends are going to remember forever this is a teaching tool first and foremost that's what it's good at but just be forewarned as a teaching tool I find this to be utterly brilliant each new room or obstacle that the players and game Masters come across is a new opportunity for them to learn about the game together you'll figure out combat environmental obstacles difficult terrain and more this is all going to happen naturally and you probably won't even realize that the game is teaching you all about role-playing games as you're experiencing the adventure I do wish that this came with a really cheap cardboard game master screen I went out and bought my own because I found it was going to be a little bit easier to run the game with it there's a lot of helpful information on that screen and I didn't want to be looking up any rules having them right there it just made me comfortable it's a minor quibble to be sure and I can't really hate on them too much because they pack this thing with so much awesome stuff they give you Maps they give you pawns they give you pre-generated characters I just wish they went that one extra step and included that game master screen but I do recommend getting the official one it's like 15 20 bucks it's gonna help out if you're a brand new game master to Pathfinder like I was paizo did an awesome thing by starting off this adventure right in the dungeon you start off right in the basement you get right to the action this is a classic classic adventure module design choice that works so well because you don't have to deal with role playing or any of the stuff that really intimidates players I'm saying this because we recently played through the dragons of storm wreck Isle and where that Adventure Starts you off with a combat it immediately thrusts you into a incredibly difficult role-playing experience where you have nine Cobalts and then an elder human woman that you have to start role playing with immediately for people that are brand new to role-playing games I find role-playing to be the hardest thing to get comfortable with exploring a dungeon at your leisure getting into combat looking at weird interesting things down in the basement that's all well in good players are comfortable doing that it almost feels like a board game kind of like kamo mentioned let's talk Nitty Gritty let's talk rules a little bit obviously the big hubba love the big hubba Lou everyone's talking about is that three Action System that Pathfinder 2E is famous for at this point oh ah chef's kiss it is amazing I love it so much it is my favorite thing about Pathfinder 2E do you want to attack three times in a room go for it just know that your second and third attacks are going to be at negative modifiers do you want to run three times you don't need a dash action you just use your actions you're like I'm running away three times it is brilliant it is clean it is so good my players immediately picked it up it feels like a board game I know I've mentioned that before but they had almost zero questions about it once we got into the adventure and the fact that they give you that little sheet with your three action tokens and a reaction reminder so good just another reason you want to buy this before the Court rule book just to have that stuff I'd want to play with it as a player for a few months just as I'm getting comfortable with this system the rules very clearly delineate that there are always four types of successes On Any Given role there's a critical success a success a failure and a critical failure slash fumble if you roll a natural 20 in Pathfinder 2E what happens in Game terms is that you go up one success level so what I talked about there was critical failures failures successes and critical successes say you happen to enroll a natural 20 and with your modifiers you only scored a success well the natural 20 will automatically bump you up to a critical success because you're going up one Higher success level but you can also achieve critical successes by Rolling 10 higher than the DC you are trying to achieve so if you happen to roll a 25 after your modifiers you only needed to hit a 15 even though you're old in 18 critical so good and the same thing happens for fumble slash critical failures if you roll 10 below you're going to get a critical failure these new critical and critical failure rules they do something amazing they're going to lead to more critical successes and more critical failures in your games it results in a slightly swingier game but it also leads to more excitement because when your players roll and they start realizing they only need to roll 10 higher than the difficulty class or the armor class to get a crit what ends up happening is camo's over there rolling he's like well I got a 24. is that correct is that a crit and you're like it's just more fun at the table people want to get critical successes they want to be doing awesome stuff but at the same time if you attack a bunch of times you get really high negative modifiers and you go to kill that Cobalt you have much more increased chance of fumbling slash critical failing it is really really fun as a game master to educate and to sort of really flex your improv skills I actually went out and bought those those critical hit in critical missed Decks that Piezo offers for Pathfinder 2E I I bought a lot of stuff for this I was really jazzed to play it just know that Pathfinder 2E is a lot swingier than your standard session of 5e you're going to get a lot more crits and a lot more fumbles and not just because the dice screwed you let's get into a few negatives a few things that I did not like about this I've mentioned time and time again that this adventure is a training tool for the game master and players but I don't necessarily love how it's grooming the game master to really rely on roles for everything there's a couple instances early on in the adventure where you're asked to either climb or climb up a craggy wall or go down a craggy wall and you have to make Athletics or acrobatic checks of like dc-15 the players have rope they can tie them up to rocks or stalagmites and they can easily repel down I would just give this to my players I want people coming up with fun and interesting ways to get around obstacles I don't want them to just constantly ask for skill checks and skill roles and hoping to roll High to solve things so that's just a that's more of a personal pet peeve and I just don't like that it asks so much of this there's a lot of that in this adventure if you're game mastering for the first time I don't think that's a really great Habit to get into I like the fact that there are rules for climbing and they're very concrete because unlike fifth edition I've noticed that Pathfinder There are rules for basically everything you're not left hanging in the wind sort of figuring it all out on your own or coming up with a ruling on the fly if there's something that you can do in the game chances are there's a rule for it somewhere out there in Pathfinder 2es massive core rule book Piezo you need to be a little bit better at proofreading your products I noticed there's a few typos in the adventure and the game Masters Guide players handbook and on the map that's included there's one spot where there's a door in the adventure that you're reading but on the map itself the door is not there uh get a little bit tighter with your proofreading I don't like seeing sloppy products out there I can't give you a pass for it again we're coming to the crunchiness and the density of Pathfinder do you want to know how many pages the real core rules of this thing takes up it's about 11 pages if you can memorize and digest 11 pages worth of rules you'll have almost everything you need to run and play The Beginner's box I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if you don't even read the rules beforehand but you've got prior dungeon mastering game mastering experience you could probably take this thing out of its cellophane wrapping look at it for about 30 minutes open up the adventure put out the map give everyone their pre-gens their pawns and you could just sort of almost play it like a board game and figure it out on the Fly that's how goddamn intuitive and easy to play this box set is all right let me talk directly to the 5e dungeon Masters out there that are curious about this product curious about Pathfinder 2E is this for you is this something that you want to try running well I want to ask you a few questions first do you get tired of having to come up with rules in 5e do you get a little bit frustrated that they they meaning Wizards of the Coast they don't have rules for everything or they have a little bit of rules but they expect you to do a lot of the heavy lifting because they almost don't want to make people mad if you play 5th editions you're acutely aware of all of the rules inconsistencies and sort of nebulous situations that happens again paizo has written this thing like a tech manual it is tight it is clean there are tags for magic items monsters spells it's like is this spell gonna work against this monster check to see if it has this tag there are really smart design choices in this in this box in this rule system it is cleverly designed it is smartly designed it is the exact opposite of what Wizards of the Coast design ethos seems to be these days they assume a lot of things that you're gonna know Pathfinder assumes nothing it gives you rules for everything what you want to use feel free to use that um it can it can seem to be as rules heavy or as rules light as you really want to make it to be um but we'll find that out as we continue to sort of explore it as a game master dungeon master I can't recommend this product enough I had a fantastic time going through it with my friends with my players and I think that you would too if you give it a shot if you can find it it sounds like paizo might be selling out of this stuff real fast again I wonder what happened that cost us all to to happen why'd you do it Wizards you didn't yourselves well that was informative that was wonderful we're the best oh my gosh what do you think about this thing what are your final thoughts about the beginner box there came out I was scared at first but there's no reason to fear it was so much fun so much more easier than I thought it was going to be man I had a blast with my friends Elaine's a Pathfinder I agree I was convinced I was gonna hate this for a long long time I think Wizards has like the best PR system out there where they're like secretly feeding internet trolls to talk trash and about how crunchy and dense Pathfinder is it's not this is pretty easy to get into if you can play fifth edition you can very easily play Pathfinder I guarantee it uh if you're a d dungeon master and you're trying to figure out a way to kind of convert your players into playing Pathfinder go online have them download in the app or visit the website of path Builder 2E it's a great tool to play around with character creation that can just dive in and go through all the options go from Level 1 to 20 and try all the different things they're gonna get started getting excited about with all the things they can do all the different choices they can make at each level here are my two selling points one player character customization it doesn't exist in 5V it's not going to really exist in one DND sixth edition this is where it is at if you want to go through you want to pick your Feats you want to pick all the cool stuff that makes your character unique if you have two fighters at the table they can be drastically different Fighters my second Pitch my second really awesome thing is you got clear and concise rules for once there's no ambiguity here it is tight it is clean if you are a game master for your dungeon master you want those rules to actually make goddamn sense here you go play Pathfinder and this is such a great introduction to that rule set in this game for sure for even players that have not played role-playing games ever before in their life I'm going I've been doing a lot of game mastering dungeon mastering and I really want to hand the torch off to kmo now that we finish this up we're gonna run the uh the troubles in otari whatever that extra Adventure is that they the companion Adventure that they put out with this I want to be a player in this so bad I'm more excited to be a player in this than I am a game master if I'm being honest well you had too many rules to remember no not at all it's just I've I just it seems so much fun you have so much character options and cool things you can do and I want to be a weird Goblin alchemist that throws bombs and blow up I just want to do something different if I'm gonna play a game that is as complex as 5V I want to play a character that feels like something that I've personally created and I've personally made all these choices I feel like that is this system is the one to do it in definitely the most exciting thing and the most exciting sell for a player is you could toss them into that path Builder two-way thing and they start figuring out all the things that they can do and they get more and more excited about like oh that sounds cool that sounds cool that sounds awesome you're gonna easily get them to jump into this game and like everyone's worrying about the first step and it is that's always the question is why is the first step if you're in fifth edition and God man I'm a dungeon master and I'm already in the middle of a campaign and my players are asking me if we can switch and uh man it's not a new rule system and my player is going to be all confused and I'm gonna be confused like this is it you can just try this it's has nothing to do with your campaign it has nothing to do with anything else it's very simple to pick up and learn and play and then all of a sudden it's easy if you've played this beginner box with your group and you would like to help us convince some DND players please leave some comments down in the comments that's where they go if you're looking to excite your d d players into starting Pathfinder we left that pathbuilder2e.com link down to the nether region bring that up in front of them have them play around with it don't forget to subscribe got more content coming at you weekly till the bed for notifications later glitches bye

Channel: Basic Liches

Views: 29,872

Keywords: pathfinder 2e, pathfinder beginner box, how to play pathfinder 2e, start playing pathfinder, Dungeons and dragons vs pathfinder, is pathfinder better than dnd

Id: 4k5aFTtZ1aY

Length: 26min 55sec (1615 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/the-rules-lawyer]

This is kind of an amazing review actually - It convincingly counters, more than anything I can post, the most common barrier for people trying out PF2e, that "it's too complex."

-They speak unequivocally that PF2e's reputation of being hard to learn and crunchy is the opposite of the truth. The GM says if you can learn 5E, you can learn PF2e and "guarantees" it. The wizard player, when comparing the PF2e Ezren to a 5e caster, thinks a caster in PF2 is easier than in 5e.

[u/emote_control]

Maybe by 2024 I'll be able to find a Beginner Box.

[u/SaltyCogs]

helps you only need to know two (?) vancian spells, and your focus spell is just a weaker version of one of them (magic missile). then you get 5 cantrips

in 5e, you start with 6 spells plus two cantrips, but still only have two slots. so you need to read all your spells to make sure you cast the right one. ezren’s three slots are already picked for you (and i think two are magic missile?)

[u/Ediwir]

Now I know what I’m watching first thing when I get home.

[u/Any-Revenue1033]

The negatives and positives, all true. Plus the pathfinder website needs an overhaul.

[u/pm_me_dice_pics]

I'm a transplant as well, commenting here to remember to watch lol

[u/AutoModerator]

Hey, I've noticed you mentioned the game "Dungeons & Dragons"! Do you need help finding your way around here? I know a couple good pages!

We've been seeing a lot of new arrivals lately for some reason. We have a megathread dedicated to anyone requesting assistance in transitioning. Give it a look!

Here are some general resources we put together. Here is page with differences between pf2e and 5e. Most newcomers get recommended to start with the Archives of Nethys (the official rule database) or the Beginner Box, but the same information can be found in this free Pathfinder Primer.

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