Let's do the SAME COMBAT in D&D and Pathfinder 2E! ("Pathfinder Law School" #3, Part 1 of 2)

in this video we'll do the same battle in DND 5th edition and in Pathfinder 2nd edition and afterward examine the differences we see this is the third video in my series of Pathfinder Law School courses my personal preference is Pathfinder but today's video is not about which system is better it's more about learning the differences between the two systems to help people who are familiar with one to learn the other and also just to help sort out the differences in our heads I am Ronald the rules lawyer I am a lawyer and activist who also for several years taught an after-school Middle School tabletop RPG class and I hope my experience teaching and a decade of game mastering and being a lawyer provide a unique skill set that will make this video series useful so like And subscribe if you want to be notified about future videos for today's demonstration we'll do a very well known own battle in a certain DND Adventure that there are many maps for on the internet if you look for it it involves a Ambush by four goblins I'm going to be using the pre-generated characters they consist of the classic four the fighter Rogue cleric and wizard I'll be using the characters in The DND starter set and the Pathfinder beginner box in both fights there will be four goblins and goblins are 50 XP each and so according to the encounter building guidelines this looks like it should be a medium encounter however because there are four of them you multiply their strength by two and therefore it is actually a deadly encounter which is the first experience of DnD for people playing this adventure four Goblin Warriors and Pathfinder make it a moderate encounter now people familiar with both systems say that a moderate encounter in Pathfinder tends to be comparable to a deadly encounter in DND 5e generally that's true encounters generally are tuned to be a little more difficult in Pathfinder however since this is a level one party that we have and DND level one parties are particularly fragile the deadly moniker probably is accurate here so here is that battle in both systems DND 5th edition is on the left and Pathfinder's second edition is on the right the setup for this battle is that the party is traveling to a town by wagon and the road is blocked by dead horses that have arrows sticking out of them there are four goblins lying in weight that are have set this up as an ambush spot we already see the differences between the systems before initiative is even rolled in DND the players say what they're doing the wizard and the Rogue go forward to examine the bodies and the fighter and the cleric players are both saying they're looking out for danger the dungeon master as they're called in DND could ask what they're holding in their hands however that's not that necessary in fifth edition because during combat you can still move and do your action and still also pull out your web Weapon It's effectively a free action but you only get one free object interaction but that definitely means you don't need to worry about whether you're having your weapon out beforehand things demand a little more Precision in Pathfinder second edition because pulling out your weapon is one of your three actions so it's good to establish whether you have your weapons out also there are specific activities you are doing before combat Begins the players can still say in general terms what they're doing to the game master and the GM can translate it to one of these activities you're not necessarily exclusively doing these things you're saying it's more what you're focusing and concentrating on the player for the Rogue says she is going to be searching the Dead Horses The Wizard is going to be using his deduction trying to recall knowledge about what he's seeing while investigating the horses the fighter will be watching out for danger his player says and the GM interprets that as defending his shield is going to be raised simply holding a shield does not increase your armor class in Pathfinder 2E you need to spend an action on your turn to increase your AC by 2 until the start of your next turn defending now before battle begins means that he will get that AC bonus even before his first turn the cleric is saying she's looking out for danger and the GM translates that as scouting giving a plus one circumstance bonus to everyone's initiative role the Goblins then make their move and attack and the game master asks all the players to roll for initiative in DND 5e it is a dexterity check in Pathfinder 2E it depends the default way to roll initiative is to roll your perception so you act earlier in combat not based on how fast you can react but on how quickly you ascertain that you are in danger but these exploration activities we just went through could change what check you make the Wizard player like would be able to roll one of his knowledge skills like Society or nature the others would be rolling perception while the Goblins in 5e are also making dexterity checks the Goblins in Pathfinder are all going to be rolling stealth because they are all avoiding notice so they have now rolled initiative and they have the same order in both battles I unfortunately cannot do the dice rolling on the screen I cannot have that Randomness in this comparison video I need to control the results and have them do generally the same dice rolls one thing Pathfinder also accounts for is if they are hiding behind cover which they are they're hiding behind these trees and logs that will give them a bonus to their stealth checks that also is factored into their initiative roles covert gives them a plus two circumstance bonus that is how doing an ambush is reflected in Pathfinder in DND what happens is there is a separate additional stealth check made to determine whether party members are surprised the DM roles on behalf of all the Goblins they have a stealth bonus of plus six and in this case they roll a total of 12. that number is compared to the perception DCS of the party members and the perception DC is represented by the number next to the eyeball so the fighter is not surprised the wizard is not surprised the cleric is not surprised however the Rogue has only a 10 for her perception DC so she will be surprised being surprised will deny the Rogue the ability to act during the first round of combat at least until the end of her first turn meanwhile in Pathfinder we will see this play out their stealth check for initiative will be compared to the perception DC of that character to see how well that character will perceive them at least until that Goblin does something to give itself away the highest perception DC is that of the cleric who has a 17. so these first two goblins who have 25 and 18 are going to be unnoticed by The Party The Party will not even know when initiative starts that they are there in contrast goblins 3 and 4 will be noticed by the party Goblin 3 and Goblin 4 their locations are known to the party they may not necessarily see these goblins but they hear them and know where they are as for resolving ties the goblin and the Rogue both had a 17 here the DM can decide which acts first or can use random determination in Pathfinder if there is a tie the monster goes before the players combat begins now a creature in DND can do a set of things on its turn each of it is its own possible thing you can check off it can do an action which could be attacking or casting a spell or many other things it can also move up to its speed it can also interact with an object or something in the environment it can also do a bonus action not all creatures can use that bonus action part of their turn they need a special ability they can also do one reaction that could be during their turn or outside their turn but as the name implies it is usually in response to something else the first to act is Goblin number one and it is hiding behind this log here it will fire its short bow at the Rogue it rolls a D20 and adds its short bow bonus which is plus four the goblin is unseen by the Rogue so it is going to attack with Advantage advantage means it makes its attack roll two times and keeps the higher result its attack roll is 16 and the rogue's armor class is 14. so this successfully hits the Rogue the short po does 1d6 plus 2 damage it does maximum damage doing 8 damage to the Rogue and bringing the rogue's hit points down from nine to one so she is in danger there is a Nuance in the rules here the goblin was unseen by the Rogue so therefore it had Advantage when attacking the Rogue hiding successfully also made the Rogue surprised surprise is different being surprised on its own only means that she cannot act if for example this Goblin were hiding right here and instead of firing a bow ran out and attacked with a short sword then the goblin would become seen and not have advantage on its attack any longer the Rogue would still be surprised all that being surprised does is that the Rogue cannot act yet so it's important to sort that out often being unseen is how you surprise them in the first place the goblin has done its action by attacking it can move up to its speed in addition it does not want to move from its current spot this is a great spot to attack from it can also interact with an object or something in the environment it's not going to do that it can also do a bonus action if it has an ability that uses a bonus action and goblins do goblins have Nimble Escape as a bonus action they can disengage or hide by attacking the goblin revealed itself to the party so it will try to hide again and become unseen again so it does a stealth check it rolls a stealth check of 16 Which is higher than all of the passive perceptions of all the player characters so it is unseen to all of them now we have Goblin number one in Pathfinder in Pathfinder a creature on their turn has three actions that they can do they also have one reaction that they can do even outside their turn in Pathfinder if you are benefiting from cover and this Goblin is by positioning itself behind the tree you get a plus two circumstance bonus to your armor class that works both ways in Pathfinder if you draw an imaginary line from the center of this goblins token to the Rogue it will pass through this cover so therefore the Rogue will have a plus two circumstance bonus to her armor class this increases the rogue's armor class from 18 to 20. however we also know that this Goblin is not seen by the Rogue it rolled a stealth check higher than the rogue's perception DC the Rogue is flat-footed giving her a -2 circumstance penalty to her Armor class circumstance bonuses and Circumstance penalties can counteract each other so this Returns the rogue's armor class to 18. one thing I didn't mention for the DND Goblin was that its short pose range is 80 feet and beyond that range it has disadvantage and can Target something up to 320 feet away if it had been farther than 80 feet away which it was not then it would have had disadvantage which would have canceled out the advantage that it had the goblin Warrior is 65 feet away from the Rogue had this been DND this would have been 55 feet what's going on here well in Pathfinder you count every second diagonal Square as being 10 feet instead of 5 feet if you were to draw the shape of a fireball in Pathfinder it would be more round and not be a square the short bows range increment is 60 feet if it is outside 60 feet there will be a -2 range penalty to the attack roll if the Rogue were 60 feet farther away say 125 feet away it would be a minus four penalty the penalty gets bigger and bigger so as you can see a number of modifiers can happen in a single roll which can be overwhelming at first though in my experience it's something people get used to and if you're not tracking at all and nobody's noticing you're still having fun the goblin Warrior's short bow has a plus eight to attack and the range penalty makes that a plus six the goblin rolls a total of 18 which is enough to hit the Rogue this Goblin also rolls maximum damage however that takes away only six of this rogue's 15 hit points the goblin has two more actions it will now fire again in Pathfinder you can attack more than once this is true of all creatures in the game however the second attack will be less accurate than the first and the third and subsequent attacks are less accurate than the second this is called the multiple attack penalty the second attack will have a -5 penalty to it so this Goblin will roll with only a plus one to its bonus this time however the goblin by making its first attack revealed itself and made itself observed so therefore seen by all the player characters so the Rogue is no longer flat-footed to it and it is less accurate this last attack is now a plus one to try to hit an armor class of 20 and misses unsurprisingly the goblin still has another action attacking again will almost certainly not hit so what it will do is use its third action to hide behind the tree and do a stealth check this works just like in d d but it will get a plus two circumstance bonus from the tree itself its total is 17 which succeeds at hiding from all of the players note that it did not have a special bonus action to be able to do this and any creature has three actions and could have done this exact sequence of things if they had a ranged attack it's now the Fighter's turn and the fighter is not surprised so he can act because the goblin stealth check did not beat the Fighter's passive perception the fighter can see all of them he wants to protect his allies from harm in case they run up to them so he's going to take out his greatax and he's going to use his action to ready an attack against any creature sure that enters his reach ready is a special action that lets you act even in the middle of another creature's turn you have to define a trigger and your response to the trigger if a goblin charges up he can interrupt the Goblin's turn with an attack with his great ax and that would use his reaction so it uses both his action and his reaction now we have the Pathfinder fighter because this turn starts his raised Shield stops being raised Goblin Warrior 2 has not acted yet and it's stealth initiative check was higher than the Fighter's perception DC so therefore when I click the fighter it actually does not notice the Goblin and it does not detect that it is right here goblins 3 and 4 had stealth checks that were lower so therefore the fighter detects them however this GM will extrapolate from the sneak action rules in Pathfinder and say that because they did not critically fail they did not get stealth checks that were at least 10 lower than the Fighter's perception DC they are still benefiting from being hidden to the fighter as you can tell there are definite gradations of stealth and Pathfinder being undetected means that the fighter does not know that this Goblin number two is in this Square goblins 3 and 4 are hidden to the fighter the fighter knows where they are but he cannot actually directly observe them maybe they made a noise that gave away their location if they had yet lower cell checks they would be observed to do the same thing the DND fighter did readying in action would cost this fighter two actions it generally works the same as in D and D however it also would end this Fighter's turn immediately he's not going to do that he's going to do something that is available in Pathfinder but not in DND he is going to delay it is something he can do when his turn begins it takes him out of the initiative order he can re-enter the initiative after another creature finishes their turn he cannot interrupt another creature's turn he would have to enter after they're done however this preserves for him the ability to do all three of his actions when he re-enters initiative whenever he returns to initiative he will stay in his new spot in the initiative order however he's unable to take any actions including reactions until he stops delaying Goblin number two will shoot at this fighter because the fighter can see him he does not have Advantage the goblin rolls in 18 making a total attack rule of 22 which does hit the Fighter's Armor class this short boat does five damage reducing the fighter to seven this Goblin can also choose to hide behind this tree however the Tactical considerations are different in D and D all of these foes could use their speed to go up to it and do all of their actions their one action unload all their full odds defensive power against it similarly this Goblin can move away in order to increase the distance between itself and the enemy and it's going to use its 30 foot speed to move away I'm going to make this foliage difficult terrain so it's going to move there in Pathfinder the same Goblin is still unnoticed and undetected by the fighter so the fighter is going to be flat footed to this upcoming short bow attack the goblin can spend its first action to lean out so it kind of in between these squares here let's imagine that to negate the cover bonus to the fighter so the goblin only needs to hit a 16 with this short bow attack on the D20 roll the Galvin rolls in 18 giving it a total attack of 26. that makes it a critical hit in D and D Critical Hits happen when you roll a 20 on your die roll but they can happen in Pathfinder if your total attack roll is at least 10 higher than the Armor class you're targeting so because of that it gets a critical hit with a critical hit in D and D you double the number of dice you roll any flat bonus to your damage Remains the Same but in Pathfinder you double the entire result including the flat bonus so critical hits are deadlier in Pathfinder in addition weapons have special traits and the short bow has the deadly d10 trait which means that on a critical hit you also roll a d10 on top of all of that and add that to the total so this does a whopping 12 damage lowering the fighter from 20 to 8 hit points doing that revealed the goblin the goblin can use its third action to try to move away that would not clear it from the fighter trying to run up to it however because the fighter could spend his first two actions chasing him and making an attack because remember Pathfinder characters can do three actions on their turn so instead this Goblin Warrior will make a second attack with the multiple attack penalty so the goblin makes another attack at a plus three bonus and that attack misses well at this the fighter decides to re-enter initiative he has a speed of 25 feet so he can move or stride is the name of the action in Pathfinder to move here to close in to the goblin he does so he has the sword and his shield in hand he's going to swing that sword being a fighter in Pathfinder he is more accurate than even other martial characters so he has a plus nine to his attack roll he rolls low however he only rolls a five on his die a 14 total will miss the Goblin's Armor class of 16. that's too bad if he had succeeded at killing the goblin now he would then be able to use his third action to walk up and threaten this next Goblin he now has a few options will he swing again but with a lower accuracy or will he raise the shield to give him that plus two circumstance bonus to his armor class in theory he does not have to spend that action to raise his shield because as a fighter his level one special fighter fee is called reactive Shield it lets him as a reaction in response to an attack against him raises shield and apply the bonus of his shield to the triggering attack the problem with that however is that it uses his reaction to do that and as a fighter he has two powerful reactions that he may want to save that reaction for instead he's thinking to himself that he just got critically hit and he does not want to be knocked out so he's going to raise his shield now not only does it raise his armor class but as a fighter he has the shield block reaction if an enemy gets past that increased Armor class and hits him he can lower the incoming damage by blocking it with the shield now to Goblin 3. this Goblin is going to do the dash action instead of moving up to its speed and doing let's say an attack as its action it will use its action to double how far it can move so it can move Now 60 feet so that enables it to go through this difficult Terrain and move here however our fighter had readied an action to attack a goblin entering his reach so he makes that attack now but he rolls only a five and his total of 10 will not hit the Goblins AC of 15. this Goblin is very courageous because there are some reasons to do this by engaging them in melee it limits the choices for these characters in D and D because any character that tries to move away will provoke an opportunity attack from the goblin they can avoid it with the disengage action but that would cost them their action this Goblin's turn now ends it cannot attack because it used its action to Dash and his bonus action is not useful right now this Goblin Warrior will also move twice its speed however it simply requires that it use two actions two stride actions to do so so through the difficult terrain it manages to get right here because its buddy is on the opposite side of the fighter they are flanking the fighter this makes the fighter flat-footed it has a minus two circumstance penalty to his AC which is now 18. this Goblin was holding both his short bow and His short sword called a dog Slicer in Pathfinder he swings that dog slicer now his 22 hits the fighter and the Goblin rolls four damage the fighter because the shield is raised uses his shield block reaction because his wooden Shield has a hardness of three for incoming damage of 4 is reduced by that number to one that remaining one damage is applied both to the shield and to the fighter so the shield loses one head point and the fighter loses one hit point if the shield ever goes down to half of its Health then it becomes broken we now go to this Rogue in DNT because her passive perception was only 10 she is surprised only after this turn is she able to act including using her reaction in Pathfinder there is no surprise mechanic it's also worth noting that perception is not a skill in Pathfinder it's its own thing every creature is proficient in perception at least trained sometimes even better this Rogue was a focus on searching the bodies however the player established with the GM that while adventuring she's carrying her Rapier in one hand and a dagger in the other she is going to walk up as an elf she has a native 30-foot speed which is faster than the usual 25-foot speed in Pathfinder so she's able to get to this spot so now she is flanking of a goblin and the Goblin is flat-footed to her for a rogue making an enemy flat-footed is important not only because it makes them easier to hit but also because she can sneak attack them if she hits a flat-footed enemy she gets to add 1d6 Precision damage to her damage she's going to swing with her Rapier her 12 does not hit the goblin she then uses her third action to make another attack however not with her Rapier because her offhand weapon her dagger has the agile trait so instead of having a minus five penalty when it is your second attack it is only a minus four penalty she misses with this as well the dice are not treating this party very well if she had hit with the Rapier it would have done sneak attack damage and then if she followed it up and hit with the dagger it also would do sneak attack damage the limitation of doing sneak attack damage once per return in DND does not exist in Pathfinder also there's a number of ways many ways to make an enemy flat-footed to you you can be invisible you can do a skill check like a faint with your deception skill to make them flat-footed too I did a video where I sing about all the ways you can make something flat-footed there's a link in the video description next up is the cleric it's a cleric the cleric chooses three cantrips at character creation that are minor spells that he can cast at will as many times as he wants to he also can cast first level spells and two of those spells are always prepared for him in the morning bless and cure wounds due to him being a life domain cleric he additionally can prepare four more spells those are going to be command guiding bolt healing word and shield of Faith he has six first level spells prepared however he only has two spell slots or castings he's going to use one of them now because this look to be a tough battle he is going to cast The Blessed spell he can bless up to three creatures and they are gonna be himself the fighter and the Rogue they whatever they make an attack roll or saving throw get to add 1d4 to their check he will stay in the back in order to stay away from danger and that ends his turn he has no bonus action to do our Pathfinder cleric gets to prepare five cantrips in the morning and gets to change which ones they are every morning she also has two first level spell slots she is a prepared spellcaster Pathfinder 2E uses what's called vancian spell casting it is how D and D used to do spell casting she gets to prepare two spells they are bless and sanctuary and when she casts that spell it is crossed off of her spell list in addition she has a Divine font an extra number of spells that either give life or take away life she does positive magic with her Divine fonts so she has extra castings of the heel spell she's going to cast the bless spell bless Works differently in Pathfinder it creates a five foot Aura around her ooh and she and her allies within that aura get a plus one status bonus to their Attack rules it is a smaller bonus however every plus one is effectively a plus two in Pathfinder because of the way Critical Hits work it increases their chance to critically hit as well bless used two actions represented by this two-action symbol leaving her with one action left you may notice that I moved the clerics I needed to for this demonstration but the cleric after casting the Blessed spell is going to move to this spot and this will benefit both the fighter and the Rogue with the bless Aura and bless is now crossed off of her prepared first level spells next is Goblin number four in d d it's going to move 20 feet to toward the fighter and attack the fighter and it rolls a natural 20 on the die this will do critical hit damage it's going to roll damage dice twice this does 9 damage and that's going to knock out the fighter and make him unconscious he's going to fall prone drop everything he's holding now because the fighter has a maximum health of 12. if the Goblet had hit the fighter so hard that it brought the fighter to negative 12. which this Goblin probably couldn't have done then it would have instantly killed the fighter because of the massive damage rule in D and D now if the goblin had aimed at the Rogue next to the fighter and had rolled just one more point of damage 10 damage it would have instantly killed the Rogue because the Rogue would have gone to negative nine so as you can see low levels are pretty deadly in D and D especially level one then it's going to move again it can break up its movement with its other actions so it's going to move 10 feet down here and threaten the wizard I'm going to note that all creatures have opportunity attacks including this Rogue she can use a reaction to attack only if a creature moves out of her reach and because this Goblin stayed within her reach she cannot make an opportunity attack next is this Goblin Warrior who was wielding a short bow he is going to drop the short bow which is a free action and use his first action to take out his dog slicer then he is going to move right here and he's moving through a square this one and the fighter can make an attack of opportunity because in Pathfinder attack of opportunity triggers on a lot more things including simply leaving a square that you threaten however we'll remember that this fighter already used his reaction to Shield block against this Goblin's attack the fighter actually has three abilities that all compete for his reaction and gives him some strategic choices and he wanted to prioritize defense on this turn also his moving here triggers a reaction from Goblin 3. goblins have a signature ability in Pathfinder also and that is Goblin Scuttle when an ally ends a move action adjacent to it it can step and step is a special action to move one square without provoking reactions like attack of opportunity this allows Goblin 4 to flank the fighter lowering his AC to 18 but will remember that the DND Goblin rolled a 20 so this one will roll a 20 on its role also and I'm actually going to roll this damage to show something oh okay it rolls six and there's an extra plus one damage being added from the backstabber trait of the weapon dog slicers have the backstabber trait when they hit something that's flat-footed they add this extra damage and we double that total on a crit so that's 14 damage to the fighter instant death from massive damage Works differently in Pathfinder a single blow needs to do double their maximum hit points so 40 hit points in this case which as you can tell is a harder condition to meet than in D and D but it can be dangerous still there are creatures that do a lot more damage than these goblins and not all PCS will have 20 hit points at level one so he will go down to zero hit points fall prone and get the dying 2 condition because it was a critical hit you die a dying four in Pathfinder and normally being knocked out puts you a dying one but a critical hit or critically failing on a your own saving throw will put you straight to dying too we'll see how the dying condition works later he drops everything he held moves to right before the effect that knocked him out so right here that gives this whole party a whole round to help him before he has to do a check to not die next is our wizard The Wizard gets to learn four cantrips at the start of his career and these are permanent choices for him he also has a spell book unlike the cleric he is limited to several spells in his spell book instead of the entire spell list for his class he also gets to prepare for spells but he doesn't get the bonus spells that the cleric gets he has prepared Shield sleep magic Missile and burning hands he wants to attack these goblins so he's going to cast Rey a frost which is a ranged spell attack because it is a ranged attack he has disadvantage with his attack role if he were to do that against this Goblin because there is an enemy adjacent to the wizard when you have someone bearing down on you it's hard to be precise with your ranged attacks so instead he's going to cast burning hands he's going to aim a 15-foot cone towards these goblins and he rolls 10 damage from his 3d6 role the Goblins do dexterity saves to avoid the damage and they need to have a 13 or higher in order to take only half damage Goblin 3 fails his saving throw and takes the full amount killing him Goblin 4 rolls a natural 20 and that definitely succeeds and so he takes only half damage bringing him down from seven to two Health the wizard would like to move away but that would provoke an opportunity attack from from the goblin so he finishes his turn our Pathfinder wizard like the Pathfinder cleric gets to prepare five cantrips in the morning and can change them from day to day he also has a limited spell book to choose spells from and he can prepare only two first level spells for the day and they are going to be burning hands and magic Missile now he has a cantrip that attacks as well and I just want to use a parallel situation here what if he were right next to the goblin he could cast acid Splash and there would be no penalty doing a ranged attack roll in melee you don't want to do a ranged attack if they have attack of opportunity because that would trigger an attack of opportunity and Pathfinder but most creatures don't have that in Pathfinder acid Splash would also actually Splash on All adjacent's Creatures so that would harm our fighter if the wizard were to aim it at this Goblin and increase his dying value so instead our wizard is going to spend 1 one of his spell slots he's going to cast burning hands in Pathfinder when using a grid the rules as written are specific on how you can aim your spell and when you aim it diagonally it has to be from a corner and he does not want to harm the fighter that would bring him closer to death so he's going to move right here and aim his cone like so and hit those two goblins only that's cool the Goblins however benefit from cover from this tree cover provides a plus two circumstance bonus to your reflex saves against area effects the Pathfinder version of the spell is more modest it does 2d6 damage and it does seven damage Goblin 3 therefore has a plus nine on this saving throw and needs to beat a 17. it fails so it's going to take the full 7 damage these goblins only have six hit points this is a dead Goblin Goblin 2 rolls a natural 20. and therefore critically succeeds on a saving throw when a spell calls for a basic save like burning hands that is shorthand for a successful save doing half damage but also a critical success on your save makes it do zero damage also critically failing to save like rolling a one will make you take double damage so this Goblin is unscathed so the Wizard player crosses that spell off of his list we now enter round two Goblin number one which has been hiding behind this Faraway tree is now going to fire it sees that the Rogue could be taken down the goblin had succeeded in hiding against its perception DC of only 10. so it's going to have advantage on this attack it rolls an 18 on the die and the total of 22 is definitely going to hit the Rogue the Rogue takes 5 damage and thankfully that does not bring it down to negative nine which under the massive damage rule would have killed the Rogue so she goes down and is unconscious and she does not move in the initiative order under 5e rules the goblin has its bonus action and will try to hide and this is a low roll and it fails to hide this time the Pathfinder Goblin had successfully hid behind this tree as well it's going to take aim at the Rogue here the high check succeeds at making the Rogue a flat-footed lowering her AC to 16. the goblin rolls 18 for a total of 24. remember the range penalty is applying a minus two penalty to his attack roll had there been no range penalty it would have been a critical hit so the Rogue was a little lucky this time this bow does five damage but our Goblin has two more actions it does not fire again right now it's going to try to become hidden again for its second attack so it uses its second action to hide does a stealth check with the plus two bonus provided by the tree and succeeds again against the Rogue so it will make a second attack against a lowered AC this is another good role doing five more damage to the Rogue which knocks out the Rogue and puts her at dying one and makes her fall prone also she moves in the initiative to right before the goblin Warrior here on the left the fighter needs to do a death saving throw because he did not move an initiative when he was knocked out a death-saving throw consists simply of rolling a D20 die and if your role is 10 or higher you succeed and get one success when you get three successes you stabilize and no longer have to make death saving throws on the other hand if you have three failures your character dies if you roll a natural one that counts as two failures if you roll a natural 20 you immediately stabilize and gain one hit point and can do your turn here the fighter fails and so he gets one failure we now go to Goblin 2 who decides to go behind this tree that we will say is right here and uses his bonus action to hide behind it to set up an attack and he succeeds with that role he now makes an attack against the wizard with Advantage this roll hits and inflicts five damage on the wizard and this party is in danger notice how because of the Goblins bonus action a DM is incentivized if playing optimally to make goblins into ranged skirmishers increasing the distance between themselves and their foes here are the Pathfinder fighter did not have to make such a save because he had moved later in the initiative when he was knocked out here Goblin number two feels a little more confident now that two enemies are knocked out and decides to switch to melee he drops his bow takes an action to take out his dog slicer then walks up to the cleric right here and with his third action attacks the cleric he hits the cleric and inflicts three damage to the cleric in DND the Rogues placed in the initiative calls for her to make a death saving throw now she succeeds on her role and is closer to recovering also if you take damage while you were knocked out that counts as a failure for you and a critical hit makes you take two failures next is the DND cleric he is going to cast the very effective spell called healing word he only has one first level spell slot for the day healing word is a bonus action spell so he still can do his main action after casting this a creature within 60 feet of his choice it gets one D4 plus his spell casting modifier wisdom in this case hit points back also because he's a life domain cleric he gets to add three to the amount he heals so this restores 8 hit points to the Rogue and he still has his main action for teaching purposes let's assume he has another spell slot now and he wants to cast Shield of Faith which would increase his armor class for the duration there are a number of reasons he cannot do that first you cannot cast more than one spell on your turn there is an exception to that rule which I'll go into momentarily second it is a concentration spell and in D and D spells that require concentration that have that marked out in their description you can only maintain one of them at a time because bless is a concentration spell if he were to cast The Shield of Faith now it would end the bless spell immediately also writing a spell uses your concentration even if that spell that you're readying does not normally require concentration another problem is that Shield of Faith requires your bonus action he already used his bonus action to heal the Rogue with healing word and in D and D you cannot use your action to do something that asks for a bonus action so he cannot cast a second spell in his turn right so he's got to do something else not true there's one exception which is if the spell he is using his main action for is a cantrip and in this case he wants to cast the sacred flame cantra and attack Goblin number three with it gobble number three fails its saving throw and takes four radiant damage and that kills the goblin the clerica says he's done with his turn he doesn't want to move now it is the Pathfinder clerics turn and she has many options with her three actions she's concerned about the threat posed by these three goblins one of them being off screen and also her two allies being down an option is to cast the heal spell she can cast it three times today and when she casts it there are three different versions of it that depend on how many actions you spend on it one action can heal something at the range of touch and heals them one d8 hit points two actions heals something up to 30 feet away and adds eight to the amount you heal them the three action version is an AOE effect that can heal every living creature within 30 feet and you can include yourself because it's an emanation but it does not benefit from the extra eight hit points of healing but she decides to do something else she's going to spend two actions to heal the fighter this succeeds at giving the fighter 12 hit points back because of that bonus healing the fighter loses the dying condition but also gains the wounded one condition this is something that makes Pathfinder different from DND the wounded value makes it more dangerous since the fighter were to be knocked out again because let's say the goblin brings him down to zero hit points again he would normally go to dying one but because he is wounded he adds the value of the Wounded condition to his dying condition so if we were to get knocked out again he would go straight to dying too if his knockout were the result of a critical hit by an enemy or him critically failing a saving throw he would go straight to Dying Three and if he were to be healed again his wounded value would tick up one to wounded two so as you can see it gets more and more dangerous he gets closer to death even after coming back up from unconsciousness so that is the reason why the cleric spent two actions to heal the fighter so that it wouldn't be as easy to knock him out again also the fighter has some advantages fighting on his own versus the Rogue her hope is that bringing this fighter to his feet can swing this battle back in the party's favor again with her third action she could cast heal again on the Rogue the one action version which would make the Rogue conscious however that does cost another spell slot and there's something else that is cool that she would like to do and it's inherent to the bless spell she can use an action to expand the aura of bless by five feet and she does so if she has enough time she can make it fill the entire Battlefield she had other combinations healing both of them with one action heals and expanding her bless spell as you can see the three action economy offers more choices because everything is competing for the same resource and there's different combinations that are possible in contrast the healing words spell for the DND cleric was not competing for any other action from the cleric which also makes that spell much more useful next is the Pathfinder fighter and we remember that as initiative change so he acts now we see another reason why you don't want to get knocked out in Pathfinder in 5e when you are knocked out you can stand up at the cost of half your movement speed and pick up your weapon for free during your turn however doing those things will cost the fighter two of his three actions standing is an action picking up his sword is an action and also if he wants to return to the state he was at with a sword and shield before you will have to spend a third action pick up his shield so what he does is instead he's going to stand up action one he's going to pick up his shield and instead of raising his shield he's actually going to try to hit the goblin with it you can bash with your shield and Pathfinder he also benefits from the Blessed spell so he's gonna have this monstrous plus 10 attack bonus against the goblin but unfortunately it misses also I want this demonstration to drag out longer so I can show more things now why did he pick his shield well he has the reactive Shield feet if something attacks him he can as a reaction raises Shield increases AC by two so picking up the shield instead of the sword gives them some more defense next is Goblin 4 and what it will do is attack the wizard it swings its short sword and misses and it's going to use its special bonus action to disengage which allows it to move away from an enemy without provoking opportunity attacks so it's going to move here now these goblins are pretty unique in 5e they have an ability that is similar to the rogue's cunning action ability that they get at second level that means this combat is a bit unusual for the amount of moving around the battlefield that is going on and enemies hiding had the goblin not had that ability it would have had to choose between attacking the wizard or disengaging Goblin number four is next now it could just act in a straightforward manner just attack the fighter multiple times but it wants to set up a really good attack it's going to try to distract the fighter because the way the math works out and critical hits in Pathfinder it will make it much more likely that it will critically hit the fighter so what it does is it creates a diversion there are two ways to create a diversion you can say something that distracts your enemy or you can make a gesture or do some kind of physical trick saying something distracting has the linguistic trait and that is a defined trait in Pathfinder meaning that for it to work you have to share a language with the Enemy this Goblin knows that it doesn't share in language with these long Shanks as goblins in the Pathfinder world called tall people so instead it's going to point somewhere behind the fighter this action has the manipulate trait which is one of the triggers for attack of opportunity our fighter has a choice here does he wants to attack this Goblin now or save his reaction for defense he decides not to attack the goblin the goblin succeeds on his diversion and that makes the fighter flat-footed to this upcoming attack then the goblin as a second action is going to attack and this is a very high roll it is a 23. that unfortunately is too high for the fighter to raise his shield against even raising his shield would not change the result this attack goes through and because it is a backstabber weapon it does an extra damage it does four damage I will note here that this create a diversion Acts is something that the Rogue could do if it were conscious to make somebody flat-footed and get sneak attack damage against them for the Goblins third action it's going to Dart this direction in order to get closer to its Archer friend when it leaves the square our fighter decides to go after it this time because leaving a square in Pathfinder can provoke an attack of opportunity the fighter attacks with his shield and the fighter misses again and the Goblin moves over here attacks of opportunity provoke on somebody moving out of a square you threaten somebody doing a move action within your reach so somebody's standing up somebody doing a ranged attack within your reach or somebody doing a manipulate action interacting with something and many spells do the last thing and also those actions that have them manipulate traits they actually get disrupted if you critically succeed on your attack of opportunity next is the DND wizard who has one first level flat left and he can use it again to cast any of his prepared spells he can cast The Sleep spell which has a fair chance of knocking out both of these goblins over here towards the east but he decides to conserve that spell slot because he wants to protect himself and have the opportunity to cast Shield a very powerful defensive spell increases this AC by five after knowing an attacker's role against him and the bonus persists until his next turn so to conserve his slots he's going to cast a cantrip he's going to cast Ray of Frost the ray of frost it hits its mark and it does four damage to the Goblin and he goes down dead the wizard has not moved yet so he decides to move here to get cover behind the wagon against both goblins as you can see spell casting in 5e gives you more flexibility and therefore power to be able to choose from all the Spells you prepared that day using your finite number of slots less Advanced planning and prediction is required it also adds some more complexity when spell slots become dry because the greater number of things that you can do with those slots in contrast our Pathfinder wizard has one for civil spell prepared magic Missile and that is all he can cast of his leveled spells now there's a class feature that lets him in the spur of the moment recast burning hands right now that can only be used once per day so that's some compensation now does he want to cast magic Missile well let's look at magic Missile magic Missile has three versions as well the number of actions you spend casting it is the number of missiles each doing 1d4 plus one damage that you can let loose it has an excellent range of 120 feet so it can reach this pesky Goblin Warrior behind the tree all the better because magic Missile automatically hits its Target so he won't need to do an attack roll and the Goblin Warriors cover will do him no good he could spend all three missiles on this Goblin to pretty much guarantee he'll be knocked out or he can spread them out among more goblins to try to have a greater net effect another problem is that the three action version uses all of his actions he might want to do something else he is wary that this Goblin behind the tree is going to shoot at him so he could cast The Shield spell which takes one action to give him a plus one circumstance opponents to AC until the start of his next turn this is clearly weaker than the fifth edition version of Shield however this is a cantrip he can cast it every round if he so chooses and it also has this extra ability it gives him a shield block reaction like the fighter does which blocks five hit points of incoming damage however it immediately ends the spell and it cannot cast shield for the next 10 minutes so it's a good defensive move that can prevent him from being knocked out so he'd like to cast shield now what to do with his other two actions he has a cantrip that is quite powerful called electric Arc that lets him attack two foes who are within 30 feet of him he does so and they have to make saving throws and there's the cool animation this cantrip does a five electricity damage and they get to make basic saving throws here Goblin number two fails at a saving throw and takes the full damage and Goblin number four succeeds and takes half damage we're now in round three and the Pathfinder Rogue actually is going to be next because she moved an initiative she's at dying one so she's going to make her flat check now if she succeeds she will stabilize and get the wounded condition however she rolls a one which is a critical failure you can critically fail and critically succeed on most checks in Pathfinder this means that her dying value will increase by two so she goes to Dying Three once you saw the one there was something she could have done at the beginning of the session of Pathfinder every player has one hero point and they can earn more hero points through good role play heroism or creative ideas hero points are used to re-roll a check a D20 rule that you make she can do this now to prevent the critical failure however she keeps that hero point in reserve because of the second reason you can use hero points which is when your dying value would increase you can prevent that from happening by spending all of the hero points you have to stabilize immediately and not increase your wounded value so she decides to save her hero point for that now here in DND Goblin number one is next and it's going to use its bonus action to hide and it succeeds on its stealth check this is very bad although the wizard now has cover and his AC has increased from 12 to 14. the goblin has advantage and this very high roll means that casting Shield right now would actually not turn it into a miss so this does four damage and knocks out the wizard the Pathfinder Goblin will do something similar it's going to try to hide now to be hidden from its Target it succeeds on this stealth check that used one action with its next action it will lean out to negate the cover bonus to the Wizards AC the wizard still benefits from Shield which gives a plus one circumstance bonus so his AC would be 16 now however he is now flat-footed because the goblin successfully hid so only needs to hit a 14 right now which is not that good for level one in Pathfinder the range penalty means that the Goblins attack bonus is lowered to plus six this dramatizes the importance of buffing and debuffing if you work out the math it has increased its chance of Landing a critical hit from five percent to 15 percent and this is a critical hit the short bow has the the deadly d10 trait that's going to be 12 damage against the wizard The Wizard elects to use the shield block reaction of his shield now and that's going to reduce that to 7 damage and also end the shield spell that whole sequence setting up his attack took his whole turn so that Goblin's done in d d our fighter is still unconscious so does a death save now he rolls 10 or higher so he now has one success and one failure Goblin 2 is going to do what Goblin 1 did it will try to hide this stealth check is unsuccessful however versus this rogue's passive perception so we'll fire at the Rogue without Advantage this is a miss the goblin decides not to do anything else because it has now used its action and bonus action and does not want to move from this space next is Pathfinder Goblin number two it has seen the fighter do a tack of opportunity against retreating foes it is still going to use its three actions to go in make a strike and then leave however because the fighter has already used his reaction using attack of opportunity against its buddy since he knows that he feels pretty safe going right here and then making this strike which does hit theoretically the fighter could use this reactive Shield feet to actually make this a Miss however he already used his reaction this does three damage to the fighter and the Goblin's Last Action is to move here in DND we have our Rogue here who would like to inflict sneak attack damage against one of these goblins to get sneak attack damage as a DND Rogue you need to either have advantage in your attack roll or you need an ally of yours to be threatening that creature so long as you don't have disadvantage on your attack so the player says she's going to switch to her short bow she's going to drop the short sword that she had been holding and take out her short bow remember you can interact with one object for free on your turn dropping something however is free her action is going to be to shoot at this goblin the goblin benefits from cover and we remember she is benefiting from the bless spell so she adds a D4 to her attack roll the Rogue rolls a one on her D20 rule rolling a natural one always misses by the way however as a half length she has the lucky race facial feature which lets her always re-roll any one that she rolls she rolls again and she hits for her short bow damage she rolls a six-sided die she only rolls a three however in D and D because it is a dexterity attack she is going to add her dexterity to her damage as well so this six damage is nearly enough to knock out the goblin the Rogue would now like to hide somewhere and go behind cover however her short sword is on the ground there she had dropped it she could have stowed it away however that would have been an interaction and putting one weapon away and taking out a second weapon would have meant using her action on her turn to do the use and object action and would have met she would not be able to do an attack also she cannot use her bonus action to pick up the sword because by rule something has to use your bonus section for you to be able to use it with your bonus section now to our DND cleric who has two downed allies the fighter and The Wizard he has one first level spell slot left he it's pretty clear that he should cast tailing a word here and he's going to do that to the wizard this restores 8 hit points to the wizard that was his bonus action so what he does now is he moves 25 feet he's a dwarf so he's slower than other characters to try to get closer to this Goblin then he's going to interact with an object to draw out his hand ax and then throw it at the goblin this being a throne weapon he is going to use his strength modifier instead of his dexterity modifier to his attack roll and damage he also will benefit from that bless spell from earlier and this is a hit this succeeds at Downing this Goblin so we just saw the cleric do four things on his turn cast healing word move his speed pull out a weapon and attack with it sometimes you can do more things on your turn than in the three-action economy but also there are other turns where you're doing three things or two things sometimes even just one thing out of your possible actions because of the action types that are involved here are Pathfinder cleric has a downed Ally she considers casting one of her heel spells to bring the Rogue up but she decides not to she has another idea she is wielding a scimitar and can hit with it she is a war priest which is one of the two subclasses you can choose for the cleric and Pathfinder this is the more Marshall focused one so she can wear armor and during this fight she has been wielding both a scimitar and a shield and you may be wondering how is it that she's able to cast spells without a free hand you only need a free hand to cast spells in Pathfinder if it uses a material component or Focus component and none of the Spells she has cast so far requires either of those being a war priest also gives her some other advantages but we won't go into that but she basically wants to get in the front lines she's going to walk right here and she's going to swing that Scimitar she's not as accurate as the fighter she has a plus five bonus however the bless spell makes it a plus six so she swings up Goblin number four and this is a hit and it does five damage killing the Goblin and she did not heal the Rogue because she wanted to do this she wanted to have an action left to make a second attack she swings at the goblin Warrior the Scimitar has a couple of weapon traits that distinguish it mechanically from other weapons Pathfinder weapons have traits that make them more distinct the first trait is the sweep trait if she attacked another creature earlier this turn with that weapon which she did she gets a plus one circumstance bonus to this attack roll which Stacks with the plus one status bonus from her bless spill she still suffers from the multiple attack penalty this all ends up being a plus two on her attack Roll Another trait that the Scimitar has is the forceful trait basically it gains momentum it does more damage as you make multiple attacks if she can land this blow she's going to get an additional amount of damage equal to the number of damage Dice and as you get to higher levels you can have up to four damage Dice and that bonus doubles if she's under her full multiple attack penalty making a third or fourth strike lots of explanation but it's a Miss we're going to keep this is Goblin live to show more stuff next is the Pathfinder fighter who is holding a shield in hand and sees these two goblins he could pick up his sword but that's going to cost the whole action so he decides to do a couple of things at once he's gonna take out his short bow then he's going to move right here next to the cleric so that he's within the bless Aura he's taking out his short bow he because he wants to threaten this Goblin who has been a thorn in the party side and also have a way to attack this Goblin if it should run away he could attack this Goblin right now but he also knows that if the goblin tries to run away without stepping away first at least then he'll get to do an attack of opportunity to kick the goblin so he makes this attack the goblin benefits from cover so he needs an 18 on this roll before firing he releases The Shield as a free action and then he fires the bow and it misses so that ends the Fighter's turn now our DND wizard is going to stand up which caused half of his movement then for his action he is going to use that last spell slot he can see the Goblin and so it can cast magic Missile he decides to cast something else he's going to cast sleep it affects a 20-foot burst and causes five to eight hit points of creatures to fall asleep without a saving throw this has the advantage of knocking the goblin unconscious and they can interrogate it later our DND party is now Victorious but they still have to make sure the fighter doesn't die and we'll get to that in a second next is our wizard who really wants to take out this Goblin Warrior who is very annoying he's considering casting magic Missile which never misses and has a 120 foot range most spells many spells are 30 feet only and if he spends all three actions he can fire a total of three missiles and determine who they hit but he feels it's a little excessive given that this fight is probably one at this point and he only has so many prepared first level spells so he's going to cast the cantrip he's going to cast acid Splash against this Goblin here he could do that right now because it is behind the cleric it's going to benefit from a lesser cover which gives it a plus one circumstance bonus to its armor class he can avoid that by moving here but he figures he might do something that will help the entire party too and I also want to demonstrate this role by debuffing it with the demoralized action he is going to say something that is frightening to the goblin the wizard is not trained in intimidation so likely will not succeed furthermore he does not share a language with the goblin and the moralize says that if you don't speak in a language that they understand you're giving a minus four circumstance penalty to it however he rolls really well and this succeeds at frightening the goblin Warrior the frightened condition gives a status penalty to a bunch of their statistics and checks equal to the value of the frightened condition because this is a regular success from The Wizard it is frightened one it also goes away on its own if the goblin survives and does its next turn its frightened condition will lower by one at the end of its turn frightened affects everything if this Goblin were a spellcaster the DC to avoid its spells would also go down by one it's Armor class also goes down by one all of its saving throws and attacks go down by one then the wizard makes his acid splash spell attack and this will miss and we get into a rules controversy I will not go deep into this but it will show that not everything is cut and dry in Pathfinder season to taste and in this case it is a splash spell that only does Splash damage when you hit according to the rules as written but many GMS like me uh make it work like an alchemist's Splash weapon the splash trait says you still do Splash damage on a regular failure if there's Splash damage here it would also apply to our cleric and fighter hit all adjacent creatures but for this demonstration we're going to keep it alive our Rogue must now do a recovery check and she has to roll a 13 or higher she fails which means she would go to dying four and she would die however she kept that hero point in reserve and she spends all of her hero points to immediately stabilize and this does not increase her wounded value Goblin number one is going to try to attack the fighter it does not lean out it wants to make a getaway so it's saving its actions so the fighter has cover the goblin must hit a 20 and the Goblin misses with two actions left this Goblin wants to make a getaway he could stride twice to increase the distance between himself and the party but he sees that they do have ranged weapons on them so he's going to try to become undetected the goblin could do the sneak action which lets it move half its speed and try to become undetected while doing so however it cannot do that yet it has to become hidden or better first before it can attempt that so it is going to do a hide check it makes a stealth roll to try to hide from the party it succeeds with its third action it will now try to sneak it makes another stealth check moves half of its speed to behind another point of cover or place of concealment in this case behind this tree and it succeeds on this next stealth check so it now becomes undetected and the party now does not know where it is and the GM tells them so now our DND fighter struggles to stay alive he has one success and one failure he likely will need assistance from his allies if he's still down after this role then the Allies can try to do a medicine skill check they'll need to get a 10 or better to do so and if any of them bought a healer's kit for five gold they are guaranteed to stabilize them so there are some quite effective ways to pull someone from the brink of death in DND the fighter player really doesn't want this character to die so he's going to spend his inspiration inspiration is a resource that you earn through good role play or any other reason the DM thinks of you can have up to one Inspiration Point banked at a time in 5e if you see an important role coming up you say you are using your inspiration and that gives you advantage on that role here he rolls a one on his role and that would kill him however thankfully he used his inspiration and he rolls again and the fighter rolls a 20. and that is amazing what that means when you are doing a death saving throw is that you immediately go to one hit points and you become conscious again Andy doesn't care that this Goblin's knocked out he's going to stand up which uses half of his movement he uses his bonus action as a fighter to get 1d10 plus his level in hit points back move half of his speed right here interact to take out his Javelin and throw it at that Goblin now the goblin is prone so this attack will have disadvantage it's a ranged attack will have disadvantage against it and it has cover but who knows it may hit and The Fighter hits however he only does four damage to the goblin and the Goblin is now conscious now rules is written I think the goblin can only act after all of these other party members act because they are next in the initiative however there are DMS that will say it can act immediately I know I allow that in my pathfinder games if it's been more than one round since they last took actions now this is where either the rules are a bit murky or my knowledge is not as good as I want it to be but let's say the goblin wants to get do the same thing as the Pathfinder Goblin and wants to sneak away it can do the hide action whether it reveals itself when it leaves that cover is up for interpretation from that point it gets a little murky one part of the book says that if you were to come out of hiding and approach a creature the creature can see you but this person's trying to get away from the party and because of the foliage and edema will probably say well they succeeded on that stealth check so they are still hidden the DNT Rogue is next and once defined that Goblin she's going to walk forward 25 feet before going forward she picks up that short sword and do the search action here the text for search is pretty open-ended and this DM says yes you can try to find a hiding creature with it and asks for a perception check and can set a number of DC's for the Rogue to try to achieve maybe the DM wrote down the stealth role from earlier and that is the DC or we'll do a stealth check for the goblin right now the Rogue only has a plus zero perception remember she's not trained in this skill but she does succeed and she tells the other players where the goblin is she would love to fire at the goblin however searching was her action so she cannot make an attack which is an action and she only has one action the cleric now knowing where it is is going to move right here and cast sacred flame I'm just doing this to emphasize how many spells have quite a long range this spell has a 60 foot range so this Clara can do it from here the goblin fails its dexterity save and takes the damage and dies we return to our Pathfinder party here in Pathfinder to try to find this hiding Goblin she can also do what's called seek however it only uses one of her three actions also the rule says specifically how much of an area she can seek either a 30-foot cone from herself or a 15-foot burst that is within line of sight which is this big she's guessing that that Goblin did not go far so she is going to aim right here tell the GM she is seeking and the GM will secretly roll a perception check behind the GM screen because the seek action as you can see has the secret tag this is compared to What's called the stealth DC of the goblin which simply consists of taking the bonus for the skill and adding 10 to it this using a skill to determine a DC for that same skill when and someone else targets it is ubiquitous throughout Pathfinder and it means you don't have to do opposed roles because the goblin stealth is plus five the cleric needs to get a 17 on this check because remember this Goblin is benefiting from cover and the cleric being wise is going to be pretty good at seeking and she succeeds she has two actions left and this Goblin goes from being undetected to Hidden from her well remember that undetected means you don't know where it is hidden means you do know where it is but you cannot see it you do not observe it clearly so she can Target effects on this Goblin but she is going to have a 50 50 chance in failing to Target it now if she had critically succeeded then the goblin would become observed to her she has two actions left and she has no attack spells that can reach this Goblin because spell distances tend to be shorter many spell distances are only 30 feet in Pathfinder and this Goblin is 60 feet away so what she does is she points it out to her allies which also has rules when something is undetected to her allies she can point it out to them so long as her allies can see her and are in a position to detect the location of the target she can point it out to all of her allies with this action this effectively saves time for the fighter and The Wizard who do not have to seek for it themselves however this probably would have been free for a character in DND a DM would probably just say you pointed out to your party members with the Last Action she's going to box that Goblin with her scimitar she has her bless spell and she misses however she's had it with this fight she wants it to be over now so she's gonna spend her hero Point she rolls again and she hits the goblin this time and the Goblin dies next is our fighter he now knows where this Goblin is because the cleric pointed it out to him he can fire his short bow certainly and because it is hidden to him he will need to do a flat check roll a D20 and get an 11 or higher on that roll in order to succeed at targeting it note that the hidden condition also works against allies too if for example you don't have dark vision and your ally tells you where they are and he wants to heal them now he could do that but he has a better idea he is going to stride three times to get in the Goblin's face and because the goblin no longer is behind cover we will assume that the fighter can now directly observe the Goblin and because the fighter has attack of opportunity this Goblin is kind of pinned assuming that it there is some regular terrain around it it could step and then try to get away again but it can't really become undetected again without risking an attack of opportunity to get far enough away to hide and sneak again this Goblin if it knows what's good for it is going to surrender on its next turn and that's if it survives what the wizard is going to try to do to it we now return to our wizard so he's going to stride actually three times to get very close to the goblin just in case it tries to bolt away getting closer here matters because even if the goblin were to bolt away and avoid an attack of opportunity from The Fighter the difficult terrain that's in this Forest likely would keep it within the Wizard's range how the wizard has a feat called reach spell this is how meta magic Works in Pathfinder any spellcaster can take Feats that let them apply enhancements to their spell however it costs one action to set it up and it increases the range of the next spell he casts by 30 feet so this Goblin can try to trudge through the forest but the wizard can cast electric Arc or acid Splash also magic Missile at a 120 foot range if he wants to spell that next our Rogue is already stabilized so it's no longer an initiative and our Goblin is going to try to make a break for it our fighter makes an attack of opportunity he's holding a short bow but he's going to use his fist and he hits he does 1d4 plus four damage because of his strength and this does enough damage to knock out the goblin because fists do non-lethal damage in Pathfinder now that both fights are over they can both recover and Recovery is done differently in both systems I'll just go over this briefly in DND they can do what's called a short rest which takes one hour and they have to not do anything strenuous during that time to get hit points back you have to spend hit ties which are a daily resource you have a number of hit dice equal to your level so at level one you have one you declare how many hit dice you're spending before doing a short rest and you recover that number of hit dice back you roll the hit Dice and for each hit die you add your Constitution modifier as well also characters who have resources that recharge on a short rest like the Fighter's Second Wind also get back to them and wizards have an ability called Arcane recovery to get back some expanded spell slots they can do this once per day what Pathfinder does is it calls this exploration mode and there are activities that take 10 minutes to complete anyone familiar with old school DND will recognize the turn which lasted 10 minutes in Old School DND and with these 10 minute increments players can use the treat wounds activity if you have enough time you can restore your party members to full health using the medicine skill and a healer's kit Kyra our cleric has the medicine skill and can spend 10 minutes treating in this case the Rogue and she needs a 15 or higher on this medicine check if she succeeds she restores two d8 hit points to the Rogue that increases to 48 on a critical success and if you critically fail it deals damage slashing damage another great benefit is that you can remove the wounded condition that can go away if you successfully treat wounds however there is a cool down to treat wounds the Rogue can have treat wounds attempted on her only once every hour the other way to get rid of it is to be at full health and to rest for 10 minutes in DND they were using a finite resource to heal and in Pathfinder they can theoretically get to full health multiple times during the day also our fighter can use his craft skill to try to repair his shield restoring five hit points on his success so that's the same combat in D and D and Pathfinder I try to be as indifferent and objective as possible when presenting and comparing the mechanics of the two systems would love to see what people think from these side-by-side comparisons whether you prefer one mechanic over the other of course be friendly and respectful to each other in the comments sections in the meantime I want to give a kind of bird's eye view comparing the two systems based off of what is shown in this demonstration but I think I will save that for a part two of this third law school course so if you've liked what you've seen so far please like And subscribe and ring the bell so that you get notified when the next video comes out you might be interested in my second law school video where I go into the design decisions that Pathfinder second edition makes and and the problems it's trying to address in Third Edition DND slash first edition Pathfinder so that's it I've been the rules lawyer and I will see you next time [Music]

Channel: The Rules Lawyer

Views: 54,762

Keywords: rules lawyer, rpg, dnd, d&d

Id: iGCLL8ZUIVE

Length: 85min 2sec (5102 seconds)

Published: Thu May 25 2023