4E was the one where they wanted to shift to digital services, but they didn't ever materialize. (In case you're wondering why it never happened - I was on the job market in Seattle at the time; they were offering a 60k salary for a senior engineer with a combo of rare talents in the same city Amazon was offering 90k to a junior engineer.)
5E was a reaction to 4E being hated by a large portion of their fans, and then Stranger Things and Critical Role resulted in them lucking into the most successful D&D edition yet, so I think their policy was mostly "Don't do anything, you might break it again."
Latest Pathfinder, though chunky rules wise given it's origin, has been doing a good job taking the 2nd place of best known RPG especially after the whole WoTC going after third party content creators and pissing all over the community. There's also a new boom in indie TTRPGs which is nice.
How's Pathfinder? People seem to like it, but I've also heard it described as number-crunchy like 3.5e which I think would be a step in the wrong direction.
Pathfinder 2e isn't number crunchy, but it is rules-heavy.
With numbers, the specifically max out the counting by limiting every roll to d20 + Circumstance bonus + Status Bonus + Item Bonus. The exceptions to this are quite rare. If you get more than one bonus of a given type, pick the highest number. So you don't get huge number stacks you have to add.
There are lots of little rules like falling damage, or grappling rules, or counterspelling, that are generally easily referenced with robust fan-made officially sanctioned reference tools.
People who tell you it's less complicated than 5e are lying, but its core elements are super elegant and play really well. Expect a tactical game in combat, nicely streamlined exploration, and lotsa fun choices for players to make during chargen and during combat
What is the difference between a circumstance bonus and status bonus?
I started reading the book than stopped because I have no one to play anything with except for 5e. But character creation looked super fun. I liked all the choices each level.
Yeah it's more complicated that 5e, but 5e is often not complicated enough where it needs to be, which is still why my group is largely still on 3.5e (and also we have all the books
Pathfinder 2e is basically just D&D done better than D&D itself has ever done. It's like if 3.5e had been refined into a more streamlined and modern game with a bunch of the bad-design-decisions that are baked into the fabric of D&D mitigated as much as they possibly can without just ripping them out, and they found a way to keep the variety and customizability of 3.5e but without as many exponentially compounding consequences.
Basically, where D&D went down this path of flattening out the splat and turning characters into basically straight line level up progressions with as few choices as possible and no room for character building (that is, you choose your class, your major class feature, and then that's it you're done you just level up and never think about anything again unless you're a magic user who gets to choose which spell you want to be allowed to cast once per day), Pathfinder 2e went down the path of pruning the sprawl of options down to a few major branches for each class, and then fleshed that out with a lot of little choices that aren't particularly meaningful but which leave tons of room for flavorful character building and which make sure that every level everyone is making some sort of choice no matter how small and fluffy that choice is.
4E was the one where they wanted to shift to digital services, but they didn't ever materialize. (In case you're wondering why it never happened - I was on the job market in Seattle at the time; they were offering a 60k salary for a senior engineer with a combo of rare talents in the same city Amazon was offering 90k to a junior engineer.)
5E was a reaction to 4E being hated by a large portion of their fans, and then Stranger Things and Critical Role resulted in them lucking into the most successful D&D edition yet, so I think their policy was mostly "Don't do anything, you might break it again."
Looks like they might break it again
I sure hope so.
Any other RPG breaking out as the biggest one would do wonders for the hobby.
Latest Pathfinder, though chunky rules wise given it's origin, has been doing a good job taking the 2nd place of best known RPG especially after the whole WoTC going after third party content creators and pissing all over the community. There's also a new boom in indie TTRPGs which is nice.
How's Pathfinder? People seem to like it, but I've also heard it described as number-crunchy like 3.5e which I think would be a step in the wrong direction.
Pathfinder 2e isn't number crunchy, but it is rules-heavy.
With numbers, the specifically max out the counting by limiting every roll to d20 + Circumstance bonus + Status Bonus + Item Bonus. The exceptions to this are quite rare. If you get more than one bonus of a given type, pick the highest number. So you don't get huge number stacks you have to add.
There are lots of little rules like falling damage, or grappling rules, or counterspelling, that are generally easily referenced with robust fan-made officially sanctioned reference tools.
People who tell you it's less complicated than 5e are lying, but its core elements are super elegant and play really well. Expect a tactical game in combat, nicely streamlined exploration, and lotsa fun choices for players to make during chargen and during combat
What is the difference between a circumstance bonus and status bonus?
I started reading the book than stopped because I have no one to play anything with except for 5e. But character creation looked super fun. I liked all the choices each level.
Circumstance bonuses involve the situation you find yourself in, Status bonuses are straight up boosts and buffs to your being. Often magical
Makes sense. I like the simplicity. I'd even consider stealing that as a house rule for other similar rpg's.
Yeah it's more complicated that 5e, but 5e is often not complicated enough where it needs to be, which is still why my group is largely still on 3.5e (and also we have all the books
Pathfinder 2e is basically just D&D done better than D&D itself has ever done. It's like if 3.5e had been refined into a more streamlined and modern game with a bunch of the bad-design-decisions that are baked into the fabric of D&D mitigated as much as they possibly can without just ripping them out, and they found a way to keep the variety and customizability of 3.5e but without as many exponentially compounding consequences.
Basically, where D&D went down this path of flattening out the splat and turning characters into basically straight line level up progressions with as few choices as possible and no room for character building (that is, you choose your class, your major class feature, and then that's it you're done you just level up and never think about anything again unless you're a magic user who gets to choose which spell you want to be allowed to cast once per day), Pathfinder 2e went down the path of pruning the sprawl of options down to a few major branches for each class, and then fleshed that out with a lot of little choices that aren't particularly meaningful but which leave tons of room for flavorful character building and which make sure that every level everyone is making some sort of choice no matter how small and fluffy that choice is.