Re: Pathfinder advice, 5e or pathfinder? And IC
The flattened mathematics and strict action economy of 5e mean that there is only so much throughput your character can have, especially in combat. Concentration, spell compartmentalization, and mechanics like Bonus actions and Reactions are designed to keep characters from stacking the dominoes too high.
The game is designed to facilitate focused concepts that don't rely on the alchemical admixture of classes, feats, and mechanics. This means that the opportunity cost of suboptimal advancement and character building decisions (such as feats, suboptimal Race/class combos, spell choices, etc) have a much lower opportunity cost. You can stat and play a straight bard with no "tricks" and come out the other end as an effective and meaningful member of the team, which is no mean feat in any D&D game or derivative. No amount of retraining is going to help your single-class Necromancer make a difference in a party of carefully tuned arcanists and do-all clerics.
Furthermore, the limitations on stacking mechanics lets you much more easily look under the hood. It is much simpler for a GM to allow a houseruled customization of a class or race, simply because he doesn't have to worry about the seven billion knockoff effects it'll have. It'd almost be impossible to create accidental Pun-Pun. The potential for customization and broad concepts are there, but they require dialogue with your GM and a tacit acknowledgement of Rule 0.
And the tone, the writing of the game encourages it. The Class, Background, and even the Race sections quietly encourage you to tweak, modify, and make the best changes for your character, your players, and your game overall.
Pathfinder might be a box of nuts and bolts and a thousand tools, but the raw material it gives you to work with is like a handul of ball bearings, and it expects you to build a MIG welder out of stuff you find around the house. D&D 5 gives you a chisel, a lathe, some sandpaper, and a nice, clean piece of hardwood. And then it tells you not to be ashamed if you need to use a bit of glue now and then.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:38, Sun 23 Apr 2017.