Hello, for the last 3 years I’ve been running a Dnd 5e campaign, due to recent events with wotc we’ve decided to stop supporting them and switch to of 2e. Are there any good resources for switching? I’m under the impressions that some systems are similar while others are completely different.
Does something like a switching guide exist or is it best to just start from scratch and learn as we go?
I would personally recommend you start over at level 1, and discard any notions of how things might work that you carry over from other systems (even besides 5e).
In general for TTRPGs in the larger sphere, every system is its own thing, and looking at rules with fresh eyes and no preconceived notions of how it might work tends to help interpret and understand them better without tripping yourself up on what you thought they might be.
The rules are legally free and you can check them out in places like the Second Edition section of Archives of Nethys and PF2eTools (if that name sounds familiar and you have concerns, worry not! They have contact with Paizo to keep them in the clear and avoid content that doesn’t fall under the free use rules, and were even present at PaizoCon 2023!).
If you want an excellent tutorial to get started, the Beginner Box is great at teaching as you go. Hope you enjoy the system!
Why is that?
I brought my campaign over from 5e at Level 7, and though it’s been a challenge with speedbumps and retcons, there is just no way I’d consider starting the campaign again at Level 1. Not after all of that time dedicated to the characters and their stories.
And that’s great that it’s worked for you - but for a majority of tables, especially those that only play 5e, it can be a challenge to adapt to another system. There is a tendency to assume things work the same that needs to be carefully picked apart, and one of these things is the split between individual power and party power on the player side. On the GM side, it’s the tendency to be fast and loose with encounter balancing.
I’ve seen a lot of tables try to start playing PF2e carrying over from 5e and if their heart isn’t in it with the notion of trying an altogether new, different system (rather than just “D&D but…”) then it tends to end pretty disastrously - GMs homebrewing right out the gate in ways that make the game hard-to-impossible to enjoy or building insanely difficult encounters, players building their character exclusively for individual synergy without thinking of the party and showing a lack of understanding of using skill actions to assist each other, or a lack of understanding of how to manipulate the action economy of the enemy.
Any one of these things individually is something that can be slowly learned out of with time, but a lot of times I see these happen at the same time and you end up with lopsided parties that don’t know how to assist each other against insanely difficult encounters and it’s just TPK after TPK which leaves people with a bad taste and perception of the system, when the system itself isn’t at fault here.
I see that you moderate the TTRPGs community over at your instance (which I’ve greatly enjoyed btw) so I can only assume you have experience with a lot of systems, in which case I can understand why it seems a lot simpler to you. But for tables where people have only played 5e, or have played other systems but in recent memory have only played 5e (I don’t know which OP’s is, but at the very least the latter given they’ve played 5e the last 3 years) there can be a lot of friction.
Additionally, I wasn’t recommending the characters be carried over except at level 1 or abruptly ending the campaign when I said ‘start over’. I was recommending “finish your campaign in 5e first and then start over in PF2e with fresh eyes.” Characters in PF2e are very different and people tend to have built expectations of what they can and can’t do by now or a specific mix of mechanic and flavor that will be different in PF2e coming from 5e. Some people are okay with that, some really aren’t. But everyone is okay with starting a new game, so finishing up your ongoing one rather than swapping halfway is the safe route.
What works for a table might not work for another, and the perspective I got of OP’s table is that they would benefit from starting over once their 5e campaign finished.
EDIT: Especially given that OP was already 1-2 weeks from finishing his campaign, wrapping it up was the most sensible thing.
Sorry, I think something went wrong in our communications here. I wasn’t trying to second guess you or undermine you. I was trying to understand your perspective, simply because my own experience diverged from yours. I wanted to hear new perspectives, not crush them :)
Oh no, I wasn’t assuming as such! Sorry, I tend to get really into the weeds with my responses and tend to be really formal in the way I write and I have been made aware that can come off aggressive without context before. :s I wasn’t trying to force my opinion, just trying to be as thorough as possible in explaining what I meant since you asked.
I was trying to explain that I really was glad it worked great for you, that wasn’t sarcastic! But it’s just that I’ve seen it break down really badly for tables that are less experienced with TTRPGs and since OP was so close to finishing his game and I couldn’t know that much about his table’s level of experience and they had spent so much time with a single game, I felt it’d make the most sense to just wrap up and start over with fresh eyes since it’s a brand new system.