this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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I'd argue it's not more complex, just different. Once you play 3 action combat you'll never want to go back.
People get intimidated by the depth of PF2e, but just remember that DnD5e/N is also a fairly complex system where you only reference specific rules when you need to, same as PF2e. The advantage is that PF2e is (in my opinion) more cohesive and better covers edge cases.
The downside of PF2 is if you try to engage with the core of the online community with this "rules for if I want/need them" attitude, someone will come out of the shadows to shank you.
There's a rabid "by the rules, and all the rules" cohort within the community, and they are pretty effective at chasing new players away.
I'd argue DnD is no different and we only see it less because half the DnD player base is busy home brewing Pathfinder content into 5e
Fair. I definitely haven't engaged with the 5e community to the same extent I have with the PF2 one. I never became a special interest to me the way Pathfinder has.
I've always felt the community was extremely kind and welcoming, personally. The publisher even goes out of their way to support and represent LGBTQ+ in their official worldbuilding.
There's always going to be elitists in every hobby of course, they do exist in PF2e as well. But it's not the majority by any stretch.
I don't know. My experience with the community has been a lot of people yelling "You're playing my fantasy XCOM board game wrong. You should probably play a rules-light game," and no one stepping up to challenge them.
Hmmm, I'm very sorry to hear that, honestly. I'd say the average PF2e player takes it a bit more seriously than the average DnD5e/N player, but not a whole lot.
Perhaps it's the part of the community you engaged with? Obviously every forum/chat server is going to have it's own flavor. The older communities that started with PF1e and still focus there are going to be more elitist in general just because of how PF1e came to be and it's target audience. But PF2e is much more widely targeted.
Discord isn't free, private, or open source, but it does host several great PF2e communities I participate in if you'd like a recommendation. But if you are just sharing your personal experience and aren't looking for a "solution", that's totally valid and I completely respect that.
Yeah, I'm mostly just... warning people to be prepared. The Paizo forums and the subreddit both house a significant number of people that actively chase people away for treating the game as a general purpose fantasy RPG. And as someone who champions PF2 as a really solid roleplaying game, and not just a tactical combat game, I've been repeatedly and harshly told I'm doing it wrong.
I haven’t seen a lot of that, but what I have seen comes down to organized play vs home games. The online community has a very strong organized play culture, which requires closely adhering to RAW and fairly strict guidelines for play in order to keep the ability to jump and character into any table of a random session. I’ve found that being clear about if this is a Society game or a home game helps to avoid those misunderstandings.
Any play podcast recs? Maybe listening to a few games will give me a better sense than just reading.
Hells Rebels on the Find the Path Presents feed. Hands down.
If you like a little more silly/lewd Glass Cannon campaign 2 is a lot of fun.
Mortals & Portals is very good. They made the decision to use PF2e like 2 weeks before they started recording, and learned the game on the fly. Sometimes they trip over the rules, but they also illustrate how to fail forward in that regard.
They also run it as a Theatre of the Mind game, which a lot of people will try to convince you isn't really feasible. They fease it just fine, so I like it as an example.
Narrative Declaration also has several campaigns on YouTube. Rotgrind and Rotgoons are campaigns set in a gritty homebrew world. They had an aborted Abomination Vaults campaign that started off with the game's beginner box. They're currently running Rusthenge, which is a different beginner's adventure. They also have a series of "teaching Pathfinder 2e to VTubers" campaigns, which... They're good, but they're just the beginner's box over and over again, with different cartoon variety streamers. They use Foundry, and play gridded combat.