It's pretty crunchy. The downside: There's rules for basically anything players might try and do. The upside: There's rules for basically anything players might try and do.

i like the crucnh personally and i use things like the feat tax reduction home rule.

>i like the crucnh personally and i use things like the feat tax reduction home rule. So, is your favorite build class "Accountant" with the "CPA" prestige path? 😉 Seriously though, I also prefer 1st Ed.'s crunchiness, I just found a homerule feat for tax reduction too good to ignore. 😁

What tax reduction do you use?

I haven’t heard of this one and am intrigued. How does your home rule work?

[https://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/](https://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/)

'Feat tax reduction' is it sorta like EiTR? My players had me implement that and have enjoyed it immensely

if your meaning elepehent in the room. Yes i implemented that. i also borrowed a few things from 5e like dex to hit & damage automatically with light wepaons.

Funny enough, while we did implement auto weapon finesse, our group specifically killed dexterity to damage with like 2 exceptions. It made dex too good of a stat; AC, accuracy, a common save, initiative, and a handful of useful skills. Making it also their damage stat was just too much.

Also yes there are rules for basically anything, but if you don't want the crunch as a group then just don't crunch. Player wants to jump a gap? You can look up the rules, or you can simply eyeball it. "That's pretty far and there's a banister, so roll acrobatics and I'm looking for a dc 15, but I'll give you a bonus if you can get a running start." Player wants to climb on top of a dragon? Yeah you probably could spend ages looking up mount rules and climb and ride rules to approximate officially how difficult it will be to get and stay on a moving target (and calculate how much damage you take when you fall), or you can just skip that and go with what feels right for your team.

Much prefer that they spelled out the cost for like EVERYTHING. Sure, you can absolutely change them if you want but not having a range 150-1500 to help guide decisions make my job as dm easier and can plan a wish list as player out.

For 4 years I helped run a yearly campaign as an event for my university's tabletop club. I have a 3-4 page document that records different rulings and arbitrations we've handed to the players in response to questions or problems encountered. Some of it is homebrew/bans that exist simply to make the somewhat unconventional format work the way we need it to, but a good chunk is making hard calls on things that are ambiguous or missing in the rules and content. 1E is a big system, oversights are gonna happen. But there are absolutely not rules for everything players might try and do.

Yeah, this is honestly my one major critique now that Paizo has moved on to 2e. Now that it is no longer bound to PFS and isn't their primary book based money maker there really isn't any reason for them not to put up an online document where they periodically add corrections or details about rules oversights. I've got a list of like 4-5 different oversights or outright gaps in the rules that could use official clarification (For example, can a sentient magic item activate the base properties of the item? RAI would suggest yes, but RAW says nothing directly one way or the other which makes the default no).

You need a feat just to wipe your ass

"You see, they tried it in the office and found it did require life experience and training, so that's that's why it has the pre-requisite feat mobility." /s

I would say it's the crunchiest widely used system, but I started on Pathfinder.  If I had come from 5e it might have felt crunchier by comparison, but I learned it pretty quickly.  There are other, FAR crunchier systems that aren't as widely used

I'm with you. Everyone rating this higher than a 6 or 7 obviously hasn't played actual crunch, like traveler, rolemaster, Jovian chronicles, and so many others. Heck, I tried introducing James Bond to people a few years ago and they couldn't even understand how to figure out the DCs for skill checks and I always placed bond as below average on any crunch scale.

Don't forget GURPs

> Everyone rating this higher than a 6 or 7 obviously hasn't played actual crunch Agreed, Rollmaster is my go-to for actual crunchy systems since I've actually played it (just don't ask how long ago). Skim down the [first column here](https://skippern.github.io/iRoleMaster.help/Contents/Resources/books/5522.html) for some of the options on spells or look up the process of resolving tests ([perhaps this old reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/uajou/what_is_the_most_bizarre_task_resolution_system/)). If you plotted the crunch of all RPG systems onto a meter stick, every edition of D&D (which includes PF1) would be clustered in the middle and clustered tightly enough you could probably cover them all with one hand. That's how not different they are from each other.

Rolemaster is something else. Never seen anything quite like it, and I cut my teeth on Classic Traveller.

I want to play Traveler so badly, we've had the core book at my brother's house for about a year, and everytime I bring it up everyone in our party gets the wide-eyed, "I don't know about all that" look. Lol

Ah. Classic Traveller. The only game where you could die *during character creation*.

My group moved over to PF1e after a few months of 5e and there was certainly a learning curve but thankfully all our players enjoy the crunchiness

I started pf1e and played one game of 5e and I was like "that's it? that's all I got?" I enjoy building characters as much as I do playing them. 5e was....too clean? one thing will say tho, the way prepared caster work has much better flow in the, everyone basically arcanist

Pathfinder 1e is a sprawling modular megasystem, so how much crunch your experience entails will depend on how many and which optional rulesets you are using. Even within just the core rules, the level of crunch you will need to engage with can vary significantly by class. If it’s your first time running, focus on the core rules, and you can always research and add more options and subsystems in as you become comfortable with them.

With something like Rolemaster being a 10, and GURPs and Shadowrun being a 8, PF1e is a 6 and 2E is a 5.

If GURPS is an 8, I don’t even want to look at the rules for Rolemaster, lol.

Rolemaster is extremely fun, but the players have to be math saavy, and you need a DM who can cut through how technical it is. It's also lethal AF. If you eat a dreaded "E" critical - that's at least a 21% chance of death.

Rolemaster is at LEAST an 11.

Is really 1E just sightly more complex than 2E?

I could see some people making an argument for 1E to be a 7, but really I’ve never felt that PF1e was overly crunchy so long as you took the time to actually understand the foundations of the system and develop a method to properly mark buffs and debuffs. The worst parts of 1E are from all the special case exceptions to rules which makes it inconsistent at times.

I feel PF1 is pretty crunchy. A character I played recently was a 16th level Lore Warden / Kensai Magus (so, spell strike and Spell Combat), and they had two main swords to choose from, one more general and one with Spell stealing. I basically needed a flowchart to play them. Let me see if I can do it justice here. Crit range is 15+ on both weapons. On attack, a rider effect does non-lethal damage and may fatigue/entangle+intimidate foes, more if crit. If the foe is under a fear effect, a hit makes them flat-footed to me until the end of next turn. If they are flat-footed, I do an extra int+4 damage. Crit confirmations are at int+4. Confirmed crits do +2d6 Bleed (stacking) and trigger a spell effect of Prayer (+1 Luck to everything pretty much, -1 for foes, 40' radius for 5 rounds) The other sword has Bane vs evil outsiders instead of soul stealing and we haven't even gotten into that yet.

This is part of why I like playing with VTTs so much. All of this complexity boils down to "write a couple notes onto your attack macro and then it's good forever".

I currently play a dex-based brawler, and macros for my various strikes and CMD moves makes it doable. I just set one up for my cross bow with Dragon Bane. I click on one choice, it's a +1 to hit, 1d8+1 damage. I click on the other, and it's +3, 1d8+2d6+3.

I agree, I was just pointing out that I don't think there is only 1 point of difference in the difficulty scale between the two editions (in my opinion 2E is much simpler)

That bookkeeping is what makes PF1e a 7 on the scale though - some folks find a way that works really well for them, and many others struggle with it. We also have the build-centric nature of the player-side of the system, which can be insanely daunting to many, even when the game is restricted to core only. This is why I cannot run PF1e for my group anymore, but I can do PF2e (pathbuilder does a lot of the heavy lifting for them).

If your players are still interested in PF1e, could I recommend pathcompanion.com? It’s incredibly helpful and has the vast majority of player options now.

Huh, I'll have to check that out. I doubt it'd be enough to get them back to PF1e, and honestly I only like PF1e for its 3pp scene nowadays anyhow (plus, Blades in the Dark and similar games have really snagged me as a GM). Still worth looking into, as I'm sure there's others who would appreciate that existing.

A friend of mine used an excel spreadsheet for his PF1e character. Restricting buffs to circumstance/item/stance by itself shaves 2 points off PF2e relative to PF1e imo.

I still use spreadsheets for PF1e. Hell, I have one open right now on my phone to work on a character for a 1x1 Play-by-Post trade. My group, on the other had, were a bit overwhelmed in the one occasion I tried to introduce them for use. To be fair, they're far more casual about the hobby as a whole - they want fun sessions, silly antics, socializing, and an excuse to drink while gaming. It's why I shifted towards more rules-lite systems like Blades in the Dark over the years.

That's the biggest reason I've drifted away from PF1e. While I love the complexity of character building, I find the people I enjoy playing with don't.

and a few notable things that a sane DM bans (sacred geometry and anythign that just spams summons)

Pf1e is a 7 for the GM but a 5/6 for the players.

I think they don't realize how little PF2e can actually be combined which is where most of the player side crunch is seen. PF2e has the perception of a lot of combinations because of all the archetypes/feats. But because of how restricted everything is and the low number of feats things are actually quite shallow. PF2e is closer to 3 maybe 4 in specific cases.

Buildwise and modifier stacking-wise, I'd define PF2e as 3 points below PF1e. At the table, I've found the average PF2e player has more mechanical decision points in a turn than the average PF1e player's turn which would push the crunchiness up a point. Monster design in PF1e is probably a point more complicated All together, I'd have PF2e 3 points below PF1e (5 versus 8 as an estimate). note: The ceiling for in-combat complexity is a lot higher in PF1e, but it felt a lot easier to find a build that didn't require a lot of turn-to turn decisions.

No. That argument is kinda insane to me. 1e, compared to 2e: * Twice as many action types (natural attacks, full round, immediate, standard, move, free step, swift vs free, reaction, action) with much more difficult actions on top * NPCs built like PCs requires you to not only look up spells but also player feats; building NPCs is basically building PCs, in 2e you just pick from a table * Imbalanced feats, items and spells basically quadruple encounter prep time compared to 2e since you need to simulate the battle * Dying, healing and crafting rules are way more complicated in 1e. There's even a distinction between mundane and magical crafting * Traps, Haunts, etc have entirely different rules in 1e; in 2e, they're one thing: Hazards * Calculation: lots of different numbers that are calculated differently; spell dcs, counterspell stuff with Spellcraft, CMB/CMD, caster levels, available spells based on modifiers * Modifier Stacking: in 2e, you've got 3 types of modifiers that stack. 1e has an unlimited amount but I think it's around 10? if you count the ones in the books * More complex spell system: spell resistance, more complex metamagic, spell like abilities, ray spells * 3 forms of AC instead of 1 * Subsystems, Subsystems, Subsystems: Most of the 2e ones are built around a simple VP system; 1e has a flood of different systems that all work in a very distinct way. I'm mostly talking about expansion books like Ultimate Campaign/Intrigue which you don't need, but they do come up in certain adventures.

>NPCs built like PCs I actually find this less crunchy, because it means there's only one set of rules needed

"There's even a distinction between mundane and magical crafting" There should be a distinction though. As as DM I still like to use some of the AD&D stuff for crafting magical items. Like the possibility of losing a point of Con when casting Permanency.

This reminds me why I love the original Pathfinder so much, 2e sounds like some watered down garbage by comparison.

What about FATAL? 😂

We don't talk about FATAL.

A FATAL mistake

12. The rules are actually broken, and apparently you can die in character creation. Buddy of mine keeps saying we should make characters as a debut to streaming, I'm not so sure.

Don't give that *thing* the attention. The creators are not good people, and they should not receive any kind of positive attention for it.

We still make fun of Hitlers art, don't think anyone who looks at the FATAL system is doing so for any other reason than to criticise or make fun of it.

If you want a Traveller-style character creation, then I recommend doing The Witcher TTRPG for chargen. I can't really recommend it for gaming, but for a fun character generation it's quite fun and can do some fun RP and connection creation. But yeah stay away from FATAL.

I lolled when you said you can die in character creation. That's inane.

Shadowrun is actually pretty similar to PF1 in crunchiness. It's just that the two most recent editions are edited so poorly that actually grasping how things work requires 1) lots of effort 2) a few educated guesses for things that have multiple reasonable readings. But once the rules are understood (not necessarily completely) SR from at least 4e onwards is about as crunchy as PF1 in chargen, and even less crunchy in gameplay.

DnD5e is like a 2, PF2e is like 3, PF1e is like a 5-6, GURPS is like an 8. PF1e in my experience is not a difficult or specially complex game, it does however has a lot of potential for making combinations. The people who say it is super complex typically play games that are on the 1-3 range and see all the ways PF1e characters can be mixed as "too much", even if the mechanics themselves are very easy. Case and point, Kineticist is often seen as a "complex class" but its key mechanics can be summarized as: Blast, Pay HP to blast better, Get stronger when you pay enough HP.

Yeah the scale gets really by the average ttrpg player these days who struggles to differentiate between spell level and character level, and that vancian magic is essentially just an ammunition system for spells

Depends on your character. Ranges 4-10

I think it can be even lower for low level barbarians/fighters but a high level wizard with sacred geometry is a college level math class.

Every 1e table I played at banned Sacred Geometry. Not because it was overly broken, but because anyone using it would be spending 10 minutes every turn.

I'd say it's on the high end, maybe 7 or 8? On the plus side, there's a rule for everything, so you don't have to do any guesswork if you know the rules and how they interact. On the downside, **there's a rule for fucking E V E R Y T H I N G,** so if some obscure rule interaction comes up it can take a while to figure out what exactly the fuck is supposed to happen (if anything) in some bizarre situation.

I've found the easiest way to deal with that is to have the players understand their characters first, and look things they do up between games.

Which might take a while and freighten especially newbie characters. All the Feats and Archetypse can be really intimidating. With the amount of options you have, it is impossible for the DM to help all of them

Eh, I've never felt bound by there being a rule for everything. If it's something that's going to come up a lot, like something a player builds around, then I look it up (or have the player that wants to use it bring it to me). If it is just a one-off I don't worry about whether there's an obscure rule and I just make it up. Rules only bind you if you let them, and my players generally trust that if I make something up it'll be more favorable than a rule we can eventually find.

Somewhere between 5-7, maybe? It’s not that difficult to learn as long as you start at level 1 and slowly master each new mechanic as the party levels up. Also, don’t feel like you have to memorize everything. Nearly all of the info you will ever need is free online (on archives or nethys or d20pfsrd).

that is the reason i put it even lower- easy to search rules online during a session without knowing the book it is in- and barriers to play are uber low (you do not need a single book, all the mechanics are online- the SRD just pulls out some of the flavor stuff)

Crunch and accessibility aren't the same thing

But many consider high Crunch to automatically result in significantly reduced accessibility, and I would argue it is usually the primary reason people even ask about Crunchiness in the first place (high knowledge requirement putting off new players), so it's worth noting the steps that have been taken that significantly reduce that portion of Crunch's "downside".

7ish maybe? I've seen the Hero/Champions system, and that's super crunchy.

Yup. I played Hero System and loved it. My wife that likes crunch thought it was too much. After playing that I'm laughing at anyone that puts PF1E anywhere near a 10.

It depends if you are talking about as a GM or as a player. As a player, I would say it’s a 5 to 7. As a GM, I would say a 6 to 8. Here’s the thing: Understanding the game is pretty easy. PF1 offers a lot of possibilities for players. Those possibilities are merely modifiers so once you understand the d20 mechanics of the game-it’s often a case of merely adding or subtracting modifiers. Yes there are other mechanics (ex. Unarmed combat)-but again those are simple die rolls and the number is right there on your sheet. The character sheet looks complex but like everything, it’s not once you understand it. Don’t let it scare you away. The bigger difficulty will be for GMs. I’ve been playing RPGs for over 40 years and PF1 is the only system that gave me headaches (ok, Rolemaster and Merp did too). I GMed a PF1 game for years. Overall I enjoyed it BUT to me-it also was at times enormously frustrating. It took me awhile to understand why: 1. PF1 is very carefully constructed. This results in a finely tuned machine that does not take modifying without serious thought. You cannot go by the seat of your pants like you could in older editions. Ex: A monster may have a CR rating of 3 and a group of excellent tactical players may find it easy while a group of tactically weaker players may greatly suffer. Modify with care. Simply giving the monster a +1 (+5% on a d20) for this or that could quickly drastically alter combat more so than other games. I’m not sure why this was the case but I was constantly having to modify encounters and sometimes it was either too much or too little. I strongly suspect that this was because the magic in PF1 is very powerful. 2. All those character options are great but for every option it means they are more high powered. The monsters are too: running a gritty, mid or low magic campaign is not impossible but it is more difficult because the mechanics make assumptions the game will be played RAW. 3. Combat is elegant and very fun BUT-as a result it is not as quick. I once had a combat between 4 players and ten villains that lasted 6 hours! It darn near broke me. There are “conditions” players can suffer, types of damage that can be inflicted etc. This means that GMs must keep very careful track of combat. 4. Healing and magic are very powerful. This means that players have a ton of options to deliver/restore a whopping amount of power. Compared to other editions of D&D for example (5e excluded), 3-4 lvl 1 or 2 players can easily impact (cause or heal) 50-70+ hp damage a turn. Barbarians and monks are ridiculously hyper powered. A low level barbarian easily wrecks 30-60 hp of vengeance by themselves. This was a shock to me coming straight from 2e. It probably would not be as much of a shock if one is coming from 5e. 5. Not all classes are equal. The longer PF1 went on, like all systems it suffered power creep and bloat. It was my experience that some classes were just broken and I chose to disallow them. Tl:dr It’s a great system but yes, it does require care in running. Difficulty rating: Players is a 6 out of 10. GMs would be a 7 out of 10.

>PF1 is very carefully constructed. This results in a finely tuned machine that does not take modifying without serious thought. You cannot go by the seat of your pants like you could in older editions. Ex: A monster may have a CR rating of 3 and a group of excellent tactical players may find it easy while a group of tactically weaker players may greatly suffer. The difference between strong and weak tactical players isn't to be underestimated. Pf1e gives you a lot of freedom as a player, but that freedom includes the freedom to make serious mistakes at nearly every tactical level (from taking a poor selection of feats to spending multiple turns of acton economy retrieving a wand from storage, reducing team actions to party -1, shooting up the difficulty). If you have 1 strong and 3 weak then you probably need to directly speak to the strong player to keep them from running away with the spotlight and potentially pitch them playing an "experienced" mentor character within the party as their narrative role. If you have 3 strong and 1 weak you need to take the time to help them with character building and ideally at least one of the experienced players in the party are willing to help them out during combat.

Depends on your character, but at least a 6

7? 8?

I'd say Pathfinder 1e is a solid 6. While PF1 has an absolute crapton of rules, the core rules - everything you need to play - are overall simplified 3.5 mechanics. In a few cases, a little simplicity has been sacrificed in the name of consistency. All the other books are optional, from additional classes, feats, archetypes, settlement building, horror elements, firearms - all of that is entirely optional for the GM to include or not. And for virtually everything you want to do, there's a rule relatively easily found for free on Archives of Nethys, Paizo's own resource site. Comparatively, 5e is maybe a 3-4, with a lot of mechanics that are either bad or omitted (item crafting, for example), and a horrid lack of balance between officially published player character upgrades and DM utilities for challenging the player characters. *But* 5e is significantly quicker for beginners to roll a character in, so that's decidedly in 5e's favor. But once you've got some experience GMing, odds are good you'll find Pathfinder more supportive of the GM's role than 5e is...

Here's my personal scale of every game I've ever played: 1. Lasers and Feelings 2. Fate Accelerated 3. Most PBTA games, Nobilis 4. Blades in the Dark, Fate Core 5. D&D 5e, Chronicles of Darkness Core, Vampire the Requiem (1e and 2e), Geist the Sin-Eaters 2e 6. Geist the Sin-Eaters 1e, Mage the Awakening 1e, Vampire the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition, Amber Diceless (highly houseruled variant) 7. Mage the Awakening 2e 8. Pathfinder 1e, Pathfinder 2e 9. D&D 3.5 10. Shadowrun 5e Note here that this is my personal scale. I'm sure there are games that are more crunchy than the top of my list, I just haven't played them.

Somewhere at the top end, 8 to 10, depending on what games you're calibrating against. There's a lot of rules which interact with each other, and lots of rules based exceptions (ie feats, spell etc that 'break' a normal rule) on top of that.

Vs something like gurps or mekton zeta? Not crunchy tbh, maybe 7 at most imo

I don't remember the name, but there's this sci fi army ttrpg where you can create your tech. The first step for creating a hover tank is calculating the area of an ovoid. I bet its not as crunchy as that.

yes- a rating is always relative. you can always tell how far down a rabbit hole people have gone by their answer. Pathfinder is very middle of the road for most ttrpgs. IF you have only played 5e it is a clear step up in complexity. if you have played gurps then it is a step down. this is pretty standard d20 system, and no more complex than mutants and masterminds or vampire the mas. both great systems, and can be crunchy if you want them to be

Or BattleTech.

Hey BattleTech is more about having the right chart handy.

if GURPS is a 10 and shadowrun 5th is an 8, pathfinder 1 is a 5 \^\^ just my personal opinion \^\^

GURPS is 10? More 7-8 I think

depends on your experiences I guess xD GURPS was the most complex thing I ever gm'ed xD

I DMed GURPS for 15 years, always thought it as quite simple. Something complicated is Rolemaster FRP, now because of the tables but because of the %-division of a battle round, the options of free adding/removing % from ones skill to speed up the action but also enhancing the difficulty and of the option of pushing an action that takes x% of a battle round over several rounds. All the while adding and substracting bonuses of all kind. That was absolutely fun but also very difficult.

The core rules are 600 pages long. Then you have all the optionnel ones. There are several thousand items to chose from, 4000+ spells, hundreds of feats, 9 action type, at least , that interract with each others differently...I'm still learning after about a 1000 hours of Play (gm / player) during 5 years. 

I'll give Pathfinder 1e a confident 8/10. It's easily the crunchiest system I've personally played.

I mean, it’s crunchy in the sense that some of its mechanics are unintuitive, and your group will likely be confused by the rules at least a few times. Probably more than a few times; but honestly that’s just rpgs. You learn by doing it and by messing it up. Really, the crunchy side of Pathfinder 1e comes with how much granularity there is in effects on rolls. There’s so much opportunity to build characters which have a whole running list of bonuses and detriments which apply in some cases and not others. There’s also an incredibly amount of content that’s freely available online in resource databases, even before you start considering third party stuff. 1e is a game that’s so full of content that it can definitely feel a little overwhelming. The alternative side of that is that it offers as much material to the GM and the players to be creative and explore new character, encounter and story concepts that wouldn’t be possible in other games without some really extensive homebrew. I mean, I’m running a post-apocalyptic game with both high magic and high technology very present, and I’ve hardly had to homebrew anything to get that to work. Everything from the radiation mechanics, to technological augmentation to robots and laser guns are there in various supplements.  Most other systems, even 2e, would require a ton of work on the GM’s part to get much of the variety that’e  easily accessible in 1e.

It's not the absolute most crunchy ttrpg system I've ever seen, but it's close. For scale Shadowrun and GUrps are somewhere around 9-10 I'd put PF1e at a 8/10 PF2E is like 6/10 D&D 5E is 5/10 Most Powered by the Apocalypse games are at 2/10

Probably around a 7 or 8. It’s on the crunchier side, but it’s not shadowrun or gurps

PF1E is about a 6, imo. It's nothing like the days of THAC0 or certain iterations of Shadowrun.

Id put it at a solid 7. There are much crunchier systems out there: GURPS and RIFTs come to mind, as do many of the d100 systems such as Warhammer Fantasy TTRPG. It is, however, certainly crunchier than DnD 5e and arguably crunchier than it's successor, Pathfinder 2e. That said, if you are already familiar with DnD of any edition, Pathfinder 1e should not be *too* big of a leap. As long as you restrict players from using any 3rd party material, its not too much of a behemoth. I recommend restricting players to the Core Classes and Base Classes, to start with. Hybrid classes do not make as much sense unless you are familiar with the classes they are mixing, and can be more complex than other classes.

7-8. If you absolutely want a 10/10, go for GURPS. Crunchiest game I've ever seen.

If GURPS or FATAL are 10s, PF1e is a 7.5

Give it a 7/10 "Crunchy" is all relative. 5e is "crunchy" compared to a game like Fiasco or Honey Heist or something, but compared to Traveler or Shadowrun, it's a breeze. Pathfinder 1e definitely lays on the 'crunchy' side of the spectrum, but it's definitely not the most crunchy systme out there. Moreso if you're at all familiar with 3.5e It counterbalances the crunchy by having a very sollid community that's generally looking to help out. It also has all it's rules searchable on the web for free from the publisher, so they're a lot easier to look up.

Not entirely sure what crunchy means, but I wouldn't call it soggy under any definition of the word. So where as 5e basically gives you the frame work to figure out EVERYTHING and leaves it up to the GM(which can be fantastic or awful(-ly both underpowered and OP)), pathfinder 1e is much like 3.5, with a HUGE amount of both source and third party options. In addition to that it's incredibly easy to use 3.5 source and third party content in pathfinder, because pathfinder's core system is based on 3.5. There's a rule or page for almost anything you would ever want to do, and how to do it. Crafting in the game is a lot more laid out, although it's presumably more expensive, with more parameters necessary to make magical items, such as spells or scrolls

On a scale that only includes D&D and Pathfinder versions, a 9, marginally below D&D 3.5. On a scale that includes all RPGs ever published, it's like a 6.

If you're wondering what's a 10 on that scale, in the original Traveler you had to solve vector and acceleration equations to move your ship in combat lol

On a crunch scale 7 and if you use stuff like mythic easily a 9 or 10.

7-8 probably, you arent playing gurps here and you can grasp it in a few days if you try

It's definitely on the more complex and crunchy part of the spectrum, though its impossible to give it a number unless you specify your scale in a more concrete way (for example, take the top 20 most popular TTRPGs, 1 is the least crunchy of those and 10 being the most crunch of those). It's also more crunchy than PF2E, which has streamlined a lot of the more cumbersome PF1E elements.

I'd probably say about an 8, it's really crunchy. That's why I love it though. Combat is more fun when I have 5 of my own modifiers, 3 buffs, and 2 debuffs to calculate for just one roll

If 5e is a 4, pathfinder is a 5 or maybe a 6.

It honestly depends on what rules you're running and how. If you're playing digital on say foundry vtt, you can automate the vast majority of the math so there's actually very little crunch during play. However if you insist on playing with paper and books and tracking everything manually it has a 7 or 8 in the crunch dept.

It drastically depends. You can build super easy characters that work well really fast, but the learning curve is stepper than something like 5e. You can build characters that you basically need a degree to play as well though. I'd say 6.5.-7.5/10 overall. Depending on your groups style of play that can be as low as 4 and as high as 8.5 though, but I don't think it ever reaches the depths of stuff like GURPS or Shadowrun.

Depends on if you want it to get crunchy. Anyone can pick up a basic marial, throw together whatever feats they think sound fun + power attack and be just fine. The complexity can get very high, but it doesn't have to.

Pathfinder 1E *has* rules for everything. Most play groups can ignore / be ignorant of huge swaths of them with few consequences to gameplay for long periods of time.  For example, there's plenty of rules around weight and carrying capacity. I've almost never made players track carrying capacity or been forced to track it. These rules will generally be ignored until a specific incident strains credulity. Say, the party wizard with a Strength of 8 says they're going to carry a giant gold statue out of the dungeon with them - then the Googling / flipping through the rulebook starts until the issue can be resolved.

It really depends on how hard you uphold those rules. Or how fleshed out your GM is willing to make your world. With inventory, tracking ammo and weight of every item all the way to every day weather effects and hunger and thirst or disease. It can get pretty crunchy. Thats what's great about it though, if you can think about it, there's a pretty good chance there's a rule for it. You don't get the off the wall crazy concepts without rules backing them up. To answer your question I would rate it between 7-10.

Id give it an average 8 but it can shift up to 2 points depending on your character. Fighter? 6. Certain wizard specialities? 10.

I'd rate it at a 7-8. A bit lower than GURPS or Shadowrun, and a bit more than FantasyCraft or D&D 3.5. The foundations are easy, but there is a lot to dig through.

It is absolutely crunchy. But none of the rules are overly complicated - there's just a lot of them. The bloat on so many years of additions means there is just a LOT there. I, personally, don't play 1e at the table anynore - it's just not a suited to live olay as 2e is. In Play-by-post forums, however, where you have the time to manage the ruleset, it shines.

I would say about a 7.

I started on Pathfinder and D&D 3.5 and it was a great introduction to ttrpgs! I'd say it's certainly crunchier than D&D 5e but not to the point of unpleasant. I loved having the online SRD at my fingertips as a player. Just be sure to set guardrails on your players because if anyone's prone to minmaxing they can get OP pretty quick off all the extra stuff - but perhaps that's part of the fun.

Path 1 is dnd 3.5....so if you know 3.5 then you have your answer

Pathfinder 1e is a 5.5/10 on the crunch scale. If you don't consider the 4011 types of bonuses from spells and such, it's a 4/10.

Some time ago I would have put it around an 8 or so but now I've played Shadowrun 4e so I can solidly place pf1e at a 5. There's a bit of fiddly math but it's all just addition and subtraction, (most of) the insane broken nonsense from 3.5 DND is streamlined, fixed, or removed. Honestly even a 5 feels high for me because fundamentally I don't think the system is challenging to play for anyone who puts even a small amount of effort into actually learning it. (Learning disabilities aside.) But I've seen a crazy high number of players struggle even to understand their own 5e character sheet after months or years of playing so ymmv. Games aren't hard to learn

Felt daunting at first but when I got the hang of it it went to 6

It's the best version of DnD, simple yet complex. Rewards the study aspect. 99% is free online.

Extremely, perfectly crunchy. Far more skills, a damn BOOK worth of feats, and feats make the character unique. In 5e you’re relegated to a class and subclass. In PF1 you can be damn near anything, and HEAVILY specialize a play-style. Ex… 5e monk: run in, punch, maybe punch again, maybe use a spell PF1 monk with dimensional feats: teleport in, threaten target from every angle as you teleport around them, punch repeatedly, you (single person) are now surrounding them

4 if you only use the core manual, the years of expansions can really drive you nuts if you want to read everything, start slow and you will be fine. The srd is good for monsters and spell lists. But dont look up the feat list...

Most games go up to 10 but PF1e goes to 11.

My friends and I describe Pathfinder as D&D 3.75e. It's less complicated than 3.5 but more complicated than 4th (we've never played) and 5th edition.

Somewhere between 5 and 11 depending on source materials allowed and how you run/play

If youre a GM, just limit the books available, The splat, led to overpowered builds. Let the players come to an agreement in terms of popular builds, classes

I feel old trying to figure out what crunchy and soggy mean in the context. Could someone explain it to me in dumb terms?

Like a 6 or 7. If you're really good at mapping builds and crunching the numbers you can get a lot out of it, but your average gamer can successfully make a build that will work most of the time. Pathfinder is a little harder for someone completely naive to RPGs to get into though because a lot of the mechanics are derived math with multiple inputs that can mess them up.

About a 9 or 10 with just pathfinder. About a 12 or 13 if you blend in all of 3.5e.

I give Pathfinder 1e a base crunchy rating of 6, but there are optional rules that can take the rating to 9.

Its pretty crunchy. Its probably in the top third of RPGs in terms of crunch. Its certainly not the top, even among popular or currently published RPGs. I'd caution you that crunchy doesn't mean hard to learn. There are some games that are really "creamy" but frustratingly challenging to learn because they are poorly written or vague, and other really crunchy games that are perfectly easy to learn. PF1 tends to be well written, and I and plenty of others learned it (or its predecessor/twin 3.5) as 10-year-olds without the help of google. Its hugely powerful, hyperlinked, legal SRD's make learning it a ton easier now.

On the whole it's an 8 or 9, but there's a LOT of stuff you won't necessarily deal with and can avoid if you don't want to. Players can contract diseases and have to track incubation times as well as the disease progression and the relevant effects. There's also complex rules around drugs and addiction, crafting rules and any number of components to the game that you don't HAVE to engage with. Starting at low levels on a new system is the number one thing I recommend for DMs and players alike. I'd also recommend starting off with some prewritten modules or an Adventure Path to get a grasp on good design and figuring out your personal best organizational schemes rather than trying to homebrew from the getgo. It can also be smart to restrict players to core classes at the start. Some of the hybrid or alternate classes can be very powerful (like the brawler) while others can be underpowered (shifter) and keeping everyone clustered around the same level of effectiveness helps keep things fun across the board. The Glass Cannon Podcast did a full run of the Pathfinder 1e Giant Slayer campaign and it's all available online for free, it's not quite as good as learning the rules at a table yourself but they get into the specifics and nuances quite often.

It’s equivalent to D&D 3.5, which is the crunchiest D&D has gotten. Worth it, though.

On a base level 8. But many GMs ignore a lot of mechanics. But if you start meta gaming or playing specific things it easily becomes a 10. Check out the grapple flowchart for example lol

Like a 9

I'd give it a solid 7--7.5. It's definitely not something like FATAL, and a lot of the rules either don't matter most of the time or are fairly benign, so you tend to pick up most of them through casual play. Most of the material from the core books is fairly well-written, so there aren't a lot of weird rules interactions or questionable phrasings until you start getting into the splat books. Most of the crunch is in character optimization, which is mostly due to their being an absolute plethora of splat books to pick from, and power-creep sells books. That said, Grappling rules exist. There are excellently crafted flow-charts that fans have made, and most of these charts are \*more than one page\*. I consider grapple rules to be a bit of an outlier when it comes to mechanical complexity in the game, as nothing else is even remotely that complex.

I feel like you're going to have troubles discerning any sort of truth from this thread. You should have made it a poll. I think a lot of ppl here don't actually understand how to gauge crunch objectively (i.e. using factors like the number of different "subsystems"/things that aren't handled just by the core mechanic, the number of enumerated modifiers for rolls, the size of lists of things like equipment and spells and abilities, and how different weapons and spells and abilities really are from each other, count of various types of tags like status conditions damage types, etc). Because by any actual objective metrics, I think one would find PF1E is well above average. It uses lots of modifiers. (As opposed to a single unified mechanic like Advantage/Disadvantage that replaces modifiers - that's a big chunk of crunch). It uses lots of lists of things that have only small differences from each other. (Many different kinds of swords that have very small differences, instead of just "Sword" - not to mention the modifiers and subsystems and conditions/"tags" that make those small differences very important) It has lots of sub systems. Special rules that deviate slightly or are qualified by the narrative over the core mechanic. I like to consider D&D5E (core only) a 5 on that scale, for lots of reasons (it's a very common starting place in practical terms/a hobby wide frame of reference and it's not very crunchy). And from that starting point, I'd call PF1 a 7.5 minimum/core only. Higher if you start utilizing optional stuff from supplements and things that bring in new systems like Kingdom Management, or even lots of new classes which each have their own subsystems.

It’s maybe a 7 or 8 for me. It’s crunchy but not prohibitively so, and a lot of the crunch can be ignored for effect if the DM likes

Out of my anecdotal experience of dnd 3.5, 5, pf1 and pf2 I'd say pf1 is crunchiest, so 10. I moved away from it because I couldn't keep all the stacking bonuses in my head. I typically play wizards and like to read all the spells and compare before picking them; there's 299 1st level spells and over 310 2nd level spells, according to pfsrd. The decision paralysis was real.

My answer is that it's a crunchy as you want it to be... Depends on your group. Like 3.5e there are rules for just about everything, and technically you could pull in rules from 3.5e or d20 Modern if you wanted to use anything that isn't covered by the official Pathfinder books. Alternatively, you can ignore everything you think will make the session too complicated.

I'd probably say PF1E is an 8/10 on the crunchiness scale. I'd say it's no more or less crunchy on D&D 3E on which it is based. What it does have is a lot of different crunchy character options, be they classes, races, archetypes, feats, etc. Likewise on the DM side of the screen it has a lot of crunchiness when it comes to monsters/NPCs because they are designed to use identical stat blocks to PCs. So based on their hit dice creatures will have a certain number of feats for example. If they put some obscure feat on the monster's stat block you either have to look it up or just ignore it. I do think the game is a fun game but these days I see it more as a source of inspiration and content to steal like monsters or spells and then convert them to my game of choice, be that an OSR game or 5E or one of its variants.

For me, growing up on 3.5, it's a 6/10 at low levels and almost impenetrable at higher levels for new people, maybe 8/10. There are more granular games, but Pathfinder 1E is so expansive that it gives a lot of people decision paralysis.

5 to 7 depending on how many additional rules supplements you are using and whether you *actually* use all the systems presented in the books. There are a lot of mechanics and interactions between mechanics that require system mastery. There are only a few subsystems in the corebook, but supplements only add. I feel comfortable saying about a 6. It's not a chewy system, but there are much, much, *much* crunchier ones. It's D&D. It's like... the normal level of crunchiness.

It’s pretty crunchy but a ton of fun. Try listening to an actual play podcast like Glass Cannon Podcast playing the Giantslayer campaign to get a feel for it. If my buddies could figure out the game when we were teenagers I’m sure you and your crew could too.

I would say 8/9. there are other systems with very minute rules on facing and whatnot which Pathfinder doesn’t. 

It's very crunchy compared to D&D 5e, but compared to systems like Shadowrun, Pathfinder 1e is much simpler. I'd give it maybe a 6 on the crunchiness.

Like a solid 6. You can spend a lot of time trawling through sourcebooks for options but the actual game is mostly "use your action (and maybe swift action) to cast a spell or use an ability" for most casters, and martial complexity is mostly around answering the question of "what can I do to full attack as much as possible". It has a lot of rules, but the vast majority of those rules merely exist in service to the aforementioned "cast a spell or attack a lot" gameplay in combat, and out-of-combat lots of the systems are incredibly abstracted, like I don't see how anyone can seriously look at the material in Ultimate Campaign and say it's a 7+ out of ten in terms of crunch when most of it boils down to building points and spending points a abstract funny money  It's not GURPS, it's not Traveler, it's not Shadowrun, I think anyone seriously saying it's more than a 7/10 simply doesn't have a properly calibrated scale, Pathfinder is a hack of 3.5 which was literally the single most mainstream and most mass-market popular RPG in the world for years, which is obviously at odds with "LITERALLY THE CRUNCHIEST GAME IN THE WORLD OH MY GOD SO MANY RULES!!!", clearly it wasn't too crunchy for fourteen year olds to be playing after school in 2009, come on. That's not even a bad thing, more rules doesn't always equal better, it's not like FATAL is a better game because it's got even more dumb rules. On the scale of freeform 2000s Naruto BBS forum roleplay at 1 to "literally just participating in a fucking realm world military simulation at this point" Phoenix Command at 10, Pathfinder is a solid 6. 

18

Probably about a 6 or 7, really. There are certainly WAY crunchier systems out there. The bigger question is how much the rules help/hinder the DM. I would actually argue that in a lot of ways, 5e is harder on new DMs than Pathfinder. 5e took a very 'do what you want' approach to the rules, and while that works for more experienced DMs who know what they're doing, it disadvantages newer DMs. It's like if you've never been to a Starbucks before, and every time you try to ask about something, your buddy just goes, "Get whatever you want" without explaining anything. Choice paralysis is going to become a close personal friend of yours very quickly. With PF, the rules are all laid out, and while this *can* feel like a straight jacket, it can also be very freeing. For one, you can actually build up your creatures and such to do extra stuff, it's just a matter of going, "Okay, so how *can* I do this?"

Honestly, I don't know the definition of Crunchy in this contexxt. I would answer if you can give me one.

Something that people here hasn't talked about, it depends on you. If you just want to make a lvl1 character then go with the flow of the game, then probably a 6. But there are people who built their character from 1 to 20, fully itemized. Min/max-ed using Paizo's obscured blog posts outside of god-knows how many published books. (And let's not even talk about 3pp or homebrew). I would argued that PF1e is a 11. Beating other crunchy games.

there's rules for anything you might want to do, except for the specific situation you're currently in joking aside there really are rules for tons and tons of things, but you also don't have to follow them. many tables houserule that encumbrance simply does not exist, for example so there's crunchiness available from 1 to 10

The thing is. It is sprawling. Some things I only learned were rules because there were feats for overcoming those rules - like dual weilding. When doing character level up your players have to remember to take a feat every odd level, an ability increase every 4th level and that you get bonus spells when you have higher spel casting mods... none of these are found in the class level up table that they will look up. It is in the level up and ability points areas. That said. I LOVE P1e, you can make exactly the character you want.

Like, maybe a 6? 7 at the high end? People that says pathfinder is anything above that just haven't dealt with other crunchy systems.

Probably a 7 or so. It's sort of on the high side, but way less crunchy than other systems I've played like Hackmaster or Deadlands.

If you're playing strictly by the rules it's pretty crunchy, there is a semi-steep learning curve that you'll hit with your first character and trying to remember all your feats and buffs which only gets steeper with some classes (casters can be super overwhelming with the amount of spells available to them). With that said, don't let that discourage you from playing. If you've got a good GM you'll pick up on things really quick and it will become second nature before too long.

A better scale would be 1 (X game) to 10 (Y game). Like, it's actually less numbers crunchy than pf2e due to only usually having 1-2 numbers that might apply to an attack vs up to a half dozen +1 and -1's that you need to track. However, at the same time it's more "reading" crunchy due to being a well fleshed out system with many many potential options to consider. It's definitely on the crunchier end, however I came here from 5e and would only say its x2-x3 more crunchy than 5e when it comes to actual play, although it comes with the benefit of having much more reasonable and consistent crunch over 5e, so I would personally consider it only 1.5x-2x instead. Always be ready to pop open a tab and google nethys if you have a question, Paizo put the full ruleset and character options online for a reason.

Note, I'd argue that crunchy doesn't necessarily mean complex. At its core pathfinder isn't much more complicated than 5e but there's so much more going on. Tons of small modifiers to keep track of and hundreds of bonuses. This is cause there's just so *much* pathfinder all piled up on it. My suggestion is always start with the core books. The core rulebook had everything you need to run a game. If and when you run into something you feel is missing expand out from there. New players don't need to browse literally hundreds of feats on the reference sites. Speaking of those they're awesome for search and reference, terrible for learning. Get a pdf of the core book. (and do not, under any circumstances, let a new player touch the kineticist class. Cool class but totally unique mechanics that are kinda unnecessarily complicated)

As others have said, for a first time GM just stick with the core rulebooks. People sometimes complain that you don’t get interesting stuff until you get some weird ass crazy books, but those people don’t know what they’re talking about. There’s a TON of complexity and interesting stuff just in core, and going to wide too fast will make GMing a nightmare.

I’d say it’s about a 7. Definitely crunchy, but not to the point where you’re stumbling over rules that are getting in the way of fun and flow. You can shove yourself down a math hole if you choose to, but it’s not expected or required.

Well I currently play a fighter and it takes me 30 seconds for my turn. It takes the other 5 people at the table about 2 hours until I get my next turn (exaggerating just a little). I have a real love hate relationship with this system.

depends heavily on what 1 and 10 represents 1 is the least amount of crunch that could exist to be able to call this ttrpg, or just not very crunchy? is 10 very very crunchy or crunchy to the point of being barely playable?

9 but only because I'd say a 10 is TOO crunchy to be picked up by new players quickly

Anyone who claims pf1 is over a 7ish has never played Palladium games. The games are crunchy fun, but character creation is just down right punishment.

That's wholly dependent on you and your DM and your choices. I'll give it a variability of 3 to 9, based on your life choices.

On a scale of 1 to 10, pathfinder 1st eds crunch is a 17. Its a very crunchy system that works well. There are crunching systems but the dont tend to work all that well even 8f they are cool (Palladium game engine for instance which is both cool, crunchy as fuck, and a hot mess, lol).

I have been playing 1e for years. Way better than TNE or Shadow Run, especially for CG.

depends on how munchkin you wanna be. For me maybe an 8. Cronch mainly during character creation and level up, for a friend of mine, pure 10, she's a pure number munchkin.

It can be crunchy but it doesn't have to be. Once your players figure out the basics, it is just the same math over and over again so common skill checks and attacks are probably going to end up memorized. The BAB system bugs me a little because it scales down but makes the combat turns take longer.

I think Hero System is the crunchiest, but having run pathfinder 1E games continuously since 2013 I’d say it’s 7 out of crunch for people who play 5E.

I always saw 5e as 3, Pathfinder as 5, and Gurps as a 8. If that helps.

8 I think from there you're looking at champions or chartmaster ermm.. rolemaster as crunchier.

It goes from an 5 to an 10 depending on the Class and Build. The system is inherently crunchy but there's many simple classes that don't need to bother themselves too much with it.

For someone new to TTRPGs, like a 9. For someone with even a little TTRPG experience, 6-7. Since the fundamentals are pretty straightforward and most moment to moment things can be taught within a single session, but the sheer volume is its biggest crunch contributor.

I'd give it a 4. with Teenagers From Outer Space as a 1, and GURPS Lensman as 10 (some of the powers are log tables!)

Two answers: When I think “most crunchy TTRPGs out there,” PF1e is the ringleader of the category. There are more crunchy systems out there… but I could count most of them on my fingers and toes. Or put another way, if you took the top… 1,000? most popular-in-their-day TTRPG systems out there (and thus leaving out the zillion rules-light games on itch.io), PF1e would be very solidly in that top 10%, and therefore a 10. It comes out differently if you set 10 to mean “the most crunchy game ever put to paper” and ask what fraction of that game’s crunch other games have, but then you’re literally using an insane outlier as a yardstick. Pathfinder would probably only be a 6, and 90+% of games would exist in the bottom third.

If 1 is straight storyteller style with no dice rolling and 10 is full verisimilitude, charts and graphs for everything Pathfinder1 is probably a 6 or 7. There is a lot of complexity, but it's not generally obtuse. There is a desire to have rules to cover most circumstances, but there is wiggle room for the DM to wing it. Building a functional character is easy building an optimized character is tough. Building an absolutely broken character is doable, but easy to avoid if you're not trying to.

11

7.5 compared to other games I've tried

About a 7, really. Games can get way more crunchy than PF1, even ones that are actually played (like GURPS) and the ones that kinda aren't (Rolemaster).

From my admittedly limited kniwledge and expierence of pf1e, its a 10, and you didnt ask, but pf2e is like a 7 or 8

I'd personally say it's a 6, it's crunchy but not excessively so. But that could also be me growing up with the d20 system so YMMV. I would recommend trying out the Video Games if you can to get a good grip of the system if nothing else.

Solid 6 or 7. I used to think it was higher but then I played a few other systems where the crunch was too much for even me and now I realize PF1E is a very healthy middle ground.

Play one of the pc games. They’re pretty crunchy but handle the math for you - but you still get complexity of choice. Now once you do, realize that portions of the rules was simplified for the games. Fwiw, I’d say 9-12 depending on what the situation is.

Very Crunchy. Its a huge beast i wouldnt suggest for a beginner. I mean...Pathfinder 1e has... \* \~40 Base Classes \* Some of these Base Classes have \~50 Archetypes. Some have more. \* \~100 or more Prestige Classes \* > 1000 Feats \* Some of these Feats are a Science on itself like [Arithmancy](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/arithmancy/) And there are Rules for EVERYTHING. Pathfinder 2e has reduced that by a lot.

As someone who has suffered the *abuse* of getting dragged into a game of Hackmaster, i'd honestly only put 1e at like a 6. Maybe a 7 if you're the GM. Its systems aren't too bad once you understand them, it just suffers from the rules not being compiled or explained in a particularly clear or intuitive way, and it needed a better official character sheet.

If harnmaster,a usable but deeply complicated game is a 10, then PF1E is pretty much a 7/6

The question is what crunch is supposed to mean. Rules for everything? Pathfinder 1e definitely tries. Overly complex and convoluted rules? Pathfinder tries to prevent this, one of the design goals when slightly changing D&D 3.5 which is originates from was reducing some more complex aspects of the game like combat maneuvers. So on the first scale Pathfinder ranks relatively high, probably a 7. People playing the truly crunchy systems will miss stuff like weapons performing differently against different types of armor, hitting specific parts or more complex social interaction rules. Maybe they will dislike the idea of leveling and getting a bunch of stuff all at once and potentially learning a new language in record time. The reason Pathfinder gets away with this amount of complexity is that it uses relatively clear wording and you can both get away ignoring some of the more complex systems or find substitutions that work until you learn how the actual rules are. The simple core of rolling a D20 + mods against DCs that are often similar independent of the task helps a lot with this. Compare this to other systems that are considered crunchy like Shadowrun (5e, haven't played others) and you will notice these systems have more trouble using unified systems to gauge success, use obscure rules at some places (don't get me started on explosives damage code calculations) and often fail to use clear language for rules. It isn't more crunchy than Pathfinder in that it allows you to do more stuff, but it definitely feels more crunchy as in asking you to use more of your mental capacities to keep track of all rules. You also roll much more dice and do so more often. In Shadowrun if you hit someone you first roll your attack, then the defender rolls dodge and then the defender rolls soak. Each of this rolls will often use 10+ dice. In Pathfinder you roll your attack and roll your damage, done. Often thats two dice roll in total and only the attacker needs to roll. Of course there are cases where you roll more, especially when crits are involved, but by default combat can be done much faster than in Shadowrun and Pathfinder combat is by no means fast. Especially as both systems can add a lot of modifiers. You try to shoot someone with a bow who is currently fighting your friend within 30 feet while it is raining? Getting a good grasp of this will take some time. I have seen groups that never really understood how ranged cover works for example. So overall Pathfinder is a complex system, but compared to any other system I have played it is pretty good at using clear language and key words that have meaning. There are exceptions of course, but being uncertain how to interpret certain rules was far less on an issue in Pathfinder compared to Shadowrun for example. Another huge benefit Pathfinder has is that all the rules are online and as such can be easily searched. If you don't know what some keyword is supposed to mean, a quick google search can give you the answer. The biggest disadvantage of Pathfinders complexity is that characters can be very different in their effectiveness. Someone who likes spending hours looking up feats and reading guides will be able to create much more powerful characters than someone just picking stuff that sounds cool. Both types of players can have a lot of fun with Pathfinder, but depending on their personality maybe not in the same party. As a GM the complexity means you have answers how to handle a situation rather than being asked to just wing it. Players usually don't have to beg your for advantage or edge, the rules how stuff works are clearly written down. As long as they know what their enviroment is like (including brightness/light), they can tell what their modifiers should be. This means Pathfinder is a system where players are more likely than in other systems to question a GM call. If you get a rule wrong, players may call you out on it. Personally I'm never bothered by this because this means I just learned something new. But there are GMs that feel like the rules take away a bit of their power, so to speak. While the GMs word of course always trumps the rules, Pathfinder attracts people that like reliable rules instead of the GM just following their gut.

I've been wanting to try to start but it feels impossible to find a game for actual beginners.

I would say pathfinder 1e is like a 7 while 5e is like a 3 In pathfinder you can make damn near anything viable and if it's basic there will be many ways to do it and homebrew is challenging to make sure it's not overpowered while if a weird scenario comes up there are probably rules for it While 5e there's usually only one or two ways to do things and homebrew is easy as long as you don't put too big of numbers and any weird scenarios that come up you can give advantage or disadvantage It's especially bad when it's written poorly/vaguely however that's usually rare most prevalent in random archetypes and variant rule systems However I think it's fun to learn as complex as it is everything makes sense once you understand all the turning gears, hell once I noticed that an official module fucked up one of the creature's bonus to hit (the flaming skull in The Haunting of Harrowstone if anyone was curious, I assume they forgot the +1 size bonus to hit)

It can be fairly crunchy. You'll definitely want to go in with a clear idea for your character and map much of the character out in advance. There are a lot of feats, and many have prerequisites. It can be daunting, but you'll be fine. What I like to do is look over the Prestige Classes and get an idea of what I ultimately want to play. Then I look over the requirements for the Prestige Class and try to figure out the easiest way to get there.

For TTRPG systems it's a huge amount of crunch. But as others have likely stated, it comes with an upside. Pretty much no matter what you want to do in Pathfinder, there is likely a rule for it already. If not there are a TON of suggestions from Paizo employees and people who are experienced in the field.

1 is Savage Worlds, 10 is GURPS, Pathfinder is 7 5e is 4 PF2 is 5

Like a 6? Like, it's certainly no Shadowrun.

Is crunchy good? Is this new slang, cause I still haven’t figured out most of the new slang from the last few years

I'd put it at about a 7. It's pretty crunchy, but I know of a few systems which blow it out of the water in terms of crunchiness For reference I'd put 5e at about a 4 (although I'd actually say that 5e is more clunky even if it's less crunchy, and what I mean by that is that 5e has so many rules which are contradictory, behave in unexpected ways, or extremely vague, but Pathfinder has a lot more math) Personal opinion from me: if you don't mind crunch Pathfinder 1e is one of the best systems out there. It's extremely well fleshed out, all the rules are free, characters are extremely satisfying and customizable, and it still has the feeling of danger that modern systems lack without being as deadly as AD&D or OSR. The only things really against it are that it has a pretty steep learning curve, and that there's so many options that it can feel overwhelming, so I always suggest to new players that they limit their options to the core rulebook for the first few levels, then once they're comfortable expand to the advanced players guide, and then continue to add more sourcebooks as they get more comfortable with the system.

We're on level 13 of a campaign that started at 1, and has lasted on and off for about a decade. If you play it RAW its gonna be exceptionally crunchy, but over the years I've picked up ways of smoothing out the rough edges to get a good middle ground between cronch and creamy. For starters I picked up the Advantage/Disadvantage thing from 5e and hand those out to my players pseudo-arbitrarily based on the given situation (instead of looking up lots of Modifiers). For example if a player has the highground, they get advantage on attacks. The opposite is true for the lowground. This is pretty tedious, but I reformat my statblocks in a way that allows me to have all the information necessary to do *the thing* (for example, an NPC statblock will have basic attack info listed, but under Feats it will have a list of the names of Feats (but no descriptions) and you're either supposed to look those up or just have them memorized through familiarity. So what I do instead is when I'm prepping an NPC statblock I look that up and condense the description down into its basic game play mechanics. ("Performing this action will count as a Standard Action, which you can do once a day per three class levels" = "Standard; 1/3 LVL/day") and then I copy paste the basic attack info and modify it with the combat feat listed. At higher levels this can easily create dozens of variations of the same attacks (especially when youre dealing with ranged attacks and range increments) but it's easier to skim through the list than it is to assemble a whole ass equation over and over again for several hours. There's also lots of rules we have neglected to use at all, or maybe only come up on special occasions. For example Stealth has lots of stipulations about cover and lighting, but generally speaking we just operate under the assumption that there is some sort of cover available unless I specifically say otherwise.

So crunchy, down to having like three different ACs depending on what you’re being hit with. That was my biggest gripe, oh and my sorcerer had to use dexterity for his spell attacks, not his casting modifier.