Goblins are kooky lil footballheads that love pickles and hate dogs
Gnomes will literally die if they get bored for too long
Kobolds can cower so pathetically it causes enemies to pull their punches
Ratfolk can store objects in their cheek pouches
You can play an animate plant (e.g rosebush, vines, cactus, pumpkin, sunflower)
You can play an animated doll
You can play an awakened animal
Goblins also love fire and can get feats to gain buffs when they set themselves on fire in combat
You can be an element bender
You can play a swashbuckler and make "I do a cool backflip" an entire mechanical thing that gives you buffs
3 words: Goblin Spoon Gun
Other people have mentioned how cleanly PF2e plays with stuff like 3 action combat, having DC's always just be your bonus +10 is great, and crits are worth mentioning as well - 10 over a DC is a critical success, 10 under a critical fail, with consequences in most situations - but the flavour is what I love the most. The setting is still a fantasy kitchen sink, but it's so much more detailed, creative, and expansive than anything D&D put out, able to cater to whatever ideas you throw at it. There are an incredible number of Adventure Paths, Modules, and Scenarios covering every adventure you could want, and they're littered with plot threads for GMs to build on or ignore as they like - plus, you can use all the lore from 1e still, because they didn't pull any silly bullshit with remaking the universe between editions. Then for 2e especially, there's an incredible amount of mandatory flavour to character creation, choosing the specifics of your ancestry and class's mechanics, and developing them as you level up, with an enormous number of options in order to bring your specific idea to life.
Never played 1e, but my favorite points for 2e are:
For players: The amount of freedom you have to create and run a character can't be overstated. The system is feat based, so two players with the same race+class combo can have vastly different characters. There's actual options to combine races, not just "human+elf and human+orc are the only mixed people in the universe". The three actions system is so clean and streamlined that once you use it you can never go back to the weirdness of dnd 5e. Also the classes are actually balanced, if you are a fighter player you won't feel left behind because your mage friend learned to conjure meteor storms at the same time you learned to attack for the third time in a round.
For DMs: The game has real rules and restrictions, you won't need to magically divine bonuses and penalities if your player decides to do some weird action or create rulings on the spot.
Pathfinder 1e is basically the old absurd buildcrafting of the D&D 3.5e splat sprawl, but with a solid balance pass to make it more workable.
Pathfinder 2e is basically "what if D&D 5e had decided to fix core issues with D&D's design and also gone all in on making every character class flavorful and varied and also balanced it pretty well at the same time, instead of doing the exact opposite of all of that like it did."
In my experience when you get familiar with DnD you start thinking a lot of "I wish I could play this class this way" or "I wish there was a system for x or y". Now you could stick with DnD and create homebrew these yourself but if you don't want to you can use the already rigorously tested and researched material from Paizo. My personal opinion having played PF 1e and 2e I prefer 1e.
Tired of making up house rules for crafting (and other stuff) in 5e (or buying splat books for it)? They already made rules for it, in the core rules!
Players don't want to shell out money for a new rulebook? Paizo is literally giving the rules away for free.
There's way more options for everything, the leveling makes more sense, it's more polished, and Paizo staff is unionized.
Free stuff isn’t as much of a selling point since getting PDFs of the DnD rules is trivially easy with a simple google, it’s essentially free for any individual with even an inkling of piracy in their bones.
Every group I’ve ever been in has just shared the relevant PDFs with everyone
While it's easy enough to get D&D's rules for free, I think that, properly emphasised, it is a selling point - they're completely free. Unless you want to buy the art and lore, you can access their official database of every single class, feat, monster, hazard, and item, for free, for ever. It really cannot be understated how much good will WotC bought with the OGL when they released 3rd edition, and Paizo are even more permissive than that.
the highest selling point of pf1 is that it's good for those who either lack imagination and need the books to create everything for them, or those who think complication equals complexity
Making a level 1 character is easy enough in 3.5, but it really starts piling up. The crazy charts fighters can work with makes me wanna stay as a caster most of the time.
What do you think the best selling point on Pathfinder is?
Other people have mentioned how cleanly PF2e plays with stuff like 3 action combat, having DC's always just be your bonus +10 is great, and crits are worth mentioning as well - 10 over a DC is a critical success, 10 under a critical fail, with consequences in most situations - but the flavour is what I love the most. The setting is still a fantasy kitchen sink, but it's so much more detailed, creative, and expansive than anything D&D put out, able to cater to whatever ideas you throw at it. There are an incredible number of Adventure Paths, Modules, and Scenarios covering every adventure you could want, and they're littered with plot threads for GMs to build on or ignore as they like - plus, you can use all the lore from 1e still, because they didn't pull any silly bullshit with remaking the universe between editions. Then for 2e especially, there's an incredible amount of mandatory flavour to character creation, choosing the specifics of your ancestry and class's mechanics, and developing them as you level up, with an enormous number of options in order to bring your specific idea to life.
Anyway, you should make a goblin.
I like this explanation the best so far
Never played 1e, but my favorite points for 2e are:
For players: The amount of freedom you have to create and run a character can't be overstated. The system is feat based, so two players with the same race+class combo can have vastly different characters. There's actual options to combine races, not just "human+elf and human+orc are the only mixed people in the universe". The three actions system is so clean and streamlined that once you use it you can never go back to the weirdness of dnd 5e. Also the classes are actually balanced, if you are a fighter player you won't feel left behind because your mage friend learned to conjure meteor storms at the same time you learned to attack for the third time in a round.
For DMs: The game has real rules and restrictions, you won't need to magically divine bonuses and penalities if your player decides to do some weird action or create rulings on the spot.
Pathfinder 1e is basically the old absurd buildcrafting of the D&D 3.5e splat sprawl, but with a solid balance pass to make it more workable.
Pathfinder 2e is basically "what if D&D 5e had decided to fix core issues with D&D's design and also gone all in on making every character class flavorful and varied and also balanced it pretty well at the same time, instead of doing the exact opposite of all of that like it did."
In my experience when you get familiar with DnD you start thinking a lot of "I wish I could play this class this way" or "I wish there was a system for x or y". Now you could stick with DnD and create homebrew these yourself but if you don't want to you can use the already rigorously tested and researched material from Paizo. My personal opinion having played PF 1e and 2e I prefer 1e.
Tired of making up house rules for crafting (and other stuff) in 5e (or buying splat books for it)? They already made rules for it, in the core rules!
Players don't want to shell out money for a new rulebook? Paizo is literally giving the rules away for free.
There's way more options for everything, the leveling makes more sense, it's more polished, and Paizo staff is unionized.
This one’s big imo
Free stuff isn’t as much of a selling point since getting PDFs of the DnD rules is trivially easy with a simple google, it’s essentially free for any individual with even an inkling of piracy in their bones.
Every group I’ve ever been in has just shared the relevant PDFs with everyone
While it's easy enough to get D&D's rules for free, I think that, properly emphasised, it is a selling point - they're completely free. Unless you want to buy the art and lore, you can access their official database of every single class, feat, monster, hazard, and item, for free, for ever. It really cannot be understated how much good will WotC bought with the OGL when they released 3rd edition, and Paizo are even more permissive than that.
Is that why the free stuff on Foundry is so good for Pathfinder?
Compared to 5e?
It's like DnD but for adults
the highest selling point of pf1 is that it's good for those who either lack imagination and need the books to create everything for them, or those who think complication equals complexity
as for 2e i have no idea
3.5 and PF 1e are inarguably extremely complex. The argument is whether they are in fact, too complex to facilitate useful roleplay
they are complex, i'm joking about the fact that a lot of the game is basically Accountant Simulator 2 (1 being 3.5)
Making a level 1 character is easy enough in 3.5, but it really starts piling up. The crazy charts fighters can work with makes me wanna stay as a caster most of the time.