I hope that this is abundantly clear by what I say and point out in the video, but I do not support WotC or Hasbro. This video is meant to compare two similar products and show you that one is clearly better than the other in nearly every way! Just felt I should make that point clear ❤
That is the clear big takeaway from this video! No worries. The Pathfinder 2E Beginner Box is an amazing product. I will say, not out of any defense of WoTC/Hasbro, that the D&D Essentials Box makes up for a lot of deficiencies in the D&D Starter set.
@@masteringmarv446 The problem with the D&D Essentials Box is that it has one of the most pathetic adventures I've ever encountered. It was the only 5e product I've ever bought and after looking through the adventure I have never opened it again.
It gets you to level 2, plus there is a short adventure called "Troubles in Otari" which is specifically designed to attach onto the adventure in the box that takes you to level 5. Edit: level 5, not level 4.
Yeah, apparently written examples of the dialogue between GM and Player go all the way back to AD&D 1st Ed. I read through Gygax’s DMG for the first time this year and was surprised to see a transcription for a dungeon crawl.
That makes sense! Dnd is pretty hard to explain sometimes. I think it's easier to understand when you see it in action and writing out an example of play is probably the next best thing. I guess it's something I just didn't notice much before
The other amazing thing is that the tie in adventure, Troubles in Otari, is designed to only need what you get in the beginner box all the way to 5th level. It is also great at teaching GMs how to run the game and showing different styles of play.
Colour coding is a really basic but useful method to ease people in. Usually find myself sounding really sarcastic (unintentionally) when telling people "A D12 is the one where the highest number is a 12" Also would be interested to hear your thoughts and learning process as you go along with pathfinder.
I do believe my lost mines came with a singular blank character sheet, which I photocopied, or had others print off. Great video!!! It was really awesome to see how much is included in the Pathfinder box. Definitely WAY more bang for your buck.
I wondered if that was the case! That'd be wild if they didn't give you at least one. Still, no info on character creation floored me. Basically if you want the starter set to do what the beginner box can do, you need to buy the $23 set then buy the $50 PHB and the $50 DMG. That's wild to me
@@misfitadventurers I completely agree! I like how the pathfinder one gives the players the ability to continue on with only what is in the box. Makes playing a whole lot more accessible for people.
My copy of Lost Mines came with pregens and no blank character sheets. My copy of Dragon of Icespire Keep came with blank character sheets and no pregens.
I'm also trying to get into Pathfinder. I'd love to see videos about resources / tools that make it smoother to run. I did get the Beginner Box for the first edition about 10 years ago, and it sounds like the second edition box has even more stuff.
The D&D Starter set (at least the one I have) comes with 1 empty character sheet, but just the front sheet. So no space for backstory and spells and stuff.
The d&d starter box really did throw you into the deep end, and to get the most out of it I had to buy both the players guide and gm guide AND a deck of cards to hand out for conditions. It's an interesting adventure but the GM has to really flesh it out though during play. The next d&d box sets were a bit better on actually introducing new players and new gms to the actual game play.
I’ve got the DnD Stormwreck Isle starter set. It’s a well written adventure and is fun to run but would have benefitted from separate players maps, handouts and a battle map of some sort + counters. Overall I felt I didn’t get a lot for my money.
Registering my interest in seeing you play through the beginner box and follow up adventure! Also, comment for the algorithm and all that jazz :) (and, ideally, then taking those characters into Abomination Vaults! It’s a very natural follow on, as it’s also set in the town of Otari, and starts at level 4 IIRC! It ends at level 12 I think. It’s a kind of light-medium cosmic horror theme, dealing with malevolent Outer Gods and their mortal servant cultists. Very fun adventure!)
Great video. As an old school role player I grew up with the Boxes (Dungeons and Dragons, Ghostbusters and Marvel Heroes) and to be honest the Pathfinder box feels like it will set someone on the correct track for new GM’s and players. The Dungeons and Dragons Starter Box you reviewed looked shockingly bad, a good quest but nothing substantial to retain new players. I retired from DM’ing after the 3.5 to 4 DnD Fiasco. The pathfinder box is bringing me back to GM’ing after 10 years away. (Thanks Humble Bundle, when I thought I was out, they drag me back in)
Thanks for the video! Actually, one of the questions about Pathfinder that I'm still not sure about is: do we actually need that Core Rulebook? I was told that Archives of Nethys has all the rules in them, and it's free and approved by Paizo. And we're paying for lore and illustrations. But Core Rulebook is not a place where I'd expect to see lore. So... are we just paying for illustrations when buying a Core Rulebook? Or does it, in fact, include a lot of lore?
Good question! As far as I can tell, the Core Rulebook includes 26 pages about the setting of Golarion, some of the ancestries found there, and the religions people worship. But I believe that information is also on Archives of Nethys
Very helpful video, seems like the Pathfinder starter set is out of stock everywhere in the UK at the moment.. I wonder why? I’ll get one as soon as they available again.
It's pretty wild the difference between these two products. I am super impressed with the PF2 box. Tho it's worth mentioning that the 5e starter set has a full mini campaign whereas PF2 has just a mini dungeon crawl, so even though there is much more content in the PF2 box, you will get a *lot* more play out of the 5e one. Not that I'm planning on playing 5e again mind you.
I think I can explain why the D&D adventure is seemingly shorter than the Pf2e one despite covering more levels: Pf2e expects each character level to last about the same amount of time, whereas in 5e some levels are significantly shorter than others (Much less XP is needed to go from 1 to 2 than 3 to 4, even relative to the threats at your level) I hope I explained that well enough!
I think you're probably spot on. I've noticed that the leveling progress is different between the two systems. Dnd eventually grinds to a halt while Pathfinder's stays consistent the entire time
@@misfitadventurers I like Nuemenora, and backed a few others like Coyote and Crow. One nitpick I have with the 3rd party ks books is the thickness of their books. Some of them are super thick and hard to use regularly. :) 😀 I wish they would split some of them into two.
There are a couple of videos here on UA-cam about how Foundry VTT works with Pathfinder 2e and it's absolutely incredible. If you want to stick with Roll20, that's cool, but those Foundry videos blew me away, and I don't even like playing online. Also, something interesting about this OGL stuff is that it seems to hurt people who started out with 5e way more than those of us who've been into this hobbie a little longer. For us, it's more like "Oh, yes. D&D screws up like this every other decade. We just switch to other systems until they come back to us with a ton of apologies and promises for their next edition. 🤷♂️"
We thought really hard about switching to Foundry, but decided to stay with roll20 for a number of reasons. Might make a video about it eventually. But I agree that there there are a lot of really cool features that make Foundry VTT extremely tempting! And I completely agree about this being especially difficult to people that started with 5e and never experimented with other systems. My group has some experience with other systems, but not much. That will be the biggest hurdle for us.
Maybe I'm just OCD or something, but the "set" of dice that are not all the same color really annoys me. You fool! Emily tricked you into doing the heavy lifting. It is like getting a promotion without a raise. Regarding starter boxes, D&D did have one similar to the Pathfinder 2e one - back in 1991. This was the "Black Box" that came with dice, standees a gridded map, a 64-page rulebook, a teaching adventure (Escape from Zanzar's Dungeon), and a DM's screen. TSR released something like 3 adventure modules for this set. The rules were the BECMI rules; TSR did not release a starter kit for AD&D 2nd edition that was being published in parallel at the time. However, the best starter sets today come from Chaosium. For example, the Call of Cthulhu starter set includes a *solo* adventure designed to teach the mechanics of the game. an introductory rulebook, a book with three adventure modules, pre-generated character sheets, blank character sheets, props (handouts) for all these adventures, and dice. The Runequest one is similar.
@@hanng1242 not really. New players (new to ttrpg's) are often overwhelmed and are actually grateful. It's actually something I have done for a long time when introducing new players as it helps them keep track.
@@alananimus9145 I was a new player once. I never needed dice in a multiple colors. This was even back in the day when RPG's were gatekept by people who could do math because of THAC0, so we were doubly disadvantaged. You kids need to get off my lawn. 😝
Pathfinder of course! Paizo isn't trying to steal all the third party publishers money directly or indirectly like WotC/Hasbro! Plugging a WotC/Hasbro product is disheartening but I hope the video does well regardless, and that no new people go out and actually buy any WotC products, maybe no Hasbro products as a whole!
I sincerely hope that me pointing out how lacking their starter set is while also expressing my disappointment in the company and intentions to not support them financially by any means doesn't qualify as plugging a WotC product.
I hope that this is abundantly clear by what I say and point out in the video, but I do not support WotC or Hasbro. This video is meant to compare two similar products and show you that one is clearly better than the other in nearly every way! Just felt I should make that point clear ❤
That is the clear big takeaway from this video! No worries. The Pathfinder 2E Beginner Box is an amazing product.
I will say, not out of any defense of WoTC/Hasbro, that the D&D Essentials Box makes up for a lot of deficiencies in the D&D Starter set.
That's what I've heard as well. Wish I could have checked it out before all the drama happened
This beginner’s box actually looks useful!
Bestiary, best if you're French, beast if you're not.
@@masteringmarv446 The problem with the D&D Essentials Box is that it has one of the most pathetic adventures I've ever encountered. It was the only 5e product I've ever bought and after looking through the adventure I have never opened it again.
I like how you can run a whole mini-campaign with just the contents of the Pathfinder Beginner Box.
It gets you to level 2, plus there is a short adventure called "Troubles in Otari" which is specifically designed to attach onto the adventure in the box that takes you to level 5.
Edit: level 5, not level 4.
I’d really like to see more videos of your learning process of PF2E; be that solo adventure or exploring various GM tools, like the condition cards.
I like the subtle shelf-love for Pathfinder behind you. Along with the new sha-woord!
Great video and insight, as always! FLGS here I come!
I'll take all the Pathfinder content you can give. I feel like a lot of us are learning together.
Yeah, apparently written examples of the dialogue between GM and Player go all the way back to AD&D 1st Ed.
I read through Gygax’s DMG for the first time this year and was surprised to see a transcription for a dungeon crawl.
That makes sense! Dnd is pretty hard to explain sometimes. I think it's easier to understand when you see it in action and writing out an example of play is probably the next best thing. I guess it's something I just didn't notice much before
I feel like all the RPGs I played in the 90s had examples of play like that.
I'm also starting a new journey to learning. I think it be useful to see you also going through that too, so we can all be learning together.
The other amazing thing is that the tie in adventure, Troubles in Otari, is designed to only need what you get in the beginner box all the way to 5th level. It is also great at teaching GMs how to run the game and showing different styles of play.
Colour coding is a really basic but useful method to ease people in. Usually find myself sounding really sarcastic (unintentionally) when telling people "A D12 is the one where the highest number is a 12"
Also would be interested to hear your thoughts and learning process as you go along with pathfinder.
For the D10 I often say: “the tasty looking one”, for some odd reason that always works. But color coding works a lot better :D
I do believe my lost mines came with a singular blank character sheet, which I photocopied, or had others print off. Great video!!! It was really awesome to see how much is included in the Pathfinder box. Definitely WAY more bang for your buck.
I wondered if that was the case! That'd be wild if they didn't give you at least one. Still, no info on character creation floored me. Basically if you want the starter set to do what the beginner box can do, you need to buy the $23 set then buy the $50 PHB and the $50 DMG. That's wild to me
@@misfitadventurers I completely agree! I like how the pathfinder one gives the players the ability to continue on with only what is in the box. Makes playing a whole lot more accessible for people.
My copy of Lost Mines came with pregens and no blank character sheets. My copy of Dragon of Icespire Keep came with blank character sheets and no pregens.
I'm also trying to get into Pathfinder. I'd love to see videos about resources / tools that make it smoother to run. I did get the Beginner Box for the first edition about 10 years ago, and it sounds like the second edition box has even more stuff.
I ALMOST bought the Starfinder beginner box this weekend. I held off because I'm waiting for MothershipRPG to ship out.
The D&D Starter set (at least the one I have) comes with 1 empty character sheet, but just the front sheet. So no space for backstory and spells and stuff.
The d&d starter box really did throw you into the deep end, and to get the most out of it I had to buy both the players guide and gm guide AND a deck of cards to hand out for conditions.
It's an interesting adventure but the GM has to really flesh it out though during play.
The next d&d box sets were a bit better on actually introducing new players and new gms to the actual game play.
I’ve got the DnD Stormwreck Isle starter set. It’s a well written adventure and is fun to run but would have benefitted from separate players maps, handouts and a battle map of some sort + counters. Overall I felt I didn’t get a lot for my money.
I think the Pathfinder beginner box is far more bang for your buck, plus better at teaching new players and new GMs.
pathfinder is awesome glad to hear youre coming to play it
Registering my interest in seeing you play through the beginner box and follow up adventure! Also, comment for the algorithm and all that jazz :)
(and, ideally, then taking those characters into Abomination Vaults! It’s a very natural follow on, as it’s also set in the town of Otari, and starts at level 4 IIRC! It ends at level 12 I think. It’s a kind of light-medium cosmic horror theme, dealing with malevolent Outer Gods and their mortal servant cultists. Very fun adventure!)
Great video. As an old school role player I grew up with the Boxes (Dungeons and Dragons, Ghostbusters and Marvel Heroes) and to be honest the Pathfinder box feels like it will set someone on the correct track for new GM’s and players. The Dungeons and Dragons Starter Box you reviewed looked shockingly bad, a good quest but nothing substantial to retain new players. I retired from DM’ing after the 3.5 to 4 DnD Fiasco. The pathfinder box is bringing me back to GM’ing after 10 years away. (Thanks Humble Bundle, when I thought I was out, they drag me back in)
Thanks for the video! Actually, one of the questions about Pathfinder that I'm still not sure about is: do we actually need that Core Rulebook? I was told that Archives of Nethys has all the rules in them, and it's free and approved by Paizo. And we're paying for lore and illustrations. But Core Rulebook is not a place where I'd expect to see lore. So... are we just paying for illustrations when buying a Core Rulebook? Or does it, in fact, include a lot of lore?
Good question! As far as I can tell, the Core Rulebook includes 26 pages about the setting of Golarion, some of the ancestries found there, and the religions people worship. But I believe that information is also on Archives of Nethys
Very helpful video, seems like the Pathfinder starter set is out of stock everywhere in the UK at the moment.. I wonder why? I’ll get one as soon as they available again.
Same. I keep checking to see if anyone has it in. Eventually more will turn up in stock.
Saw those PF2e books behind you right after video started. You really took a plunge :)
It's pretty wild the difference between these two products. I am super impressed with the PF2 box. Tho it's worth mentioning that the 5e starter set has a full mini campaign whereas PF2 has just a mini dungeon crawl, so even though there is much more content in the PF2 box, you will get a *lot* more play out of the 5e one.
Not that I'm planning on playing 5e again mind you.
True but the PF2 box gives you all the pointers a new GM would need to make their own adventures.
It's an opportunity to see what Pathfinder's like 🤓
I think I can explain why the D&D adventure is seemingly shorter than the Pf2e one despite covering more levels: Pf2e expects each character level to last about the same amount of time, whereas in 5e some levels are significantly shorter than others (Much less XP is needed to go from 1 to 2 than 3 to 4, even relative to the threats at your level) I hope I explained that well enough!
I think you're probably spot on. I've noticed that the leveling progress is different between the two systems. Dnd eventually grinds to a halt while Pathfinder's stays consistent the entire time
:) Many Congrats for this video ! Happy Adventuring and Good Luck to your Questions in the " Pathfinder " RPG !
Thanks!
I hope you can have time to do some other fantasy rpgs starters, like Nuemenora or others.
I have played pathfinder, and went back go d&d.
I hope to explore more than just Pathfinder. I'm actually super interested in checking out Numenera and the Cypher System!
@@misfitadventurers I like Nuemenora, and backed a few others like Coyote and Crow. One nitpick I have with the 3rd party ks books is the thickness of their books. Some of them are super thick and hard to use regularly. :) 😀 I wish they would split some of them into two.
There are a couple of videos here on UA-cam about how Foundry VTT works with Pathfinder 2e and it's absolutely incredible. If you want to stick with Roll20, that's cool, but those Foundry videos blew me away, and I don't even like playing online.
Also, something interesting about this OGL stuff is that it seems to hurt people who started out with 5e way more than those of us who've been into this hobbie a little longer. For us, it's more like "Oh, yes. D&D screws up like this every other decade. We just switch to other systems until they come back to us with a ton of apologies and promises for their next edition. 🤷♂️"
We thought really hard about switching to Foundry, but decided to stay with roll20 for a number of reasons. Might make a video about it eventually. But I agree that there there are a lot of really cool features that make Foundry VTT extremely tempting!
And I completely agree about this being especially difficult to people that started with 5e and never experimented with other systems. My group has some experience with other systems, but not much. That will be the biggest hurdle for us.
Wait, the log at the beginning has the shape of the dragon's head... Has anyone noticed that?
Great vid as always. Vox Machina S2 makes me emo fr
Right?! It's great, but man does it hit right in the feels
Skeleton, skeletal giant. It's for searching. You only need to find the skeleton section for all those kinds of creatures.
I am converting lost mines into Pathfinder. It's a deathtrap.
:) Many Congrats for your informations ! PF2E is greater and better than D&D5E , for RPG players ! For the first time RPG players !
There’s just no comparison between the two boxes. WotC look really really underwhelming and slipshod by comparison to Paizo.
Maybe I'm just OCD or something, but the "set" of dice that are not all the same color really annoys me.
You fool! Emily tricked you into doing the heavy lifting. It is like getting a promotion without a raise.
Regarding starter boxes, D&D did have one similar to the Pathfinder 2e one - back in 1991. This was the "Black Box" that came with dice, standees a gridded map, a 64-page rulebook, a teaching adventure (Escape from Zanzar's Dungeon), and a DM's screen. TSR released something like 3 adventure modules for this set. The rules were the BECMI rules; TSR did not release a starter kit for AD&D 2nd edition that was being published in parallel at the time.
However, the best starter sets today come from Chaosium. For example, the Call of Cthulhu starter set includes a *solo* adventure designed to teach the mechanics of the game. an introductory rulebook, a book with three adventure modules, pre-generated character sheets, blank character sheets, props (handouts) for all these adventures, and dice. The Runequest one is similar.
The different colors are to make it easier for new players.
@@alananimus9145 fine, but they *are not the same color* surely that must annoy some new players as well.
@@hanng1242 not really. New players (new to ttrpg's) are often overwhelmed and are actually grateful. It's actually something I have done for a long time when introducing new players as it helps them keep track.
@@alananimus9145 I was a new player once. I never needed dice in a multiple colors. This was even back in the day when RPG's were gatekept by people who could do math because of THAC0, so we were doubly disadvantaged. You kids need to get off my lawn. 😝
@@hanng1242 I remember a box for D&D in the 80's with coloured dices. Am I mis-remembering ?
It’s pronounced “BEST-iary”. 😊
There are multiple accepted pronunciations of that word, my guy. She said it correctly.
Bestiary is pronounced BESS-chee-air-ee.
There are 4 different accepted pronunciations of that word, fam. She said it correctly.
Hell no.
Pathfinder of course! Paizo isn't trying to steal all the third party publishers money directly or indirectly like WotC/Hasbro!
Plugging a WotC/Hasbro product is disheartening but I hope the video does well regardless, and that no new people go out and actually buy any WotC products, maybe no Hasbro products as a whole!
I sincerely hope that me pointing out how lacking their starter set is while also expressing my disappointment in the company and intentions to not support them financially by any means doesn't qualify as plugging a WotC product.